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Paper short abstract

This paper explores narratives of dominion through representations of the tiger in Asia. From royal hunts to colonial cinema, the tiger is framed as adversary and symbol, embodying wildness, power, and resistance, revealing tensions in human–animal encounters and control over nature.

Paper long abstract

This paper examines how narratives of dominion over nature are expressed through representations of the tiger in Asian visual and cinematic traditions. Across historical and cultural contexts, the tiger emerges as both adversary and symbol, embodying wildness, danger, and resistance to human control.

From imperial hunting scenes that celebrated sovereignty, to colonial iconography portraying conquest as civilisation, and twentieth-century films staging the tiger as both threat and spectacle, these narratives illustrate how human–animal encounters are embedded in wider struggles over power and identity. The tiger becomes a contested figure: a predator to be subdued, a trophy to be displayed, and a cultural emblem to be feared and admired.

These portrayals naturalise binaries such as human/animal, coloniser/colonised, and masculine/feminine, while also exposing their instability. Moments of confrontation with the tiger reveal the fragility of dominion and the limits of human mastery over the wild.

Through interpretative analysis of visual and filmic sources, the paper argues that dominion is never absolute but continually narrated, contested, and reimagined. By foregrounding the tiger as a focal point, it contributes to the conference theme by showing how stories of human–animal encounters mediate cultural politics of power and nature.