Queering Tropical Nature: Decolonising Hetero-Ecologies through Indigenous Epistemes in My Father’s Garden and Man Tiger

Abstract

Queer ecologies, an emerging debate in studies of the humanities, is an intersectional appeal for inclusivity of gender, sexuality, and ecology to dismantle hetero-ecological perceptions and embrace strangeness within nature. Relocating decoloniality through the framework of queer ecology, this paper confronts hetero-ecologies through the Indigenous epistemologies of two novels, one set in India and the other in Indonesia. The Adivasi Sarnaistic knowledge and practices, as showcased in the Indian novel My Father’s Garden (2018) by Hansda Sowvendra Shekhar, firmly hint at queer nature as perceived by the Indigenous communities who live in the Indian state of Jharkhand. In turn, the Indonesian novel Man Tiger (2004) by Eka Kurniawan, dismantles the hierarchical, heteronormative, and androcentric views regarding nature and gender by moving beyond the bio/ontological boundaries of the human and embracing a biophilic desire between human and tiger. The paper analyses these queer intersections within tropical naturecultures that shapeshift the entire human-nonhuman matrix.

Keywords

• Decolonial queer ecologies
• queering hetero-ecologies
• Indigenous epistemes
• Adivasi Sarnaism
• biophilic desire
• queering tropical nature