ABSTRACT
Tania James’ foray into the mind of a traumatized elephant in her 2015 novel, The Tusk That Did the Damage, imagines the animal’s lived experience as that which is unknowable yet understandable to her reader. The chapter explores how this strategy complicates both the human/animal divide and the class inequities embedded in Indian wildlife conservation. I then argue that the texts’ refusal to resolve the issues it raises nuances the political and social entanglements that structure local communities as spaces that thwart resolutions to human–animal conflicts prescribed by FirstWorld conservationists.
