Questioning rationality: Martel’s philosophy of transpersonal self in Life of Pi

Abstract

In the novel Life of Pi. the story uses a human-animal story to articulate Martel’s transpersonal aesthetics which reconsiders traditional Western philosophical notions of the self, maturity, and rationality. The naming of Martel’s protagonist enacts a symbolic subversion of the subject-object hierarchy, placing the self in a relational continuum with other inanimate and insentient beings. It also blurs the boundary between humanity and animality, thus questioning the role of Western rationality which defines the self as a perfection of unity, autonomy, and independence. The novel also sets forth the notion of a transpersonal, transcultural self through religious pluralism, and expresses an ecological, metaphysical self coterminous with the entire universe. Martel’s philosophical reflection on the transpersonal self expresses the need for breaking the limits Western philosophy has imposed on the boundary of the self.