https://doi.org/10.67147/literariness.v1i4.095
Tidal Ecologies: A Critical Posthumanist Reading of The Hungry Tide
AISHWARYA PAULSON
Research Scholar
Department of English, KTHM College (Research Centre), Nashik, Maharashtra
DR. DHADE HEMKANT VIJAY
Research Guide and Assistant Professor
Kalvan Education Society Arts, Commerce, and Science College, Kalvan, Nashik
Abstract: In the Anthropocene, Critical Posthumanism challenges the Humanist assumptions, that humans occupy a central and privileged position in the ecological systems. Literary narratives, especially the climate fiction, engages with these concerns through foregrounding ecological interdependence by reimagining human-nature relationships. The Hungry Tide by Amitav Ghosh is one such masterpiece, which portrays the Sundarbans as a volatile tidal landscape, where the constantly shifting terrain appears to destabilize assumptions of human mastery over nature. The novel set in this unstable ecological environment, explores the encounter between different ways of knowing and living in the tide country. The narrative shows the contrast between Piya’s scientific knowledge as a marine biologist and Fokir’s lived experience as a fisherman who is intimately familiar with the rhythms of the tide country. This contrast highlights the limitations of anthropocentric frameworks that assume human control over ecological systems. It also depicts the alternative ecological epistemologies rooted in embodied experience of the tidal landscape “where the boundaries between land and water are always mutating, always unpredictable”. This paper suggests that The Hungry Tide foregrounds a critical posthumanist perspective in which the unpredictable ecology of the Sundarbans destabilises anthropocentric assumptions. It also reveals relational modes of coexistence between human and nonhuman life, evident in the character of Fokir for whom the sea is just an extension of his body. The paper by redirecting agency from the humans instead seeks emphasising the agency of the tidal landscape and the ecological knowledge embedded within local ways of inhabiting it. It invites readers to reconsider human–nature relations and coexistence in the Anthropocene by examining the novel The Hungry Tide through the Critical Posthumanist lens.
Keywords: Critical Posthumanism, Anthropocene, Indigenous Ecological Knowledge, The Hungry Tide, Coexistence
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