“Who are these people?”: Anthropomorphism, Dehumanization and the Question of the Other

AbstractDiscussions of the animal have repeatedly examined both our epistemological desire and our epistemological insufficiency towards the non-human animal. In different ways Spinoza, Derrida, Nagel and Berger have shown that once the anthropomorphic layer of assumption has been peeled back, there appears the abyss of incomprehension between humans and the non-human animals. Yet the ‘abyssal difference’ does not address the scale or the scope of existing knowledge; it only points to the elusive and ultimate epistemological certainty, obscuring important distinctions between degrees and kinds of interspecies communication. This paper will consider the ground that is too often overlooked in arguments that appeal to the anthropomorphic fallacy. While we cannot share another species’ experience, we can, to some extent understand it through processes of inductive inference – that is anthropomorphism – and through studying it, broaden and deepen the ontological significance of both humans and animals. By looking at the process of humanizing the non-human as a basic cognitive method, this paper will argue that anthropomorphic reasoning can not only bridge the ‘abyss’ in crucial ways but have a powerful impact on animal ethics. Then it will link anthropomorphic reasoning to the process of othering – dehumanizing the human – and make salient the processes that inform the discursive and political practices of speciesistic and cultural hierarchization. Finally, it will examine representations of anthropomorphism, dehumanization and the construction of otherness in Amitav Ghosh’s The Hungry Tide (2005), a novel which is based on the Morichjhani massacre of 1978–79, when animal rights came into conflict with human rights