Course No: 350:595
Index #: 18471
Distribution Requirement: A5, C
Mondays - 10:20 am
MU 207
Postcolonial Climate Fiction
Mangharam, Mukti
How does the study of postcolonial literatures help us understand the impact of capitalist modernity on our planetary climate? The history of that modernity is inseparable from the colonial capitalism that spread certain ideas about the way humans relate to the world, their environments, and to each other. If our planetary climate crisis has its roots in colonialism, how can postcolonial texts that challenge colonialism offer us alternative frameworks through which to relate to our planet? Can they lead us to the models that can critique and dismantle harmful cultural separations between humans, between the human and animal, and between the human and their ecosystems? Can they provide us with a vocabulary that speaks in terms of shared planetary concerns? To examine the relationships between capitalism, colonialism, and the environment, we will turn to writers in English from Africa, the Caribbean, South Asia, and the Pacific Islands and examine how they represent threats to the planet and theorize ways out of it. We will draw from diverse genres such as short stories, film, and the novel, perusing texts by Amitav Ghosh, Doris Lessing, Helon Habila, Nnedi Okarafor, and Wangari Maathai among others. We will also examine debates around the role that narrative plays in depicting climate change, reading Amitav Ghosh, Dipesh Chakrabarty, Rob Nixon, Cajetan Iheka, and Elizabeth DeLoughrey among others.