In literary criticism, the term ‘ecocriticism’ is employed to capture the various aspects of the relation between literature and environment; it “expresses a desire to bring to the study of literature the concerns of ecopolitics”. Timothy Clark brings together his expertise in philosophy, literature and literary theory in addressing the question of ecocriticism, giving directions as well as discussing the possible challenges this task might encounter. He is dissatisfied equally with the global capitalist thinking that least bothers about the earth, with the anthropocentric tendencies inherent in postcolonial thinking, with the romanticists who want to preserve the forest and with the progressives interested in the rights of oppressed groups insofar as the solution each camp suggests does not first understand the intellectual challenges set forth by the recognition of the anthropocene epoch.
{"title":"Book Review: Ecocriticism on the Edge: The Anthropocene as a Threshold Conceptby Timothy","authors":"D. Pandiaraj","doi":"10.35684/jlci.2019.5208","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.35684/jlci.2019.5208","url":null,"abstract":"In literary criticism, the term ‘ecocriticism’ is employed to capture the various aspects of the relation between literature and environment; it “expresses a desire to bring to the study of literature the concerns of ecopolitics”. Timothy Clark brings together his expertise in philosophy, literature and literary theory in addressing the question of ecocriticism, giving directions as well as discussing the possible challenges this task might encounter. He is dissatisfied equally with the global capitalist thinking that least bothers about the earth, with the anthropocentric tendencies inherent in postcolonial thinking, with the romanticists who want to preserve the forest and with the progressives interested in the rights of oppressed groups insofar as the solution each camp suggests does not first understand the intellectual challenges set forth by the recognition of the anthropocene epoch.","PeriodicalId":183557,"journal":{"name":"Sanglap: Journal of Literary and Cultural Inquiry","volume":"10 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-03-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115264729","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In the last decades, there has begun a close and productive dialogue between humanities studies and environment and disaster studies. This has arisen from the general understanding in academic and policy-making circles that the problem of environment crisis or of climate change cannot be meaningfully engaged with through the lens of one single discipline or for that matter through scientific studies alone. Environment is constituted of material and non-material interactions between the humans and the non-humans. It is a very broad and complex domain, and a study addressed towards sustainable living and caring for the environment will need to take into account factors responsible for the current global environmental crisis and the way human communities and non-human living beings in a local set up have responded to environmentally directed but (majorly) human-oriented policies and values. As development ideology continues to remain the cornerstone for ‘progress’, questions of sustainability and conservation have become vital to national, state, and non-state thinktanks.
{"title":"Environment: From a Humanities Perspective: Introductory Thoughts","authors":"Sourit Bhattacharya, A. Chattopadhyay","doi":"10.35684/JLCI.2019.5201","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.35684/JLCI.2019.5201","url":null,"abstract":"In the last decades, there has begun a close and productive dialogue between humanities studies and environment and disaster studies. This has arisen from the general understanding in academic and policy-making circles that the problem of environment crisis or of climate change cannot be meaningfully engaged with through the lens of one single discipline or for that matter through scientific studies alone. Environment is constituted of material and non-material interactions between the humans and the non-humans. It is a very broad and complex domain, and a study addressed towards sustainable living and caring for the environment will need to take into account factors responsible for the current global environmental crisis and the way human communities and non-human living beings in a local set up have responded to environmentally directed but (majorly) human-oriented policies and values. As development ideology continues to remain the cornerstone for ‘progress’, questions of sustainability and conservation have become vital to national, state, and non-state thinktanks.","PeriodicalId":183557,"journal":{"name":"Sanglap: Journal of Literary and Cultural Inquiry","volume":"47 2 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-03-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"131453033","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The land for an indigenous community is a significant part of their collective consciousness. However, the economic model of growth that India adopted post-independence did not accommodate the idea of tribal territorial sovereignty. Ill-conceived industrial policy coupled with failure of land reforms in most parts of the country displaced these peoples, severing the primordial links they had with their land. This paper would undertake a study of issues like legislative nomenclature for tribal groups, their subjection to structures of marginalisation and environmental cost shifting as the contemporary backdrop against which Gopinath Mohanty’s novel Paraja can be read. Paraja posits the inalienable autochthonous identity of a tribe rendered vulnerable to the logic of postcolonial capitalism. The paper seeks to explore the role played by the novel in articulating the worldview of an indigenous community. The mythical universe of the Parajas would be studied vis-a-vis Levi-Strauss’s structuralist discourse on myths. A modern state’s phallocentric gaze upon native land and resources would be addressed in conjunction with the ideas of bioregionalism and ecological nationalism. Keywords: autochthonous identity, environmental cost shifting, postcolonial capitalism, myths, bioregionalism, ecological nationalism
{"title":"Negative Externalities of Modern Development: The ContinuingRelevanceof Gopinath Mohanty’s Paraja","authors":"S. Mohapatra","doi":"10.35684/JLCI.2019.5207","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.35684/JLCI.2019.5207","url":null,"abstract":"The land for an indigenous community is a significant part of their collective consciousness. However, the economic model of growth that India adopted post-independence did not accommodate the idea of tribal territorial sovereignty. Ill-conceived industrial policy coupled with failure of land reforms in most parts of the country displaced these peoples, severing the primordial links they had with their land. This paper would undertake a study of issues like legislative nomenclature for tribal groups, their subjection to structures of marginalisation and environmental cost shifting as the contemporary backdrop against which Gopinath Mohanty’s novel Paraja can be read. Paraja posits the inalienable autochthonous identity of a tribe rendered vulnerable to the logic of postcolonial capitalism. The paper seeks to explore the role played by the novel in articulating the worldview of an indigenous community. The mythical universe of the Parajas would be studied vis-a-vis Levi-Strauss’s structuralist discourse on myths. A modern state’s phallocentric gaze upon native land and resources would be addressed in conjunction with the ideas of bioregionalism and ecological nationalism. Keywords: autochthonous identity, environmental cost shifting, postcolonial capitalism, myths, bioregionalism, ecological nationalism","PeriodicalId":183557,"journal":{"name":"Sanglap: Journal of Literary and Cultural Inquiry","volume":"103 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-03-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"132355754","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This paper provides a postcolonial ecocritical perspective on modern American novel. It relates and examines aspects of ecological and human violence in Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian : The Evening Redness in the West (1985) and Anne Pancake’s Strange as This Weather Has Been (2007). The paper argues that while McCarthy represents examples of ethnic and racial violence and Pancake focuses on class violence, the two novelists articulate a particular awareness of the interconnections between economic and political hierarchy and different forms of ecological and human violence within different American contexts. The two novels, then, denounce the deterministic, colonial constructions of economy, power and knowledge in modern societies on the one side and the validation of antagonism and violence against otherness and difference on the other. The paper argues further that colonizing countries as well as colonized countries still suffer, at different levels, the discrepancies and contradictions within colonial culture and politics. The two novels expose the limitations of white Americans’ freedom, and equality within colonial and national frameworks. This paper specifically examines the psychological-mental challenges and changes of the fifteen-years-old female teenager, Bant in Strange as This Weather Has Been and the male teenager, the kid, in Blood Meridian as exemplifying how specific individuals and groups through their ecological awareness try to deconstruct such deterministic, colonial constructions of identity and violence. Keywords: Violence; identity; difference; postcolonial ecocriticism
{"title":"A Postcolonial-Ecocritical Perspective on Modern American Literature","authors":"Jihan Zakarriya","doi":"10.35684/JLCI.2019.5204","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.35684/JLCI.2019.5204","url":null,"abstract":"This paper provides a postcolonial ecocritical perspective on modern American novel. It relates and examines aspects of ecological and human violence in Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian : The Evening Redness in the West (1985) and Anne Pancake’s Strange as This Weather Has Been (2007). The paper argues that while McCarthy represents examples of ethnic and racial violence and Pancake focuses on class violence, the two novelists articulate a particular awareness of the interconnections between economic and political hierarchy and different forms of ecological and human violence within different American contexts. The two novels, then, denounce the deterministic, colonial constructions of economy, power and knowledge in modern societies on the one side and the validation of antagonism and violence against otherness and difference on the other. The paper argues further that colonizing countries as well as colonized countries still suffer, at different levels, the discrepancies and contradictions within colonial culture and politics. The two novels expose the limitations of white Americans’ freedom, and equality within colonial and national frameworks. This paper specifically examines the psychological-mental challenges and changes of the fifteen-years-old female teenager, Bant in Strange as This Weather Has Been and the male teenager, the kid, in Blood Meridian as exemplifying how specific individuals and groups through their ecological awareness try to deconstruct such deterministic, colonial constructions of identity and violence. Keywords: Violence; identity; difference; postcolonial ecocriticism","PeriodicalId":183557,"journal":{"name":"Sanglap: Journal of Literary and Cultural Inquiry","volume":"112 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-03-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"117196988","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Concepts of Environmental Justice have impacted on our understanding of the relationship between social aspects and the representation of nature. The environment, for centuries, has been seen as a trophy, to be possessed and controlled. The Anthropocene has ruptured this sense of oneness with nature. Going beyond the borders of language and authorial representation, nature has eluded the racks of human knowledge. We have come to understand that nature is also a part of our social interaction and politico-human relationships. The concept of identity associated with nature depends on the medium of representation. I want to show, in the light of environmental justice, that nature is a challenge, which is both cultural and representational. The question of identity creeps out of the unlikeliest places and challenges the norms of social and cultural representation. I will argue that the interdisciplinary approach of environmental justice can offer a better understanding of our relationship with nature. Simple modes of storytelling can use the medium of language to challenge and seek social justice through voices of the repressed. Environmental Justice is about this need for voicing the unheard stories and the unusual lives of those considered aloof from modern civilization. Mamang Dai is a perfect example of an author who understands the crisis of identity in association with the environment. Keywords: Mamang Dai, Environmental Justice, Identity, Representation, Nature, Culture.
{"title":"“The Hidden Valleys of My Home”: Home, Identity, and Environmental Justice in the Select Works of Mamang Dai","authors":"P. Chakraborty","doi":"10.35684/JLCI.2019.5206","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.35684/JLCI.2019.5206","url":null,"abstract":"Concepts of Environmental Justice have impacted on our understanding of the relationship between social aspects and the representation of nature. The environment, for centuries, has been seen as a trophy, to be possessed and controlled. The Anthropocene has ruptured this sense of oneness with nature. Going beyond the borders of language and authorial representation, nature has eluded the racks of human knowledge. We have come to understand that nature is also a part of our social interaction and politico-human relationships. The concept of identity associated with nature depends on the medium of representation. I want to show, in the light of environmental justice, that nature is a challenge, which is both cultural and representational. The question of identity creeps out of the unlikeliest places and challenges the norms of social and cultural representation. I will argue that the interdisciplinary approach of environmental justice can offer a better understanding of our relationship with nature. Simple modes of storytelling can use the medium of language to challenge and seek social justice through voices of the repressed. Environmental Justice is about this need for voicing the unheard stories and the unusual lives of those considered aloof from modern civilization. Mamang Dai is a perfect example of an author who understands the crisis of identity in association with the environment. Keywords: Mamang Dai, Environmental Justice, Identity, Representation, Nature, Culture.","PeriodicalId":183557,"journal":{"name":"Sanglap: Journal of Literary and Cultural Inquiry","volume":"5 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-03-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126369795","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The photographs of George Osodi, Abdoulaye Barry, Tsvangirayi Mukwazhi, Nyaba Leon Ouedraogo, and Mario Macilau exhibited at the ninth Rencontres de Bamako photography festival, which had sustainability as its theme, featured humans living amidst environmental degradation. Documenting communities affected by oil extraction, fishermen in the face of climate chaos, as well as lives of diamond and granite miners and e-recyclers, these black African photographers’ human-centered focus—a trend identified by Cajetan Iheka as also common among most black African ecocritical authors and scholars—may eschew a more African cosmology-inspired gaze that ideally twines human and nonhuman implications of environmental tragedies. Yet such a human-centered focus, this paper argues, unlike the leading Western visual environmental discourse—the toxic sublime, obsessed as it is with an unpeopled landscape, ultimately, implicates the consumerism of privileged viewers in environmental degradation in ways environmental photography that resists assigning blame to corporations and consumers doesn’t. Keywords: African photography, neo-colonisation, toxic sublime, green protest
{"title":"Human Subjects and “Green” Protestin Black African Photography at the Ninth Rencontres de Bamako","authors":"Spring Ulmer","doi":"10.35684/JLCI.2019.5205","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.35684/JLCI.2019.5205","url":null,"abstract":"The photographs of George Osodi, Abdoulaye Barry, Tsvangirayi Mukwazhi, Nyaba Leon Ouedraogo, and Mario Macilau exhibited at the ninth Rencontres de Bamako photography festival, which had sustainability as its theme, featured humans living amidst environmental degradation. Documenting communities affected by oil extraction, fishermen in the face of climate chaos, as well as lives of diamond and granite miners and e-recyclers, these black African photographers’ human-centered focus—a trend identified by Cajetan Iheka as also common among most black African ecocritical authors and scholars—may eschew a more African cosmology-inspired gaze that ideally twines human and nonhuman implications of environmental tragedies. Yet such a human-centered focus, this paper argues, unlike the leading Western visual environmental discourse—the toxic sublime, obsessed as it is with an unpeopled landscape, ultimately, implicates the consumerism of privileged viewers in environmental degradation in ways environmental photography that resists assigning blame to corporations and consumers doesn’t. Keywords: African photography, neo-colonisation, toxic sublime, green protest","PeriodicalId":183557,"journal":{"name":"Sanglap: Journal of Literary and Cultural Inquiry","volume":"24 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-03-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116661194","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Narrativising Community, Surviving Contagion: Orality in Véronique Tadjo’s In the Company of Men","authors":"Sreya Mallika Datta","doi":"10.35684/jlci.2023.9201","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.35684/jlci.2023.9201","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":183557,"journal":{"name":"Sanglap: Journal of Literary and Cultural Inquiry","volume":"233 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1900-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"123039151","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Caste ̧ as Nicholas Dirks suggests, has become the most important and well-known register of identification of the Indian civilisation. It is often considered ‘intrinsic’ to the Hindu society in the scholarly investigations on India (or more generally on South Asia) emerging in the global academia (Dirks 3). From the time of early travel narratives on South Asia by western tradesmen, orientalist scholars like William Jones, Max Muller, narratives written by Christian missionaries like Charles Mead or Robert Caldwell or the denigrators of ‘oriental societies’ like G.W. F. Hegel and concerned critics like Karl Marx to much of our postcolonial socio-political struggles, ‘caste’ has been perceived as either an elusive, resilient, hydra-headed monster, or a unique feature of the Hindu society that preempts competition that western modernity brings about.
{"title":"Introduction: Caste in/as Humanities: Unsettling the Politics of Suffering","authors":"K. Das, S. Sengupta","doi":"10.35684/jlci.2019.6101","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.35684/jlci.2019.6101","url":null,"abstract":"Caste ̧ as Nicholas Dirks suggests, has become the most important and well-known register of identification of the Indian civilisation. It is often considered ‘intrinsic’ to the Hindu society in the scholarly investigations on India (or more generally on South Asia) emerging in the global academia (Dirks 3). From the time of early travel narratives on South Asia by western tradesmen, orientalist scholars like William Jones, Max Muller, narratives written by Christian missionaries like Charles Mead or Robert Caldwell or the denigrators of ‘oriental societies’ like G.W. F. Hegel and concerned critics like Karl Marx to much of our postcolonial socio-political struggles, ‘caste’ has been perceived as either an elusive, resilient, hydra-headed monster, or a unique feature of the Hindu society that preempts competition that western modernity brings about.","PeriodicalId":183557,"journal":{"name":"Sanglap: Journal of Literary and Cultural Inquiry","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1900-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127338882","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Ghiñn: A Reading of Disgust as a Literary Device in Subimal Mishra’s Short Fiction","authors":"Arijeet Mandal","doi":"10.35684/jlci.2023.9206","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.35684/jlci.2023.9206","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":183557,"journal":{"name":"Sanglap: Journal of Literary and Cultural Inquiry","volume":"47 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1900-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126773813","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Non-human, Haunting and the question of ‘Excess’ in Elizabeth Bowen’s “The Demon Lover”","authors":"Paromita Mukherjee","doi":"10.35684/jlci.2021.8103","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.35684/jlci.2021.8103","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":183557,"journal":{"name":"Sanglap: Journal of Literary and Cultural Inquiry","volume":"17 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1900-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126478828","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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