LANGUAGE IN INDIA

Strength for Today and Bright Hope for Tomorrow

Volume 25:9 September 2025
ISSN 1930-2940

Editors:
         Selvi M. Bunce, M.A., Ph.D. Candidate
         Nathan Mulder Bunce, M.A., Ph.D. Candidate
         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.

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

Celebrate India!
Unity in Diversity!!

HOME PAGE

Click Here for Back Issues of Language in India - From 2001

Poetic Encounter
Available in https://www.amazon.in/dp/B09TT86S4T

Poems
Naked: the honest browsings of two brown women
Available in https://www.amazon.in

Decrees
Available in https://www.amazon.com

BOOKS FOR YOU TO READ AND DOWNLOAD FREE!

REFERENCE MATERIALS

BACK ISSUES

  • E-mail your articles and book-length reports in Microsoft Word to languageinindiaUSA@gmail.com.

  • PLEASE READ THE GUIDELINES GIVEN IN HOME PAGE IMMEDIATELY AFTER THE LIST OF CONTENTS.

  • Your articles and book-length reports should be written following the APA, MLA, LSA, or IJDL Stylesheet.

  • The Editorial Board has the right to accept, reject, or suggest modifications to the articles submitted for publication, and to make suitable stylistic adjustments. High quality, academic integrity, ethics and morals are expected from the authors and discussants.

Copyright © 2025
M. S. Thirumalai

Publisher: M. S. Thirumalai, Ph.D.
11249 Oregon Circle
Bloomington, MN 55438
USA
Custom Search

Life in the Anthropocene: Re-Thinking Human Identity

Raj Gaurav Verma, Ph.D.

Abstract

This paper argues that ecological imbalance in the Twenty-First Century has generated a concern about re-thinking human identity vis-a-vis other life forms and elements. Humans have alienated themselves from the environment and other life forms in their race for advancement and progress. The segregation of humans from trees, animals, and nature has resulted in a bio-threat. Thinking beyond human identity implies focusing on decentering the anthropocentric universe, giving way to other life forms, and making human identity more inclusive instead of reducing it to a four-walled, sanitized air-conditioned room. The extreme divide between humans and other life forms has threatened their adaptability, immunity, and survival capacity. Identity cannot be inscribed in one form or body but as an extension of this bodily existence, as a network of interlinked human-animal-plant life and their relationship to the ecosystem. This understanding and realization particularly becomes important for corporate sectors in understanding the nature of humans and their resources. Human beings are not only organisms but also a part of a network and shared existence linked with nature and other beings. The exploitation of resources (natural or human) may appear lucrative at one point, but it eventually leads to drastic consequences, often irreparable, in the long run. Natural calamities in the present millennium draw attention towards the long-established conflict between the human world and the world of other beings. One way to address this gap is by extending the notion of human identity, which is more assimilative and inclusive.

Keywords:Autopoietic, Sympoietic, Anthropocentric Process-Product Model, Anthropocene, Capitalocene

Introduction

The Twenty-First Century started with the coronavirus pandemic and continued to be affected by natural calamities, wars, and global disasters. In light of such ecological imbalance, it is imperative for human beings to re-look, re-visit, and re-define our perception and approach towards our identity. Identity forms an intrinsic part of our existence and survival. It creates a sense of purpose in our lives. Different civilizations vary in their take on identity. Western civilization bases its notion of "bare life" and "a purported opposition between bios and zoe" (Aristotle; Agamben 1995, 2005, 2009; Finlayson, 2010). Eastern civilization has more or less continued to be pantheistic in its approach and spirit. On the one hand, Western Civilization struck the world with its Renaissance, Enlightenment, Industrial, Scientific, and Technological Revolutions, Colonization, and finally culminated in the global-capital-commercial order spreading in the world. On the other hand, Eastern civilization, following its Western colonizer, adhered to the market-economy model. Since the Renaissance, the extreme importance given to human beings created an anthropocentric global order, and this anthropocentrism was based on humans in power. The sense of identity thus formed was based on the "anthropocentric process-product model," in which the activities and products that were human-centric were produced and promoted. Human Beings derive their identity materially through the body and philosophically through the soul. Likewise, identity is derived from society, culture, and place, as is seen in various disciplines. In sociology, Emile Durkheim points out that humans are basically social beings. Aristotle has seen human beings as political animals. Economics is dominated by the idea of homo economicus, which sees humans as a resource. Anthropology classifies the current species as homo sapiens sapiens, meaning "wise, wise human."

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

Raj Gaurav Verma, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Department of English and Modern European Languages
University of Lucknow
Lucknow. 226007.
rajgauravias@gmail.com

Custom Search
  • Click Here to Go to Creative Writing Section

  • Send your articles
    as an attachment
    to your e-mail to
    languageinindiaUSA@gmail.com.
  • Please ensure that your name, academic degrees, institutional affiliation and institutional address, and your e-mail address are all given in the first page of your article. Also include a declaration that your article or work submitted for publication in LANGUAGE IN INDIA is an original work by you and that you have duly acknowledged the work or works of others you used in writing your articles, etc. Remember that by maintaining academic integrity we not only do the right thing but also help the growth, development and recognition of Indian/South Asian scholarship.