Art, Ecology and Affective Encounters: An Ecosophical Study of Folk Tales from Tripura.

This paper promotes an anti-anthropomorphic approach to the study of folk oratures of India’s Northeast with special reference to select motifs in the folk tales of the Bongcher and Chakma communities of Tripura (in English translation). The tales are replete with strange transformations from humans to beasts and birds, and vice versa. This motif of metamorphosis serves to situate the folk tales of this region in a paradigm which explores and accommodates a literally symbiotic kinship between art and nature. Timothy Morton’s observations on “ecological thought”, and the “mesh” resting on the pillars of inter-human and inter-elemental relationships which they foreground, offer a methodological premise to this study. This paper pursues an ecosophical study of select folk tales like – Rulrengtenu Retape (Bongcher), translated as “The Story of the Snake-Queen” and Bucya buri a Egpal Bandar (Chakma), translated as “The Old Man and the Band of Monkeys”. Besides, this study may also be situated at a crucial juncture in human history, when concerns of late capitalism and its consequent ecological collapse have begun to threaten life on this planet. Hence, this study also draws on Guattari’s notion of ecosophy engaged upon in his work The Three Ecologies, and explores how folk tales of India’s Northeast encompass the material, social, and perceptual realms of ecology in all its diverse life-affirming varieties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]