NAYANIKA MATHUR University of Oxford Beastly identifcation in India: The government of big cats in the Anthropocene ABSTRACT How does a big cat in India come to be identified as the one guilty of preying on humans? Indian conservationist law stipulates that the big cat must be identified before it is hunted down. But as I demonstrate ethnographically, there is no possible means of establishing the correct identity of a big cat before it is killed. Through an account of the impossibility of beastly identification, this article demonstrates the limits of both bureaucratic action and conservation in the government of big cats. What operates, instead, is a form of knowing the nonhuman Other, a knowing that is localized, personalized, affective, and momentary. Such forms of knowledge and living-besides are called for by the Anthropocene. Indeed, an analytic potential of the Anthropocene lies in rendering untenable the continual disciplinary sequestering of the nonhuman and environmental from the political, bureaucratic, and legal. [bureaucracy, nonhuman animals, conservation, identification, government, Anthropocene, India] _pbV `ì q^dpg j`sXpa Gy qGjr ^y NpZgb Nzjy VìXs8 ^pJ hyb 9ĊapqX G} 94jpZ Gp àhGpb GbZy Gp X}ir Gzjy Gbpb qXap NpVp kz " _pbVra j4bùU GpZtZ GkVp kz qG Bjy NpZgb G} `pbZy jy \kdy ;jGĴ \kLpZ GĴ Npay  \b Nzjp qG `ï Zug4h qgúpZ AWZ}Ŀp]Ĵ Gy `pča` jy qXHp;4Ir Bjy NpZgb G} `pbZy jy \kdy ;jGĴ jkr \kLpZ GbZy Gp G}: j4_g VbrGp Zkı kz  9j ńGpb Gy NpZgb GĴ \kLpZ GĴ 7jĔ_gVp Gy gUòZ Gy `pča` jy `ï akp3 Xhpò<3 Ir qG 9Z ｷ^y q^dpgƑ Gy jbGpbr V4łｸ `ì k`ì Z~Gbhpkr Gpaògpkr Fb j4bùUgpX 9Z X}ZƑ kr qG jr`pA3 Ğ\Ż Ƈ\ jy qXHVr kï  Bjy `ì N} ń_pgr Ƈ\ jy Gp` `ì dpap Np jGVp kz gk Bjp úpZ kz N} 94jpZ jy \by XyH jGy  gkr úpZ N} ĞWpZra k} ﾜNj`ì _pgZp k} Fb N} jp`çaG k}  Bjp úpZ Fb NrgZ hzdr BĎƌ}\}jrZ asI ﾜNj`ì `pZg IçVqgçYap4 \apògbU G} `süa Ƈ\ jy ń_pqgV GbVr kï GĴ `p4I _r kz  ^ĖĘG A4ƌ}\}jrZ GĴ AG qgŹyipĊ`G jĔ_pgZp 9j ^pV `ì qZqkV kz GĴ ak `pZg9Vb NrgZńGuçV g bpNZrçVG Z~Gbhpkr Fb GpZtZr 8ap`Ƒ Gy ^rL Gy 7dIpg GĴ 7j`WòVp G} ěaŎ GbVp kz $Z~Gbhpkr `pZg9Vb \hs  ńGuçVj4bùU \kLpZ jbGpb A4ƌ}\}jrZ _pbV& H ow does a tiger, leopard, or lion, one of several that in- habit the same territory in India, come to be identi- fied as what is termed a “man-eater” by humans? There is no single overarching modality for arriving at such a beastly identification. It is only in the rarest of rare cases that the evidence is indisputable and identification foolproof— such as when the cat’s attack is caught on camera, when there are several witnesses, or when the nonhuman animal is operating in a territory where there are no others of its species. In most instances, the argument is built up, case by case, against a specific cat after it has been trapped or, worse, killed. Yet government guidelines and legal strictures require that this identification be correctly made and fully verified before the hunt. All participating actors must, therefore, pretend that the correct big cat (man-eater) has been neutralized. In other words, the killing of a big cat enjoins all involved to maintain a conspiracy of silence. Identifying man-eaters in India is a beastly task, one that con- stitutes yet another failure of wildlife conservation, particularly as it operates through large state bureaucracies (Mathur 2016). While the limits of conservation and the state’s overbureaucratized re- sponses are a notable feature here, I wish to push this ethnog- raphy further by exploring the analytical potential of the Anthro- pocene. One way that the Anthropocene marks a radical break for anthropology and other academic disciplines is its comprehensive dismantling of the human-nonhuman divide (Latour 2014; Lorimer 2015; Tsing 2017), a dismantling that this article is premised on. The Anthropocene calls for, as Jedediah Purdy (2015, 6–7) notes, a new kind of politics in which we must find ways to merge or “hold together” certain questions that have hitherto been kept apart. Anthropologists have noted that the Anthropocene potentially re- quires nothing less than the discipline’s transformation. This is, as Bruno Latour (2014) claims, part of the gift that the Anthropocene presents anthropology. Tsing, Mathews, and Bubandt (2019) have correctly asked whether anthropology is content to continue be- ing regarded as a minor science or whether it can step up to the task of thinking differently: Will it dare to allow for the transfor- mation of “anthropological stories of the ‘otherwise’ into concrete AMERICAN ETHNOLOGIST, Vol. 0, No. 0, pp. 1–13, ISSN 0094-0496, online ISSN 1548-1425. © 2021 by the American Anthropological Association. All rights reserved. DOI: 10.1111/amet.13021