Necroecology: Undead, Dead, and Dying on the Limits of the Colony

This paper introduces and explicates the neologism “necroecology” as a critical, philosophical approach for studying human-nonhuman relations in the context of British colonialism and its aftermath. Necroecology also names an aesthetic that originated in the mid-nineteenth century as a direct consequence of the 1857 Indian Uprising. This paper develops its hypotheses through readings of Rudyard Kipling's short story “The Strange Ride of Morrowbie Jukes” and E. M. Forster's A Passage to India .