4/11/2023 0 Comments Colloquy definition![]() ![]() In mimicking Western concepts of modernity, the inhabitants of these nations are, according to the anthropologist Deborah Bird Rose (2015), locked into a system that is “hope-destroying right from the start.” An eco-collectivist novel’s representation of communal living or the collective activism of humans and nonhumans, as well as its underpinning of interspecies connectivity or care, opposes the extractivist and exploitative nature of Western modernism, suggesting alternatives or modifications to it. While envisioning different ways of living, eco-collectivist texts interrogate the catastrophic impact of Western beliefs in progress and development on the environment, evincing why so many developing countries, particularly those in South Asia, have become sites of environmental violence. Put differently, fighting and activism are not the only sources of hope there is a gentler, companionable source of hope to be found in representations of communities or individuals, offering alternative ways of being in the world. ![]() Examples of practice might include, on the one hand, fighting for climate justice and raising a collective voice against policies that aggravate the crisis, and on the other hand, recognizing ways of living that remain outside of, or defy, consumer-driven overproduction, waste, overconsumption and emissions. For Head, “hope is something to be practised rather than felt,” and this is true in the context of eco-collectivism. The Australian geographer Lesley Head (2016), in her formulation of eco-ethics in the age of the Anthropocene, separates hope from optimism, and stresses the importance of an active self who never gives up. The hope inspired by eco-collectivism is, therefore, different from optimism. Texts representing eco-collectivism do not subscribe to the belief that the climate crisis is a temporary phenomenon, nor do they suggest that it is separable from other forms of crisis, including socio-historically-produced inequalities, injustices, and violence. There is no pretending everything will be fine.” Textual representations of eco-collectivism underpin this kind of active hope through the shared activism of a vulnerable or affected community or through communal ways of living that point to sustainable alternatives. Rather, the hope derived from eco-collectivism is what Jonica Newby labels “active hope.” According to Newby, “ctive hope is grounded in reality. Textual representations of eco-collectivism can offer hope, but this hope is grounded in a different future, rather than one in which society reverts to its unsustainable ways of living. Towards the end of this piece, I shall draw out connections between hope and eco-collectivism with reference to Arundhati Roy’s The Ministry of Utmost Happiness (2017) and Amitav Ghosh’s Gun Island (2019). Therefore, identifying eco-collectivism in a novel can offer alternative ways of living, which is all the more important when, in the current state of planetary crisis, there is much to learn from cultures that have been pushed to the margins. These works also highlight how a fictional communal setting can represent ways of living and communities that remain outside the discourses of capitalist modernisation and development, and are therefore officially “invisible.” The alternative modes of living highlighted or envisioned in eco-collectivist texts are similar to or inspired by the “Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK)” or Indigenous peoples’ ways of life that emphasize interspecies and intraspecies connectivity, empathy, and care, acknowledging the agency of natural environments. ![]() In the novels that represent eco-collectivism, individuals or communities often resist social or state ideologies to face the challenges of environmental degradation. The collective struggle of the victims of environmental injustice or of those impacted by climate change, as represented in certain South Asian novels in English of the twenty-first century, is what I term “eco-collectivism” to capture its combination of hope, kinship, and activism. The South Asian novel in English, because of its postcolonial orientations, and the region’s extreme vulnerability to the climate crisis, can engage with the historical and ongoing exploitation and injustices that have exacerbated the climate crisis. That reframing might lead to hope for characters, as well as for readers, allowing them to imagine new ways of living in the Anthropocene. W hile the climate crisis has given rise to a state of despair for many around the world, novels that engage with the environmental crisis can reframe humanity’s collective struggle in a positive way. Fiction can also represent or envisage the need for a collective activism, comprising both humans and more-than-humans, to face the planetary crisis. The novel has the capacity to encapsulate human existence, enabling us to interrogate our existing modes of being in the world, while imagining alternatives. ![]()
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