Postcolonial Environments: Nature, Culture and the Contemporary Indian Novel in English

by U. Mukherjee

Overview

Postcolonial Environments examines the relationship between contemporary environmental crises and culture by offering a series of provocative readings of key Indian novels in English, making an original and important contribution to the emerging theories of 'green postcolonialism'.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780230219373
Publisher:	Palgrave Macmillan UK
Publication date:	01/20/2010
Edition description:	2010
Pages:	203
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.60(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

UPAMANYU PABLO MUKHERJEE was born in Calcutta, India, and educated there. He won a Rhodes Scholarship to study in Oxford, UK, and went on to teach at Cambridge, Newcastle and Warwick Universities. He is the author of Crime Fiction and Empire (2005).

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements vii

Introduction 1

Why postcolonial environments? 1

Why postcolonial English literature? 7

Why uneven environmentis? 13

Who 'eco' and 'poco' literary theories? 17

1 From Earth Day to Earth Summits: Trajectories and Debates 20

'Memento Mori to the Earth' 20

Odin's eye 26

'The economic logic of toxic waste' 34

2 'Green Postcolonialism' and 'Postcolonial Green' 39

Literary exchanges 39

Conflicts and convergences 42

Grounding postcolonialism 46

Common threads 56

3 Towards Eco-Materialism 59

Environment and aesthetics 59

Thinking with matter 60

Nature, labour, history 65

'Summoning life' 68

(Re-)enter matter 73

Representing an uneven world 77

4 The River and the Dance: Arundhati Roy 82

Uneven style 83

'No language to do it in' 88

Ayemenem and Ayamenem 90

'Ancestors whispering inside' 92

'His body is his soul' 103

5 Water/Land: Amitav Ghosh 108

The forests of beauty 108

Tracing shadow lines 112

'Out of place everywhere' 115

'Our translated world' 121

Cyclonic forms 127

6 Dear Air: Indra Sinha 134

'Playing with poison' 135

'Definitely the right animal' 144

'In all the world is none like me' 149

'There's such a thing as bhayanak rasa' 156

'Tomorrow there will be more of us' 162

7 'Blood on my Water': Ruchir Joshi 163

Water wars 164

'RHEAL water' 170

'This optic-driven two-leg' 176

'What you imagine is a whole' 182

Notes 188

References 191

Index 20

Editorial Reviews

'Postcolonial Environments makes a valuable contribution both to the emerging field of postcolonial ecocriticism and to the established field of Indian English literature, the two main fields combined in Mukherjee's timely and informative book.'

- Graham Huggan, Professor of Commonwealth and Postcolonial Literatures, Leeds University, UK

'Pablo Mukherjee's Postcolonial Environments is an innovative and timely book which builds a critical genealogy of the rapidly expanding field of postcolonial ecocriticism and suggests new directions for the future.

As the first book to place South Asian literature in a dialogue with postcolonial ecocriticism, Mukherjee makes a powerful and convincing argument for a historical materialist method which he terms 'eco-materialist aesthetics.' This is a compelling model of how to approach the unity of humans and nature, the mediating function of labor, and how the materiality of the environment enables our cultural activity. Building upon Marx's ideas on how labor connects humans to the environment and how capitalism enables nature's destruction, Mukherjee's work provides a piercing critique of how forms of empire, past and present, reflect a 'state of permanent war on the global environment' His exploration of the uneven spatial and cultural development of postcolonial experience leads to a perceptive ability to focus on the stylistic and formal innovations within texts that speak more accurately to an adaptive model of 'eco-materialism.' This is a groundbreaking and original book, one that is destined to change the way we speak of the material history and representation of postcolonial environments.'

- Elizabeth deLoughrey, Associate Professor of English, University of California, Los Angeles, USA

'Postcolonial ecocriticism (or ecocritical postcolonialism) is a robust, vibrant and important field to which Mukherjee's volume in a valuable contribution.' - John Miller, Green Letters

From the Publisher