ANTHROPOCENE AND THE EMPIRE: REPRESENTATION OF ENVIRONMENT IN THE WRITINGS OF AMITAV GHOSH

Abstract

Humans seem to have emerged as the most influential species on the planet especially during the age of the ‘Anthropocene’, a term having wider anthropological allusions. The present thesis attempts to relocate and further contextualize the human-centric rationality as an agency responsible for affecting almost every form of existence on the sphere, both living as well as non-living apart from extending the domination of ‘irrational’ Nature by the ‘rational’ Man with potential tools of subjugation including machine and technology at his command. The available data indicates that the planet has been experiencing an unprecedented ‘derangement’ leading to different environmentally critical issues like global warming along with other changes to land and water due to excessive human interference, a phenomenon that can be linked with what climatologists like Paul Jozef Crutzen call Anthropocene. It has been argued that the onset of the Anthropocene majorly corresponds to the beginning of industrialization in the late 18th century which also coincides with the European enlightenment and the subsequent rise of a discourse that favored grossly Eurocentric rationality. The present thesis offers a critical analysis of the process of Colonization and its impact specially in terms of the adoption of worldviews and embracing alien ideologies that were detrimental to the workings of Nature and humans both. It has also been argued that such violent imposition of foreign cultures has been further responsible for subjugation and degradation of the natural environment of the colonized territories. It is to this count that the present study investigates the ecological concerns in the writings of Amitav Ghosh with a focus on his novels The Glass Palace (2000), The Hungry Tide (2004), Sea of Poppies (2008), River of Smoke (2011), Flood of Fire (2012), and Gun Island (2019) and his nonfictional work The Great Derangement (2016) which offer a site for a discussion on ecological imperialism and the role of the British colonizers in further aggravating the anthropogenic climate change that finds a common mention in any contemporary debate on the environment. With its six chapters, the thesis begins with the Introduction and examines anthropocentric rationality coalescing with Eurocentrism as having a potential for consideration in the contemporary debates surrounding ecological studies while using the European Enlightenment for its backdrop. The chapter examines how this discourse supports a certain kind of dualism, like Man/Nature, with the former in the binary being privileged over the latter — it segregates ‘Nature’ as the ‘Other’ —thus relegating the Other as irrational and irrelevant. While probing into the historical roots of this dualism and binaries, the chapter presents a detailed critical evaluation of various theories referred to in the successive chapters of the work. The second chapter, Empire and the Rubber: The Glass Palace, is focused on Amitav Ghosh’s novel The Glass Palace (2000) which has been analyzed to discover the various modus operandi of the empire which have been responsible for the subjugation of virgin territories which also became accountable for the destruction of the forests for expanding their lucrative rubber cultivation at the cost of the native agricultural practices. Foreign modes of land use were promoted in order to ensure a seamless and uninterrupted supply of rubber to the West, leaving an acute loss of biodiversity. The chapter also discusses the issue of imposition of colonial practices and their impact on the socio-cultural mooring of the colonized subjects in the light of theories proposed by scholars like Ashis Nandy (The Intimate Enemy, 1983) and Edward Said (Culture and Imperialism, 1993). While analyzing Ghosh’s novel The Hungry Tide (2004), The third chapter, Man vs Animal: The Hungry Tide, examines a postcolonial eco-consciousness emerging out of ecological issues such as Man-Animal conflict and relocates the debate in the light of the growing Human-Tiger conflict in the Sundarbans. The critical analysis of the chapter also provides a context to the problem of encroachment of land and excessive interference in the mangroves of the area where the binary of Man/Animal gets dismantled only to give expression to new modes of thinking. With Ghosh’s essay Folly in the Sundarbans (2004) as its backdrop, the chapter probes into some of the philosophical theories like Social ecology and Environmental justice in the light of the ecosemiotics developed by the author in his novels. In the chapter, issues like increasing modernization, the symbiotic relationship between humans and non-humans and the changing climatic conditions have been analyzed in the light of some of the postmodernist theories (already mentioned in preceding passages) in order to evaluate the inter-relatedness of Anthropocene and the Empire. By way of analyzing Ghosh’s Ibis trilogy that consists of the novels, Sea of Poppies (2008), River of Smoke (2011) and Flood of Fire (2012), the fourth chapter entitled, Empire and the Opium: The Ibis Trilogy, looks into the issues of the imperial/colonial ramifications of opium trade between the East India Company and China focusing on the process of subjugation and exploitation of the colonized people and their lands. The chapter problematizes the complicity of the British colonizers in accelerating the inflow of opium in China using “free trade” as a tool while claiming that free trade was a right conferred upon (White) Man by God, and also the forced opium cultivation in India and the other parts of the world and their impact on the native cultures. The fifth chapter entitled, The Anthropocene: Great Derangement in the Gun Island, is a critical evaluation of Amitav Ghosh’s novel Gun Island (2019) together with his nonfictional The Great Derangement (2016) and examines how Ghosh, like the enlightened Buddha, discovers in his gradually obtained epiphany that the endless human desires are responsible for the impending apocalypse – the climate change. The chapter also discusses Ghosh’s vision regarding the human-centric culture and the idea of ‘good life’ as the key drivers of climate change and environmental deterioration. The chapter examines these observations put forth by the writer who is blatant enough to forewarn the upcoming environmental apocalypse, the devastating consequences of changing climatic conditions and degenerating ecosystems along with their cumulative impact on the planet colonized by humans. Further, the chapter investigates the more popular issues ranging from marginalization, displacement, dislocation, migration, colonization, imperialism and to say the least the environmental disaster and how their cataclysmic consequences have the potential of rising up into Frankenstein’s monster — unbridled uncontrolled and at large. The deep ecology and social ecology have been contextualized in order to examine the possibilities of any redemption. The Conclusion presents the concluding remarks on the novels of Amitav Ghosh and his significance in developing suitable critical idiom. The chapter also comes up with recommendations for further research including the limitations of this study.