NUML journal of critical inquiry

Pluribiological Cosmopolitanism and More-than-Human Societies

Patricia Vieira — 2025-06-28

In this essay, I discuss the notions of multiculturalism and cosmopolitanism from an interspecies perspective. I propose the concept of "pluribiologism" as an alternative to Western multiculturalism and to the multinaturalism that anthropologists such as Eduardo Viveiros de Castro identify in the Amerindian peoples of the Amazon. Pluribiologism is the basis for interspecies societies and for the concept of the rights of nature, which has been developed and introduced into the legal systems of many Amazonian countries. I offer examples of the rights of nature and of its consequences within nation-states. In the final section of the essay, I outline the notion of a pluribiological cosmopolitanism from an interspecies perspective and suggest ways for humans to establish peaceful relations with more-than-human beings.

Research for this article was funded by the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program (grant agreement no. 101002359).

The Development of Nominal Synsets for the Saraiki Language: A Corpus-based Analysis

Madya Asgher — 2025-06-28

This paper focuses on developing nominal synsets for the Saraiki language (SL), a lesser-studied language spoken in Pakistan. Nominal synsets are groups of nouns that share semantic characteristics and are crucial for natural language processing tasks such as information retrieval, machine translation, and text classification. The research aims to create Saraiki Nominal Synsets (SNS) using the Gurumukhi Punjabi WordNet. The study employs a hybrid approach, combining merge and expansion techniques for analysis and gathers data from PDF textbooks, online sources, and the Saraiki Wikimedia incubator. The collected data is limited to texts published between 2000 and 2019, and manually tagged using Antconc 3.4.4.0 wordlist due to the unavailability of a tagger for the Saraiki Language. The study builds a 2.2 million Saraiki word corpus and a list of 750 nouns, then categorizes and semantically organizes the Saraiki Nominal Synsets based on the list of Saraiki nouns. To identify and classify nouns in SL based on their semantic properties, a corpus-based approach is utilized, and nominal synsets are constructed using a combination of manual and automatic methods. Evaluating the quality of the synsets involves comparing them to existing lexical resources and conducting a semantic similarity analysis. The results demonstrate the effectiveness of the approach in capturing semantic relations among nouns in SL and producing synsets useful for various NLP applications. Overall, this study contributes to the development of linguistic resources for lesser-studied languages and provides valuable support for researchers and developers working on natural language processing tasks involving SL.

Terraforming the Red Planet: Imperial Domination, Neocolonial Control, and Resistance in Kim Stanley Robinson’s Red Mars

Jonathan Caleb Imdad — 2025-06-28

This paper uses Edward Said’s concept of colonial discourse to examine how Mars is colonized by the governments of Earth and dominated by transnational capitalism, as it is depicted in Kim Stanley Robinson’s Red Mars. The novel portrays Mars as a battlefield for the imperial powers of Earth, where the wars for Martian land proceed from well-known predilections for imperialist and neo-colonial capitalism. Mars appears as a “frontier,” neither settled nor exploited, that can be colonized, where both the colonizers and colonized struggle for dominance. But Martian colonists reject corporate and institutional control and fight their own battles reminiscent of anti-colonial struggles on Earth. This qualitative study investigates how Mars can be viewed as an extension of neocolonialism by arguing that Robinson has depicted Mars as a colonial/neocolonial space. The novel serves as a warning to the institutions of Earth as it demonstrates that conquest, corporate dominance, and economic exploitation are challenges that must be continually opposed. The research underlines the need to create a system based on justice, freedom, and the wellbeing of all settlers. It raises both political and ethical questions and illustrates how speculative fiction like Red Mars plays a role in policymaking conversations.

Slamming Narratives: A Critical Analysis of Suhaiymah Manzoor-Khan’s Slam Poetry

Marya Gul — 2025-06-28

Some popular literary feminist discourses have reduced Muslim woman’s identity to a homogenous monolithic entity devoid of her subjectivity and agency. Resultantly, Muslim women seem to be reduced to a stereotypical image of an oriental, marginalized entity, as these narratives are often employed to rationalize the violence in the third world. Over the years, slam poetry has become a popular medium of counterdiscourse against such problematic framing of Muslim women. This paper examines the slam poetry of Suhaiymah Manzoor-Khan as a site of resistance against monolithic representations of Muslim women in both Western and cultural narratives. Situating her work within the post-9/11 socio-political context, the analysis draws on postcolonial and Muslim feminist theories to explore how Manzoor-Khan reclaims narrative authority through performative verse. Through close readings of “This Is Not a Humanizing Poem”, “A Story for Ourselves This Time”, and “Funeral of the Authentic Muslim Woman”, this paper highlights her subversion of Orientalist tropes, patriarchal scripts, and Western expectations of relatability. Manzoor-Khan’s poetry resists frameworks of respectability and authenticity, offering instead a defiant, pluralistic vision of Muslim womanhood. By using the slam stage as a political and poetic platform, she expands the possibilities for self-representation and collective storytelling.

Monolithic Modes of Oppression: An Intersectional Approach to Class and Gender in Tendulkar’s Kamala

Ayesha Izhar Chaudhri — 2025-06-28

The study aims to answer critical issues concerning the nuanced interplay of gender, class, and silence in shaping the experiences of South Asian women, as well as different layers of oppression that become the cause of multilayered identities. Through an in-depth analysis of Vijay Tendulkar's play Kamala, the study challenges monolithic conventions regarding Indian womanhood, concentrating on the traditional institution of marriage and illustrating its role in women's enslavement. This study critically evaluates the differential experiences of women of color, illustrating that shared identities do not equate to monolithic realities, by utilizing a methodology of close textual analysis and drawing upon Crenshaw's (1991) intersectionality theory. The pronounced disparity between Kamala and Sarita in the play highlights the complex and context-dependent intersections of class and gender that influence various feminine identities. Furthermore, it recognizes the potential of theatrical performance as a tool for empowering underrepresented communities to articulate their lived experiences. This research paper argues for the necessity of an intersectional approach to understand social justice in Pakistan, indicating the limitations of singular frameworks in addressing the interwoven oppressions faced by Pakistani women due to their multiple identities.