Endangered (and Endangering) Species: Exploring the Animacy Hierarchy in Malik Sajad’s Munnu

Abstract

The contrast between Kashmiris as hanguls (endangered Kashmiri deer) and the Indian occupiers as “human” provides us with a good entry point to investigate and interrogate the visual representation of the “animacy hierarchy” (Mel Chen)—the conceptual arrangement of human, animal and other forms of nonhumanness in orders of value and priority—in Malik Sajad’s graphic memoir Munnu: A Boy from Kashmir (2015). The anthropomorphic representation of Kashmiris as hanguls enables Sajad to simultaneously query the relative valuation of human life vis-à-vis that of the animal, and the mutual degradation and endangered status of both human and animal in a zone of emergency. However, a closer look reveals that another animal—the stray dog—appears either directly or indirectly in Munnu’s bestiary. This article unpacks the polyvalent symbolic and material valences of stray dogs as important narrative cogs in the triangulated animacy hierarchy (human-hangul-canine) in Munnu. While strays often function either as symbolic representations or as visual analogues to organized army brutality in the text, I argue that they also gesture towards other modalities of interspecies affiliation in the realm of quotidian life in zones of emergency.

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