Climate change, ecological catastrophe, and the contemporary postcolonial novel / Justyna Poray-Wybranowska.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Poray-Wybranowska, Justyna, author.

Series:

Routledge studies in world literatures and the environment.

Routledge studies in world literatures and the environment

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Climatic changes in literature.

Physical Description:

1 online resource

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

New York, NY : Routledge, 2021.

Summary:

"Climate Change, Ecological Catastrophe, and the Contemporary Novel responds to the critical need for transdisciplinary research on the relationship between colonialism and catastrophe. It represents the first sustained analysis of the connection between colonial legacy and present-day ecological catastrophe in postcolonial fiction. Analyzing contemporary South Asian and South Pacific novels that grapple with climate change and catastrophe, environmental exploitation and instability, and human-nonhuman relationships in degraded environments, it offers a much-needed corrective to dominant narratives about climate, crisis, and the everyday. Highlighting the contributions of literary fiction from the postcolonial South to the growing field of the environmental humanities, this book reconsiders the novel's relationship with climate change and the contemporary environmental imaginary. Counter to dominant current theoretical discourses, it demonstrates that the novel form is ideally suited to literary and imaginative engagements with climate change and ecological catastrophe. The six case studies it examines connect contemporary ecological vulnerability to colonial legacies, reveal the critical role animals and the environment play in literary imaginations of post-catastrophe recovery, and together constellate a decolonial perspective on ecological catastrophe in the era of climate change. Drawing on the work of Indigenous authors and scholars who write about and against the Anthropocene, this book displaces conventional ways of thinking about the relationship between the mundane and the catastrophic and promotes greater dialogue between the largely siloed fields of postcolonial, Indigenous, and disaster studies"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Cover

Half Title

Series Information

Title Page

Copyright Page

Table of contents

Acknowledgements

Land Acknowledgement and Positionality Statement

Introduction

A Crisis of the Imagination

Climate Change, Catastrophe, and the Anthropocene

Popular Perceptions of Climate Change

Why Read Novels about Climate Change and Catastrophe?

Chapter Breakdown

Chapter 1: Reading Catastrophe through Postcolonialism, Ecocriticism, and Animal Studies

Chapter 2: Catastrophe, Vulnerability, and Human Relationships

Chapter 3: Catastrophe and Human- Nonhuman Relationships in Degraded Environments

Chapter 4: Land Justice, Resistance, and Post- Catastrophe Recovery

Conclusion

Notes

1 Reading Catastrophe through Postcolonialism, Ecocriticism, Indigenous Studies, and Animal Studies

Racism, (Neo)Colonialism, and Environmental Justice

Colonialism, Postcolonialism, and Catastrophe

Colonial Roots: Colonialism, Environment, Environmentalism

Postcolonial Studies, Indigenous Studies, and Environmental Justice in the Anthropocene

Defining Catastrophe (Catastrophe versus Apocalypse versus Disaster)

The Nonhuman Turn

Ecocriticism and Environmental Literature

Animal Studies

Problems and Contributions

2 Catastrophe, Vulnerability, and Human Relationships

Colonialism, Catastrophe, and the Everyday

Colonialism and Its Aftermath in the Context of Climate Change: Race, Indigeneity, and Socio-Ecological Vulnerability

Kiran Dessi's the Inheritance of Loss

Synopsis and Literature Review

Socioeconomic Hierarchies and Power Dynamics: Caste, Class, Race, Ethnicity, and Indigeneity

Lepcha Characters

Wealthy/Powerful Indian Characters

Gorkha Characters

Racism and Colonialism

Precarity, Vulnerability, and Catastrophe.

Reflection, Renegotiation, and Human-Animal Relationships

Kim Scott's Benang : From the Heart

Form, Perspective, and the Desensationalization of Violence

Colonial Law, Segregation, and Control

Control, Violence, and the Body

Control, Violence, and the Environment

The Bushfire

3 Catastrophe and Human-Nonhuman Relationships in Degraded Environments

Animals, Climate Change, and Ecological Catastrophe

Uzma Aslam Khan's Thinner Than Skin

Colonial Law and Human-Nonhuman Relationships

Ecological Vulnerability and Earthquakes

Disappearance of Local Species

Animals and Catastrophe

Alexis Wright's Carpentaria

Racial/Racist Geographies and Their Legacy

Catastrophe in the Novel: The Cyclone and the Mine

Narrative Form: Dreaming, Indigenous Cosmologies, and "Aboriginal Realism"

Animals in the Novel

Animals and the Mine

Animals and the Cyclone

New Beginnings

4 Land Justice, Resistance, Recovery

The Physical Environment

Amitav Ghosh's The Hungry Tide

The Sundarbans

Narrative Structure

Space-Time Compression and Nonhuman Actants

Project Tiger and the Morichjhãpi Massacre

Indigenous Peoples and Conservation Priorities

Catastrophe and Environmental Trauma

Patricia Grace's Potiki

The Colonization of New Zealand: Historical and Environmental Context

Stories, Perspectives, and Now-Time

Racism and Colonial Capital

Land and Resistance

Land, Community, Identity

Ecological Degradation

Floor, Fire, and Explosion

Recovery, Cyclicality, and the Everyday

Works Cited.

Index.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

1-00-307976-8

1-003-07976-8

1-000-29451-X

1-000-29461-7

9781003079767

OCLC:

1182020113