FROM TIDE COUNTRY TO LIVING MOUNTAIN: PLANETARY KINSHIP, NONHUMAN AGENCY AND THE ANTHROPOCENE IN AMITAV GHOSH'S ECOLOGICAL FICTION
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.29121/shodhshreejan.v3.i1.2026.96Keywords:
Anthropocene, Climate Change, Displacement, Interconnected Ecosystems, Multispecies EthicsAbstract [English]
Amitav Ghosh has persistently addressed dominant ecocritical concerns in his writings. His theoretical framework in The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable (2016), highlights how serious fiction has not yet documented the urgent implications of climate change. Ghosh insists on the interconnected nature of ecological crises and believes that literature should take this into consideration. This paper examines three works by Ghosh – The Hungry Tide, Gun Island and The Living Mountain and focuses on how Ghosh consistently reimagines the nonhuman world as an active agency in the human background. He exposes the fallacies of the anthropocentric beliefs that form the bedrock of contemporary society. The study of the three texts exposes a unifying principle – the interconnectedness of ecosystems. Human and nonhuman ecosystems, local and planetary ecosystems are minutely scrutinised to delineate broader perspectives. He urges literature, collective imagination and politics to create new forms of telling stories, stories capable of grasping scales beyond individual human experience.
References
Chakrabarty, D. (2009). The Climate of History: Four Theses. Critical Inquiry, 35(2), 197–222. https://doi.org/10.1086/596640
Ghosh, A. (2004). The Hungry Tide. HarperCollins.
Ghosh, A. (2016). The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable. University of Chicago Press.
Ghosh, A. (2019). Gun Island. Penguin Random House.
Ghosh, A. (2022). The Living Mountain. HarperCollins.
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Moore, J. W. (2015). Capitalism in the Web of Life: Ecology and the Accumulation of Capital. Verso.
Nixon, R. (2011). Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor. Harvard University Press. https://doi.org/10.4159/harvard.9780674061194
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