Transecology as “Lines of Flight” in Arundhati Roy’s The Ministry of Utmost Happiness

Abstract

The term “transecology” examines sociocultural and environmental inequalities and offers a fresh perspective by clubbing eco-consciousness with transgender and queer scholarship. It dismantles the hegemonic views on nature and dominant gender practices by exploring the issues of identity, belonging, longing, exclusion, inclusion, and emplacement concerning gender fluidity and environmental issues. In Arundhati Roy’s The Ministry of Utmost Happiness (2017), I explore these issues from a transecological perspective and observe how this interconnection offers “lines of flight” to the exploited ones whose existence is deemed to be unproductive in sociocultural imaginings. The transgender protagonist, Anjum, faces so much exploitation and humiliation before finally achieving liberation from the dominant heteronormative norms by settling into the cemetery, far from the civilized world, to experience the interconnectedness of her nature with the natural surroundings and becomes an agency for all the oppressed people who are exploited because of the hierarchical practices of society. Thus, this paper insists that human beings, irrespective of gender, are part of socially constructed and natural spaces.