Posthuman Ecologies of the Feminine: Re-signifying Yakshi within Indian Cultural Thought

  • Unique Paper ID: 190726
  • Volume: 12
  • Issue: 8
  • PageNo: 2958-2961
  • Abstract:
  • This study aims to reframe the South Indian cultural imagination of the Yakshi as a posthuman ecological figure, rather than a mythical relic or folkloric seductress. Conventional academic discourse has often diminished the Yakshi to a symbol of perilous female sexuality, a spectral femme fatale that imperils men and domestic propriety within their spheres. This article challenges such anthropocentric and patriarchal misreadings by approaching Yakshi through the lens of posthuman feminism, eco-spirituality, and indigenous ecological cosmology, arguing that Yakshi personifies vegetal intelligence, contingent agency, relational ontology, and disjuncture in human and nonhuman headings and foregrounds a female model of subjectivity rooted in forest ecologies, desire, danger, and environmental ethics. Drawing from regional folklore, ritual practices, sacred spatiality, and interpretive theology, this paper positions Yakshi as a profoundly ecological feminine presence, which is simultaneously erotic, predatory, nurturing, and cosmic, thus contributing to global feminist discourse and posthuman theory.

Copyright & License

Copyright © 2026 Authors retain the copyright of this article. This article is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

BibTeX

@article{190726,
        author = {Adithya Pavithran},
        title = {Posthuman Ecologies of the Feminine: Re-signifying Yakshi within Indian Cultural Thought},
        journal = {International Journal of Innovative Research in Technology},
        year = {2026},
        volume = {12},
        number = {8},
        pages = {2958-2961},
        issn = {2349-6002},
        url = {https://ijirt.org/article?manuscript=190726},
        abstract = {This study aims to reframe the South Indian cultural imagination of the Yakshi as a posthuman ecological figure, rather than a mythical relic or folkloric seductress. Conventional academic discourse has often diminished the Yakshi to a symbol of perilous female sexuality, a spectral femme fatale that imperils men and domestic propriety within their spheres. This article challenges such anthropocentric and patriarchal misreadings by approaching Yakshi through the lens of posthuman feminism, eco-spirituality, and indigenous ecological cosmology, arguing that Yakshi personifies vegetal intelligence, contingent agency, relational ontology, and disjuncture in human and nonhuman headings and foregrounds a female model of subjectivity rooted in forest ecologies, desire, danger, and environmental ethics. Drawing from regional folklore, ritual practices, sacred spatiality, and interpretive theology, this paper positions Yakshi as a profoundly ecological feminine presence, which is simultaneously erotic, predatory, nurturing, and cosmic, thus contributing to global feminist discourse and posthuman theory.},
        keywords = {Yakshi, Posthuman Feminism, Posthuman Ecocriticism, Indigenous Ecological Cosmology, Vegetal Intelligence.},
        month = {January},
        }

Cite This Article

Pavithran, A. (2026). Posthuman Ecologies of the Feminine: Re-signifying Yakshi within Indian Cultural Thought. International Journal of Innovative Research in Technology (IJIRT), 12(8), 2958–2961.

Related Articles