A ‘South within the South’: writing from more-than-human entanglements in Guwahati, India

This paper attempts to theorize from two peripheries within the Indian 'knowledge production nexus': one which is spatial vis-à-vis a 'peripheral' city; and the other which is relational vis-à-vis more-than-human relations in the city. Drawing from Southern and postcolonial urban theory and more-than-human geographies, we postulate that first, the city of Guwahati in North-East India remains a 'South within the South' as a site to theorize from, and second, the everyday enmeshed lives and relations of animals within this landscape remain negligible within the above-mentioned discursive nexus. In a parallel enquiry over 'other Souths' and 'other lifeforms', we explore animals' geographies in Guwahati, finding potential in the framing of 'entanglements' to encapsulate varied relations with pigs, rhesus macaques, bovines, and dogs – both historically and in the contemporary. More-than-human entanglements, we contend, unveil more-than-human material, spatial, and liminal relations in the city, striated along economic, gender, caste, and class lines. Such a framing is both located and dislocated, suggestive of a comparative analytic and a plural ethic.