Session on Ecocriticism by Devang Nanavati
Ecocriticism with reference to Postcolonialism :
Hello Readers!
Welcome to my blog. So here in this blog you will find the introduction and response to the session on Ecocriticism by Devang Nanavati. This session is organize by Dr. Dilip Barad sir at virtual platform on the date 10 November 2020.
It was an interesting session by Nanavati sir. In this session first of all sir has been talking about the environmental issue and globalization.
Then Devang sir talks about Sintanshu Yashschndra's poem "Tree once again". That is the translation from the Gujarati. The translation was done by Devang Nanavati sir. The Gujarati poem was " 'ફરી પાછું વૃક્ષ'. Moving ahead sir had done an Ecocritical reading of a poem "Tree Once Again".
Here we also recall a poem 'विद्रौह ' by केदारनाथ सिंह that is in Hindi language. This is also an interesting poem. Here we also recall the tree hugging revolution, Gujnan Gandhi's poem, 'After Babel' by Jessica de koninck.
Devang sir also discussed about various points like,
🔹️Ecocriticism: Appreciate A shift from Greed centrism to Green centrism
🔹️Gunjan Gandhi - Jessica de Koninck's Poems
🔹️Ecocriticism: Goal strategies - Tools and criteria
🔹️Definition
🔹️ Poem of Sitanshu Yashaschandra's " Tree Once Again " translated in English by D.S. Nanavati.
One of the main goals in ecocriticism is to study how individuals in society behave and react in relation to nature and ecological aspects. This form of criticism has gained a lot of attention during recent years due to higher social emphasis on environmental destruction and increased technology.
today, environmental study in literature is a crucial topic to be explored. It raises concerns about current issues and their relationships and influences upon each other, which was not the case in the field of literature a century before. Contemporary writers and critics have concentrated their thoughts and studies on humans’ expression, their behavior, and their impact on the environment. Moreover, their major concern is what type of resolution literature offers to current issues.
When any region is colonized, it means the whole environment is colonized. The environment begins to be manipulated by the dominant power. Besides, land provides an identity to people who belong to the place. Hence, any kind of intrusion in terms of power politics harms integrity of the culture and the environment.
Ecocriticism was officially heralded by the publication of two seminal works, both published in the mid-1990s: The Ecocriticism Reader, edited by Cheryll Glotfelty and Harold Fromm, and The Environmental Imagination, by Lawrence Buell.
Now days Ecocriticism as well as Ecofeminism also emerging from that. For more understanding visit my blog on Ecocriticism And Ecofeminism. (Click here)
Very interesting insight we can find in the book of Ania Loomba. The book is ' Colonialism and Postcolonialism ' . In which the conclusion part we get more useful ideas and examples of environment and Postcolonialism. She started her conclusion with the ecology and in the first para she mentioned Vandana Shiva 's argument. She has exposed the connection between colonialism and the destruction of environmental diversity. Nature is connected with the women. Because women’s work was so crucially tied to producing food and fodder. Other feminist environmentalists are more sceptical
of such an assessment of pre-colonial cultures, which, they point out, were also stratified and patriarchal; however, they agree that questions of ecology and human culture are intricately linked. Especially in the so-called third world, they state, one cannot talk about saving the environment while ignoring the needs of human lives and communities (Shiva 1988; Agarwal 1999).
There is also Rob Nixon further notes that this wilderness obsession is celebrated in American literature as well as in natural history.Nixon suggests such ‘spatial amnesia’ is one reason why ‘postcolonial criticism’ has been suspicious of earth-first ‘green-criticism’ and therefore has not engaged with questions relating to the environment.
Ania Loomba also points out that the Narmada Bachao Andolan ( NBA, save the Narmada river movement ) led widespread protests against a project, funded by multinational as well as indigenous capital, to build scores of large dams across central India. There were long term protests going on not only the environmental destruction but also a big problem of displacement of people. We can say that here the ecology or the marginalized people are in the same situation. This way Postcolonialism works for pro power dimensions.
Finally, it was the Indian Supreme Court which ruled that construction of the dams should continue. Chittaroopa Palit, one of the leaders of the NBA, says that :
" though international political factors, such as the character of the governments involved, the existence of able support groups in the North that play an important part, they cannot supplant the role of a mass movement struggling on the ground. Soon after the SPD government in Berlin refused a guarantee to Siemens, the German multinational, for building the dam in Maheshwar, it agreed to underwrite the company’s involvement in the Tehri dam in the Himalayas and the catastrophic Three Gorges Dam in China—both just as destructive as the Narmada project; but in neither instance were there strong mass struggles on the ground. "
(Palit 2003: 91)
Palit also said that its self-conception and practices were also shaped by the methods of the Gandhian anti-colonial struggle. Here we can say that the development should not be constructed at the cost of the environment. In this movement we can say political power colonized the land.
Thus, Ecology and Postcolonialism it's an interesting field to work on. As we see the animation by Steve Cutts. ( Click here to watch video ) . In which find that from the beginning of human history. Humans colonized the environment. And that through various disasters. It is interesting to read literature of the environment through the lens of Postcolonialism.
References :
Agarwal, B. (1999) ‘The Gender and Environment Debate: Lessons from India’, in N. Menon (ed.), Gender and Politics in India, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, pp. 96–142.
Nixon, R. (1994) Homelands, Harlem and Hollywood, New York and London: Routledge.
——(2005) ‘Environmentalism and Postcolonialism’, in A. Loomba, Suvir Kaul,Matti Bunzl, Antoinette Burton and Jed Esty (eds), Postcolonial Studies andBeyond, Durham, NC: Duke University Press, pp. 233–51.
Palit, C. (2003) ‘Monsoon Risings’, New Left Review 21 (May-June), pp. 81–100.
Shiva, V. (1988) Staying Alive: Women, Ecology and Survival in India, New Delhi: Kali; London: Zed Books.
Thank you….
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