Multiscalar Temporalities in Postcolonial Climate Fiction
Abstract
In the context of postcolonial ecocriticism and environmental time studies, I analyse different but interrelated scenes of confrontations between human history, ‘generational time’, deep time and myth to highlight a trend towards multiscalar temporalities in Anglophone climate fiction. Co-reading Amitav Ghosh’s The Hungry Tide (2004), Gun Island (2019) and Mahasweta Devi’s “Pterodactyl, Puran Sahay and Pirtha” ([1989] 1995), I focus on the texts’ multi-generational character constellations and their specific confrontations with geological time to reveal the literary strategies to capture the “slow violence” (Nixon 2011, 2) of global warming.
Presentato: 14 Settembre 2023 | Accettato: 24 Novembre 2023 | Pubblicato 05 Febbraio 2024 | Lingua: en
Keywords Amitav Ghosh • Ecocriticism • Ethicology • Biosemiotics • Gun Island • Mahasweta Devi • Multiscalar temporalities • The Hungry Tide • New materialism
Copyright © 2023 Nadine Böhm-Schnitker. This is an open-access work distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction is permitted, provided that the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. The license allows for commercial use. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
Permalink http://doi.org/10.30687/EL/2420-823X/2023/10/002