Events

Ecology of Intimacies: An Ethics, Aesthetics and Politics of Reading Postcolonial Environmental Fiction

Sangeeta Ray

March 18, 2020
12-1:30 p.m. 
Shiffman 209

This talk will reflect on the relationship of environmental issues, political ecology and such to intimacy. Starting with a reflection on intimacy and postcolonial ecocriticims, the talk will read three postcolonial literary texts including Amitav Ghosh's The Hungry Tide to focus on the relationship between intimacy and the environment. I want to suggest that in certain postcolonial environmental novels the task of engaging with an environmental/ecological event produces a concomitant demand to imagine and represent new ways of thinking about the heterogeneous affinities that develop and put pressure on a too easy celebration of “naturecultures."