LANGUAGE IN INDIA

Strength for Today and Bright Hope for Tomorrow

Volume 21:3 March 2021
ISSN 1930-2940

Editors:
         Sam Mohanlal, Ph.D.
         B. Mallikarjun, Ph.D.
         A. R. Fatihi, Ph.D.
         G. Baskaran, Ph.D.
         T. Deivasigamani, Ph.D.
         Pammi Pavan Kumar, Ph.D.
         Soibam Rebika Devi, M.Sc., Ph.D.

Managing Editor & Publisher: M. S. Thirumalai, Ph.D.

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Post Humanistic Elements in Child Writers:
A Brief Analysis of Two Child Writers

Alfin Davis

Abstract

The study of child writers is a recently emerging branch of scholarly study. It is known by the name of ‘juvenilia studies’ in academia. The works of child writers grant the reader and the critic a privileged access into the thought process of children. This paper does a brief analysis to reveal the post human elements in the thought process of two child writers as revealed through their works.

Opal Whiteley and Kavya Kompella, two child writers, the former speaking to us from the 20th century and the latter speaking to us in the 21st, have as the common thread of their works, the blurring of boundaries between the human and the non-human. Whiteley’s work is a semi-fictional diary titled The Story of Opal: The Journal of An Understanding Heart where she recounts her days in an Oregon lumber camp - her days at school, the journeys she makes to her school, her home and other places near the settlement during the course of which she establishes a deep bond with all the living and nonliving things in and around the woods that surround the settlement. Kompella a nine-year old Indian published 110-pages book titled The Three Adventurers at Fungalore, which rose to the best-selling list of Amazon, India. The book is about two children, Neel and Nina who are excited to go to their new school, Fungalore, and the adventures that they have there.

Keywords: Opal Whiteley, Kavya Kompella, juvenilia, posthumanism

Introduction

The relationship of humans with animals and other non-human entities have been a subject of discussions, ever since it has been understood that our faulty and at-times-egotistical perspective of placing ourselves in the world around us is the reason for the ever-worsening ecological imbalance in the natural world. Such discussions have often made us aware of the need to recast and redefine these relationships on a philosophical level. Environmentalists and other theorists have understood that, anthropocentrism is the bedrock that operates under the rhetoric of civilizational progress and economic development. Such a philosophy puts humans above and before all others. The Cartesian idea of the delineation between a thinking mind and a subservient body in humans further validated the idea of superiority of human-beings as opposed to animals that cannot think self-consciously about themselves and act according to these thoughts. When we say that egocentric humans have been responsible for the creation of ecological imbalance in the natural world, we mostly mean the adult male human. In other words, patriarchy along with ‘aetonormativity’(a term coined by Maria Nikolajeva in 2010 to denote the assumption that adult behavior is normative while childish behavior is deviant)1 are the controlling ideologies behind an anthropocentric perspective. The indifference and, often, arrogance of governments and corporations, at whose helm mostly sit adult males, are responsible for the precipitation of this crisis.

This is only the beginning part of the article. PLEASE CLICK HERE TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE IN PRINTER-FRIENDLY VERSION.

Alfin Davis
Independent Scholar
M.A., M.Phil., J.R.F.
Vadakkan House, No:227
Wadakkanchery P.O.
Thrissur,Kerala,India-680582
alfindavis@gmail.com
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