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Colonialism And/As Catastrophe

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Colonialism And/As Catastrophe COLONIALISM AND/AS CATASTROPHE: ANIMALS, ENVIRONMENT, AND ECOLOGICAL CATASTROPHE IN THE CONTEMPORARY POSTCOLONIAL NOVEL JUSTYNA PORAY-WYBRANOWSKA A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY GRADUATE PROGRAM IN ENGLISH YORK UNIVERSITY TORONTO, ONTARIO July 2019 © Justyna Poray-Wybranowska, 2019 ii Abstract This dissertation analyzes literary representations of ecological catastrophe in contemporary postcolonial fiction to study the relationship between colonialism and catastrophe and to reveal the critical role animals and the environment play in literary renditions of catastrophe. Its primary site of investigation are six novels that I use as case studies to examine how postcolonial texts render experiences of catastrophe and connect contemporary ecological vulnerability to colonial legacies. I focus on fictional texts that engage with ecological catastrophe and climate change, environmental instability and exploitation, and human- nonhuman relations in an era that some scholars refer to as the Anthropocene – a time in which human activity has become a main driver of global environmental change. I limit my analysis to novels from South Asian and the South Pacific, because in addition to sharing a past as British colonies, these regions are consistently identified as at-risk for ecological catastrophes. I show that the formal properties of novels (their commitment to representing mundane and repeated events and their focus on detailed psychological portraits) make them productive sites for thinking through the way ecological vulnerability is experienced unequally across the globe. Highlighting that factors such as race, class, and indigeneity affect how individuals living in ecologically vulnerable regions experience catastrophe, I emphasize the way intersecting positionalities shape the narrative representation of catastrophe. I demonstrate that relationships with local animal species and the land help environmentally vulnerable populations cope with catastrophe, and that postcolonial texts use the nonhuman to work through violent environmental events. In this way, I foreground the potential contributions of literary fiction to transnational efforts to better understand how postcolonial subjects experience ecological catastrophe and massive-scale environmental change, and how they imagine possible recovery. iii Dedication For my parents and grandparents. iv Acknowledgements I would like to thank my supervisor, Dr. Lily Cho, whose guidance, mentorship, and refusal to sugar-coat critique have been invaluable over the years. Thank you for pushing me to aim higher. Thank you to my supervisory committee members, Dr. Catriona Sandilands and Dr. Marcus Boon, who helped me work through shortcomings in my initial drafts. I am grateful for your guidance. Thank you also to my internal examiner, Dr. Jody Berland, whose scholarship has been instrumental to my thinking about animals, as well as to my external examiner, Dr. Susie O’Brien, whose feedback and insights on my project will shape my work moving forward. A sincere thank you to Dr. Susan Ingram, who put a lot of time and work into supporting my research and writing. Your mentorship has been vital to my growth and progress. Thank you to Dr. Karen Valihora, for your encouragement and advice. Thank you to Dr. Thomas Loebel, whose knack for asking unanswerable questions has played an important role in my theorization of this project. Thank you to Dr. Terry Goldie, for the helpful feedback in the early stages of my research. Thank you to Dr. Marie-Christine Leps, who has gone out of her way to help me disseminate my research, as well as to Dr. Lesley Higgins, Dr. Arun Mukherjee, Dr. David Goldstein, and Dr. T.V. Reed. I am also thankful to the late Dr. Anthony Carrigan, whose work on disaster in postcolonial environments laid the groundwork for my research; I am very grateful that our paths crossed. Thank you to my exceptional friends and colleagues, who have supported me and kept me grounded over the years. Thank you to my brilliant colleagues in the Department of English, Sydney Tran, Derek Gingrich, Tyler Ball, Rachel Wong, and Angie Park, who have made my time at York so much richer. Thank you to Kathy Armstrong and Rose Crawford, for all of your help over the years. Thank you to Rachel Levine, my friend and collaborator, who regularly v reminds me to focus on what matters in academia and in life. Thank you to Athena Elliott, to Dr. Ilyssa Stein, and to Capt. Ariane Philippouci, who have been there to celebrate the small victories with me and to support me when life didn’t go according to plan. And thank you to Igor Borisovich, who has been a model of inquisitiveness, resilience, and composure for me for the past seven years. You are all amazing, and I am grateful for your friendship. I would also like to thank my parents, Jadwiga Wrzesinska and Wojciech Poray- Wybranowski, who have supported me generously and unconditionally throughout my interminable studies. And, finally but most importantly, I thank my partner, James Snelgrove, without whose keen editorial eye and infinite patience I never would have succeeded in bringing this project to completion. Thank you for believing in me. I am also thankful for the funding I received from York University and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. vi Table of Contents Abstract ........................................................................................................................................... ii Dedication ...................................................................................................................................... iii Acknowledgements ........................................................................................................................ iv Table of Contents ........................................................................................................................... vi Introduction ..................................................................................................................................... 1 Positionality Statement ............................................................................................................ 1 Section 1: A Crisis of the Imagination .................................................................................... 1 Section 2: Climate Change, Catastrophe, and the Anthropocene ............................................ 8 Section 3: Popular Perceptions of Climate Change ............................................................... 16 Section 4: Why Read Novels about Climate Change and Catastrophe ................................. 19 Section 5: Chapter Breakdown .............................................................................................. 33 Section 6: Conclusion ............................................................................................................ 38 Chapter 1: Reading Catastrophe through Postcolonialism, Ecocriticism, and Animal Studies ... 40 Section 1: Racism, (Neo)Colonialism, and Environmental Justice ....................................... 40 Section 2: Colonialism, Postcolonialism, and Catastrophe ................................................... 41 Section 3: Colonial Roots: Colonialism, Environment, Environmentalism .......................... 46 Section 4: Postcolonialism and Environmental Justice in the Anthropocene ....................... 53 Section 5: Defining Catastrophe (Catastrophe vs. Apocalypse vs. Disaster) ........................ 57 Section 6: The Nonhuman Turn ............................................................................................ 61 Section 7: Ecocriticism and Environmental Literature.......................................................... 63 Section 8: Animal Studies ..................................................................................................... 66 Section 9: Problems and Scholarly Contributions ................................................................. 70 Chapter 2: Catastrophe, Vulnerability, and Human Relationships .............................................. 74 Section 1: Colonialism, Catastrophe, and the Everyday ....................................................... 74 Section 2: Colonialism and its Aftermath in the Context of Climate Change: Race, Indigeneity, and Socio-Ecological Vulnerability .................................................................. 77 Part 1: Kiran Desai’s The Inheritance of Loss .......................................................................... 83 Section 1: Synopsis and Literature Review ........................................................................... 83 Section 2: Socioeconomic Hierarchies and Power Dynamics: Caste, Class, Race, Ethnicity, and Indigeneity ...................................................................................................................... 88 Section 3: Racism and Colonialism ..................................................................................... 102 vii Section 4: Precarity, Vulnerability, and Catastrophe .......................................................... 108 Section 5: Reflection, Renegotiation, and Human-Animal Relationships .......................... 111 Section 6: Conclusion .......................................................................................................... 114 Part 2: Kim Scott’s Benang: From the Heart ........................................................................
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