Beyond Species Boundaries: Study of Power, Pain and Politics in Nabarun Bhattacharya’s Lubdhak

Abstract

Heidegger’s fundamental ontology suggests that animals exist in a state of ‘poverty’ in the world, with limited access to their surroundings. This poverty stems from the animals’ inability to apprehend the world’s openness, which in turn diminishes their agency and reinforces human superiority. This persistent denial of animal agency in Western philosophy is part of a longstanding political fable that has distinguished humans from animals since the earliest days of civilization. This paper argues that animals, similar to marginalized humans, have limited access to their environment. The concept of ‘zoe’ or ‘bare’ biological life encompasses both peripheral humans and non-human animals, not treated as political subjects. According to Foucault, the operation of sovereignty has transformed with the shift from monarchical power to biopower in modern nation-states, but this shift hasn’t altered the attitude of power toward ‘bare life,’ whose existence can be terminated without significant legal or ethical consequences. Derrida opines in The Beast and the Sovereign that any revolution against sovereignty would fail indefinitely until the demand is for the ‘absence of sovereignty’ instead of a fight for “a new form of the same fundamental structure”. To transcend sovereignty, Derrida suggests, the sovereignty of the human species must be challenged first. One needs to question the animal/human boundary on which sovereignty is founded. This paper invokes Nabarun Bhattacharya’s Lubdhak to offer a vivid illustration of how power operates in the modern nation-state, affecting animals on the periphery. Bhattacharya, aligning with Derridean insights, interrogates sovereignty by acknowledging the non-exclusivity of humans. The animals in this story are often regarded as a metaphor for suppressed marginal people, but this oversimplified interpretation arises from the complex affinity between the two groups. United by their shared experience of pain and deprivation, if not by agency, marginal humans and animals become readily comparable metaphors for each other. Resistance, therefore, requires questioning the barrier between species and reimagining governance and ethics from the premise of species continuity.

DOI - https://doi.org/10.66496/LCAP.9788168710108.2026.143-169