Ecodisaster Imaginaries in India

Scott Slovic is University Distinguished Professor of environmental humanities at the University of Idaho.Joyjit Ghosh is professor in the English Department at Vidyasagar University.Samit Kumar Maiti is assistant professor in the English Department at Seva Bharati Mahavidyalaya.

Tightly focused on Indian literary and filmic production, this wide-ranging volume explores the concept of “ecodisaster imaginaries” through its varied and complex nuances. Touching some of major theoretical cornerstones in contemporary environmental humanities—cli-fi, narratives of “slow violence,” the Anthropocene, studies of toxic hazardscapes, ecocritical analyses, geocriticism and multispecies studies—this trendsetting volume opens new conversations about literature, cultural production and literary criticism in the Indian context. More fundamentally, a central concern of this volume is with storytelling and narrative. What kind of stories give shape to human and nonhuman experiences in this era of accelerating climate change and ecological disasters? How are these stories told? How do they impact and create an affective connection with audiences both in India and beyond? The fifteen well-researched and lucidly written essays in this volume address these questions from multiple angles. A very valuable and important contribution to the environmental humanities in and about India.

• AcknowledgmentsIntroductionScott Slovic, Joyjit Ghosh and Samit Kumar MaitiChapter 1. Imagining Tropical Cyclones in Fiction: Representation of Cyclone Disaster in Selected Indian Novels in EnglishSk Tarik AliChapter 2. Green Criminology and the Himalayas: Revisiting the Ecodisaster in Kedarnath ValleyShruti DasChapter 3. Mythical Imagination and the Young Minds: A Reading of Geeta Dharmarajan’s Ma Ganga and the Razai Box as a Metaphor of Hope in DisasterDona Soman and Renu Bhadola DangwalChapter 4. The Trope of the Imperiled Earth in Jhumpa Lahiri’s Unaccustomed Earth and The LowlandSharada AllamneniChapter 5. Land, Trauma, and Family: An Ecocritical Reading of Perumal Murugan’s Rising Heat in the AnthropoceneRisha BaruahChapter 6. A Vulnerable City, Environmental Apocalypse, and the “Politics” of Climate Disaster: A Comparative Study of The Black Dwarves of the Good Little Bay and A Cloud Called BhuraSamrat LaskarChapter 7. Negotiating Mourning and Trauma: Imagining the Repertoire in Kamala Markandaya’s The Coffer DamsRicha Joshi Pandey and Dheeraj PandeyChapter 8. Writing the Grotesque: Poisoned Bodies and Toxic Environment in Ambikasutan Mangad’s Swarga: A Posthuman TaleSonalika Chaturvedi and Renu Bhadola DangwalChapter 9. The Culture of Modernity and Ecological Change: A Reading of Amitav Ghosh’s The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the UnthinkableJoydip Ghosh and Tajuddin AhmedChapter 10. Romanticizing Greenness: A Reading of Rabindranath Tagore from an Eco-theological PerspectiveGoutam Buddha SuralChapter 11. Ecological Violence, Peripheral Voices, and the Need for Climate Justice: Reading Jacinta Kerketta, the Voice of Contemporary JharkhandShreya Bhattacharji and Roshan Raj SinghChapter 12. “Cry, children/cry the silence of the earth”: Representation of Climate Change, Environmental Disaster, and Species Extinction in Contemporary Indian EcopoetryJoyjit GhoshChapter 13. “The Mangroves are home to predators of every kind”: Performing Ecoprecarity in Amitav Ghosh’s Jungle Nama: A Story of the SundarbanAshwarya Samkaria and Debajyoti BiswasChapter 14. The Bollywood Representation of the Bhopal Gas Disaster: A Foucauldian Discourse AnalysisDebabrata Modak and Tarakeshwar SenapatiChapter 15. Radical Landscapes: Analysing Ecodisaster and Human Rights Violations in Irada and Kadvi HawaDevapriya SanyalAbout the Contributors