ABSTRACT
Placing itself in the intersections of post-colonial studies, nonhuman theory, disability studies, phenomenological analyses of the everyday and the ordinary, and Northeast Indian studies, the introductory chapter of Contemporary Literature from Northeast India interrogates the theoretical limitations of the necropolitical framework in post-colonial studies through a consideration of the categories of the everyday, the ordinary, survival and endurance. It also illustrates how concepts like the everyday and the ordinary cross-hatch with articulations of the strategic and tactical will to survive powerfully theorized in recent works in nonhuman and disability theory. Beginning with a consideration of states of exception and necropolitics, and their uptake in Northeast Indian studies, the author demonstrates that a critique and way out of the chokehold of sovereign power can occur through contentions with the everyday and ordinariness and the lived realities of animality, nonhumanness and disability. He also discusses what literary analyses of figuration and narrative can contribute to a study of the minutiae of the everyday and the ordinary in zones that resemble deathworlds.
