Postcolonial Green: Environmental Politics and World Narratives

Description

Postcolonial Green brings together scholarship bridging ecocriticism and postcolonialism. Since its inception, ecocriticism has been accused of being inattentive to the complexities that colonialism poses for ideas of nature and environmentalism. Postcolonial discourse, on the other hand, has been so immersed in theoretical questions of nationalism and identity that it has been seen as ignoring environmental or ecological concerns. This collection demonstrates that ecocriticism and postcolonialism must be understood as parallel projects if not facets of the very same project―a struggle for global justice and sustainability. The essays in this collection span the globe, and cover such issues as international environmental policy, land and water rights, food production, poverty, women’s rights, indigenous activism, and ecotourism. They consider all manner of texts, from oral tradition to literary fiction to web discourse. Contributors bring postcolonial theory to literary traditions, such as that of the United States, not typically seen in this light, and, conversely, bring ecocriticism to literary traditions, such as those of India and China, that have seen little ecological analysis. Postcolonial Green boasts a global geographical breadth, diversity of critical approach, and increasing relevance to the issues we face on a world stage. Contributors Neel Ahuja, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill * Pavel Cenkl, Sterling College * Sharae Deckard, University College Dublin * Ursula K. Heise, Stanford University * Jonathan Highfield, Rhode Island School of Design * Alex Hunt, West Texas A&M University * Upamanyu Pablo Mukherjee, Warwick University * Patrick D. Murphy, University of Central Florida * Bonnie Roos, West Texas A&M University * Caskey Russell, University of Wyoming * Rachel Stein, Siena College * Sabine Wilke, University of Washington * Laura Wright, Western Carolina University * Sheng-yen Yu, National Taipei University of Technology * Gang Yue, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill/Xiamen University Cover Contents Acknowledgments Introduction: Narratives of Survival, Sustainability, and Justice ASIA & THE SOUTH PACIFIC Arundhati Roy: Environment and Uneven Form Jungle Tide, Devouring Reef: (Post)colonial Anxiety and Ecocritique in Sri Lankan Literature Fragments of Shangri-La: "Eco-Tibet" and Its Global Circuits Diggers, Strangers, and Broken Men: Environmental Prophecy and the Commodifcation of Nature in Keri Hulme's The Bone People AFRICA "Ravaging the Earth, Wasting Our Patrimony": Excess Hunting, Landscape Depletion, and Environmental Apocalypticism in J. M. Coetzee's Waiting for the Barbarians "Relations with Food": Agriculture, Colonialism, and Foodways in the Writing of Bessie Head Rhetorics of Endangerment: Cultural Difference and Development in International Ape Conservation Discourse NORTH AMERICA Narrative Currency in a Changing Climate: Grounding the Arctic amid Shifting Terrain Wild Madness: The Makah Whale Hunt and Its Aftermath Bad Seed: Imperiled Biological and Social Diversity in Ruth Ozeki's All Over Creation SOUTH AMERICA & THE CARIBBEAN Performing Tropics: Alexander von Humboldt's Ansichten der Natur and the Colonial Roots of Nature Writing The Poetic Politics of Ecological Inhabitation in Neruda's Canto General and Cardenal's Cosmic Canticle Rewriting Eden in Walcott's Omeros: A Sea Change of Stories in Visible Silence Afterword: Postcolonial Ecocriticism and the Question of Literature Bibliography Notes on Contributors Index A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z