Semester

Spring

Date of Graduation

2022

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Type

PhD

College

Eberly College of Arts and Sciences

Department

English

Committee Chair

Timothy Sweet

Committee Co-Chair

Stephanie Foote

Committee Member

Stephanie Foote

Committee Member

Gwen Bergner

Committee Member

Farhad B. Idris

Abstract

I examine how South Asian Anglophone fiction represents the evolution and derangement of postcolonial ecologies, especially how unrelenting colonial and capitalist interventions affect the symbiotic relationship between subaltern people and nonhuman entities. The conceptual methodology develops from Karl Marx’s theory of “metabolic rift,” which illustrates how capitalist exportation of crops causes loss of important soil nutrients because the nutrients are consumed in distant locations and not returned to the original soil. My concept of “eco-material rifts” extends Marx’s idea to contend that the “rifts” have grown into more complicated and difficult to remediate modes of material rifts today. I scrutinize the ways in which South Asian authors, such as Amitav Ghosh and Indra Sinha, expand the concept of rifts in writing on the multilayered consequences of colonial and postcolonial exploitation. These eco-material rifts include dislocation of marginalized entities, organized drugging and demolition of human bodies, discriminatory displacement of humans based on their class, gender and race, toxification of ecological sites and human bodies, and the formation of psychological rifts that prompt replication of colonial violence of the past. The selected texts not only offer plural perspectives on pressing ecological concerns of postcolonial locations but also suggest narratives of resistance from subaltern viewpoints. Such integration of local perspectives, I argue, demonstrates that the complexity of postcolonial ecologies can enrich global environmentalism and foreground the question of environmental justice for the victimized communities. The epilogue examines pedagogical angles of teaching South Asian fiction through the lens of eco-material rifts.

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