The question of corporate disappearance becomes critical in Animal’s People when a local activist named Zafar organizes a boycott of Dr Elli Barber’s free clinic precisely because he fears that the clinic’s surveillance of the community will allow the company to deny the existence of biochemical toxins. Zafar pleads,Think like the Kampani. Thousands of people say that for twenty years their health’s been ruined by your poisons. How do you refute this? We say that the situation is not as bad as alleged, that not so many people are ill, that those who are ill are not so seriously ill, plus of whatever illnesses there are, most are caused by hunger and lack of hygiene, none can be traced back to the night or to your factory ….To make arguments you need facts and figures. You need case histories, a health survey. (2007a: 69)
Although Zafar is wrong about Elli’s intentions, his willingness to “think like the Kampani” helps him anticipate their alibis. Using “case histories,” the company can individualize the “thousands of people” who claim that their “health has been ruined.” Such a health survey would allow the company to pick through the population and interrupt patterns of symptoms by attributing “illnesses” to individual factors, one person’s “hunger” or another’s “lack of hygiene.” Zafar knows the health survey will provide “a new way of seeing that gives” the company a new way of hiding.
But when Elli does eventually examine the local residents it not only becomes clear that the chemicals persist even without official recognition from legal, scientific, or political institutions, but, moreover, that the continued circulation of the chemicals within and between bodies has helped construct a very different kind of community. In particular, one young mother explains to Elli, “our wells are full of poison. It’s in the soil, water, in our blood, it’s in our milk. Everything here is poisoned. If you stay here long enough, you will be too” (2007a: 107–108). For this mother, “here” is defined by a chemical saturation that is both ecological and biological. From territories of “soil” to tributaries of “blood,” the factory’s chemicals have produced a network of chemical contact that defies the atomistic scale and universal scope of human individuality. Through a system of circulation, the poisons have settled the landscape and entered bodies through the local water and food; they stick to the blood and are passed down to children through breast milk. Importantly, this woman tells Elli that “if [she] stay[s] here long enough” she too will become part of the networked community called “here.” To be “here” is not necessarily a matter of being from here nor is it enough to merely stand here. To be “here” you have to “stay here long enough” for the slow violence of the chemical spill to make you, in a material sense, part of here.
For Animal, being “here” means awakening to a “nother world” that is not “meant to be seen” by the “world of humans,” but is nevertheless filled with a sense of community and non-human interactions. Animal explains, “since I was small I could hear people’s thoughts even when their lips were shut, plus I’d get en passant comments from all types of things, animals, birds, trees, rocks giving the time of day” (2007a: 8). This cross-species, empathic formation of a local community follows the pathways of poisonous touch opened up by the factory’s chemicals. By rejecting the eye-to-eye image of a humanity composed of isolated and indivisible individuals, Animal begins to explore the possibility that the prosthetic touch of abject materiality might constitute a non-human political community.
Consider, for example, Animal’s conversation with an unborn two-headed foetus floating in a jar of formaldehyde at Elli’s office. In one of Animal’s empathetic moments, he chats with “Kha-in-the-jar,” a ghostly figure of the biochemical undead. Sitting alongside other jars, Kha introduces Animal to “the directors of the board.” Kha explains, “everyone on this earth has in their body a share of the Kampani’s poisons. But of all the Kampani’s victims … we unborn paid the highest price … This is why, Animal miyan, we are the Board of Directors of the poisonwallah shares” (2007a: 237). If the company’s technologies of touch have reached “everyone on this earth,” including “animals, birds, trees, [and] rocks,” then these prosthetic connections might be reverse engineered as a mode for resistance. That is, the whole assemblage of poisonous touch that remains hidden behind humanist discourse must also produce posthuman communities capable of being awoken. The board seeks to counteract the company’s efforts and “instead of breaking ground for new factories to grow grass and trees over the old ones, instead of inventing new poisons,” the board seeks to “make medicines to heal the hurt done by those poisons” (237). To match the transnational and biochemical reach of the corporation, Animal notes, the board has “found some purpose in the web of things” (237). Like Animal’s “nother world,” this “web” of prosthetic connections is filled with “shares,” or those material stakes that impose community between different species of life. The comically undead “Board of Directors” that Animal conjures helps dramatize the awakening from abandonment that is necessary for the construction of posthuman communities.
Ambivalence: Humanism and “Something Different”
In his conclusion to The Wretched of the Earth, Franz Fanon expresses a familiar postcolonial ambivalence for, and critique of, western humanism. He points out thatThat same Europe where they were never done talking of Man, and where they never stopped proclaiming that they were only anxious for the welfare of Man: today we know with what sufferings humanity has paid for every one of their triumphs of the mind. Come, then, comrades, the European game has finally ended; we must find something different. We today can do everything, so long as we do not imitate Europe. (1963: 312)
But while Fanon, in the early 1960s, was encouraging the process of finding “something different,” petrochemical companies from the United States were beginning to technologically colonize the economies of India and elsewhere under the humanitarian banner of the Green Revolution. In 1970, Union Carbide expanded its Indian operations by building a giant pesticide factory in heart of Bhopal, but for much of the next decade Union Carbide sought to maximize profit, even as oil prices spiked in 1973 and again in 1979. At their Bhopal plant in particular, UCC tried to repair short-term profits by dismantling workers’ unions, firing nearly a third of the staff, and scrapping many safety procedures. By 1984 these cuts led to a massive eruption of toxic chemicals that began behind factory walls, but over the course of a quarter century, have now spread to the plants, animals, and people living in Bhopal. During the time of this continued spread, a period marked by the end of the Cold War, a revived form of neoliberal humanism has found its way into free trade agreements and global advertising campaigns. This is not the same form of European humanism Fanon confronted, and yet, it has reproduced similar structures of oppression and abandonment. While Fanon turned to nationalistic forms of resistance during an era of geopolitical struggle, Indra Sinha, in Animal’s People, rethinks the ongoing chemical spill in Bhopal to offer a critique of humanism worthy of a neoliberal world order.
Significantly, many of Animal’s closest friends and allies are devoted humanists. Among the group of activists at the centre of the novel, only Animal seriously and consistently challenges a humanist formulation of their struggle. Zafar, in particular, represents a thriving form of postcolonial humanism, and his story is just as instructive as Animal’s. Zafar is an ex-university student who, when he “got news of that night,” immediately decided to“quit his college and [come] to Khaufpur” to help “fight against the [American] Kampani” responsible for the chemical spill (2007a: 27). Over the course of the novel, Zafar is locked in a lengthy court battle to bring the company’s American CEO to India to face criminal charges. Although he is an outsider of sorts, the people of Khaufpur treat Zafar like a “saint.” They admire his earnest motivations and even his good looks, all of which infuriate Animal. The tense friendship between Animal and Zafar allows Sinha to explore a deep postcolonial ambivalence towards humanist forms of activism. Time and again, Zafar tells Animal
you shoul
d not allow yourself to be called Animal. You are a human being, entitled to dignity and respect. If you haven’t a name then this is a great opportunity for you. You can choose your own. Jatta for example or Jamil, go ahead pick one, whatever you like, we’ll call you that henceforth.
To which Animal responds:“My name is Animal,” I say. “I’m not a fucking human being, I’ve no wish to be one.” This was my mantra, what I told everyone. Never did I mention my yearning to walk upright. It was the start of a long argument between Zafar and me about what was an animal and what it meant to be human. (2007a: 23–24)
This debate between Zafar and Animal about “what it meant to be human” marks a fissure within the activist community, but this disagreement takes a violent turn when Animal decides to poison Zafar. Jealous of Zafar’s sexual relationship with Nisha, Animal attempts to dampen Zafar’s libido by depositing “datura” pills in his food and water.
One the one hand, Animal’s actions play into a heteronormative narrative of male sexual competition that leaves Nisha as a less-than-human sexual prize to be won by the most aggressive man. In this way, Animal’s unspoken “yearning to walk upright” is at least partially motivated by a desire to assume the high status of a male human within the patriarchal “world of humans.” Indeed, throughout the novel, whenever Animal is struck by the yearning to be human, it is almost always accompanied by the heterosexual fantasy of also becoming a husband. “Because I am an animal,” he asks Nisha, “that’s the real reason isn’t it, that you can never marry me?” (2007a: 332). For all of Animal’s willingness to defend the “nother world” in which he lives from the “world of humans,” he is at his most vulnerable and least subversive when it comes to the ideology of human sexuality. Animal’s rebuke, “I am not a fucking human,” carries with it a real sense of sexual humiliation. Nevertheless, given Michel Foucault’s argument that human sexuality serves as the “pivot” point between the “disciplines of the body … [and] the regulation of [human] populations,” (1990: 145) it is not surprising that Animal struggles to queer the “fucking human,” when both his body and his species are so roundly abject to human society (2007a: 145). Put differently, Animal’s body is never more desperate for community than in the one case where human individuality actually recognizes some measure of bodily touch. Animal’s decision to poison Zafar reveals ambivalence within the novel about the sexual politics of a “nother world,” but the intransigent denial of alternative forms of touch in the world of humans is no less troubling. Moreover, just as the poisoning exposes Animal’s sexual yearning to be more human, it also forces Zafar to confront the ahuman dimensions of the company’s “faceless” technologies.
Immediately after ingesting the datura, Zafar begins to feel “insects crawling over him” and he falls into a hallucinatory dream. Here Zafar is greeted by a magical crow that offers to grant him three wishes. Zafar’s first wish is thatThe Kampani must return to Kahufpur, remove the poisons from its factory plus clean the soil and the water it has contaminated, it must pay for medical treatment … it must give better than one-cup-chai-per-day compensation, plus the company bosses must come to Khaufpur and face the charges from which they have been running. (2007a: 227)
The crow responds “whoa, … I make that at least seven wishes,” but Zafar insists that all of his wishes “proceed from one wish, which is that simple natural justice should prevail” (227). The crow disallows this first wish because it is “impossible … if there were such a thing as natural justice, wouldn’t you be entitled to it, whether or not you could pay” (228). Zafar’s idealistic wish that natural justice prevail can be traced directly to his humanist philosophy. As Animal explains,I hate to praise Zafar but he is the only one who has a sensible view because not only doesn’t he believe in god, he thinks religion is a bad thing. The idea of heaven was invented by the rich and powerful to keep the poor from rebelling … He says if he believes in anything it’s humanity, that deep down all people are good. I don’t know where he gets that idea, because there’s no evidence for it in the world. (2007a: 207)
Zafar’s “deep down” belief that “all people are good” is grounded in a universal view of human nature, which is not supported by “evidence … in the world.” Using Zafar’s own critique of religion, it is easy to see how Zafar’s alignment of natural justice with human nature functions in much the same way as heaven does for the poor. In particular, both faiths are promoted by the rich and powerful to displace attention from the material “nother” world. Dow Chemical, for one, advertises a belief system very much like Zafar’s. Both Zafar and Dow’s ads root their political goals in a sovereign natural order that treats human individuals as a natural unit of “deep down” goodness. Although Zafar’s humanism doesn’t prevent him from “rebelling,” it does keep Zafar busy in the courtroom demanding an eye-to-eye confrontation with the company’s CEO.
Undaunted by the crow’s denial of his first wish, Zafar uses his second wish to make the impossible first wish possible, but once again, the crow declines. Finally, Zafar says, “I would like to see the face of my enemy.” The crow responds,“behold, the Kampani. On its roof are soldiers with guns … From this building the Kampani controls its factories all over the world. It’s stuffed with banknotes, it is the counting house for the Kampani’s wealth. One floor of the building is reserved for the Kampani’s three-and-thirty thousand lawyers. Another is for doctors doing research to prove that the Kampani’s many accidents have caused no harm to anyone … Above the chemists is a floor of those who sell the Kampani’s poisons with slogans like SHAKE HANDS WITH THE FUTURE and NOBODY CARES MORE, above these are a thousand public relations consultants, whose job is dealing with protesters like Zafar who are blind to the Kampani’s virtues and put out carping leaflets saying NOBODY CARES LESS. It is the job of the PR people to tell the world how good and caring and responsible the Kampani is”… Says [Zafar], “This is not my wish. I asked to see my enemy’s face.”
“Third time impossible,” says the crow. “The Kampani has no face”. (2007a: 229)
This nightmarish amalgam of lawyers, banknotes, chemists, poisons, slogans, consultants, and soldiers is the closest Zafar can come to personally confronting the company. Even as the company advertises the image of an eye-to-eye handshake, to “shake hands with the future” is a technology of touch that links “factories all over the world” to the company’s Frankenstein-like headquarters. The legal, financial, and marketing networks the company operates are transnational in scope, just as its scientific operations are biochemical in scale.
Although he represents a humanist form of postcolonial activism, it is important for Zafar to realize that “the Kampani has no face” (2007a: 229). Or rather, the company’s prosthetic attachments “all over the world” present a peculiarly contemporary problem: how can communities of resistance match the ahuman dimensions of neoliberal technology? This problem is made all the more urgent when Zafar learns that the company is using backchannel connections to broker a deal with local government officials, avoiding the courtroom altogether. In response, Zafar decides to stage a hunger strike in the public square, and this spectacle of bodily depravation helps bring “the world of humans” into confrontation with a “nother world” of biochemical violence. In a vivid passage, Elli describes the unleashing of a chemical violence within Zafar’s body as he fasts:In the first few days your body will raid your muscles and liver for their stores of easy energy. It’s called glycogen. You’ll lose weight fast. With the glycogen gone the body starts feeding on muscle. That includes heart muscle. When the muscles are exhausted, the body burns ketones produced by cracking fats. This also makes a lot of toxins. When the fat is used up the body goes into meltdown. It has nothing left to feed on by vital organs, but serious damage begins well before that.
Ostensibly, Zafar’s fast is a paradigmatic example of individual heroism. In a great show of personal willpower, he refuses the very food and water that would capture his body in the company’s network
of poisonous chemicals. Even Animal concedes, “Zafar is a hero, a saint, and his death would cause such mayhem that no politician could ignore it” (2007a: 296).
And yet, this sacrificial narrative cannot account for the specificity of Zafar’s slow deterioration. From the glycogen to the ketones, the range of toxic chemicals that flood Zafar’s starving body become a critical part of the novel’s focus. Zafar’s toxic “meltdown” near the end of the novel clearly echoes the chemical heat that grips Animal’s body at the beginning of the novel. As Zafar’s muscles and organs begin to burn, his mind is flooded with voices, and he begins adopting the same vulgar language as Animal. He tells Animal, “you are fucking lucky mate, because … I think my head will bust with all the fucking thoughts bulging in it” (2007a: 296). Feverishly, Zafar begins mapping a “nother world” of political struggle, where the transnational reach of corporate poisons might be met by a transnational community of resistance:Is Khaufpur the only poisoned city? It is not. There are others and each one of has its own Zafar. There’ll be a Zafar in Mexico City and others in Hanoi and Manila and Halabja and there are the Zafar’s of Minamata and Seveso, of Sao Paulo and Toulouse and I wonder if all those weary bastards are as fucked as I am. (2007a: 296)
These “poisoned cities” have produced a community of “weary bastards” that have been “fucked” over and abandoned by paternalistic humanism.8 The toxins that flow through the body and the city spread slowly and widely. These chemicals mark out a posthuman “here” that is both local and transnational. Indeed, even as more and more people, animals, and environments are abandoned by an unceasing succession of corporate disasters, the prosthetic technologies of neoliberalism have a half-life that persists in Bhopal as it does in Hanoi and Sao Paulo. Here the undead awaken to a “nother world” where they can hear the echo of Fanon’s call to “find something different” (2007a: 312).
Posthuman Capital and Biotechnology in Contemporary Novels Page 18
