Biswas Debajyoti
Department of English, Bodoland University, Kokrajhar, India.
J Environ Stud Sci. 2022;12(4):905-908. doi: 10.1007/s13412-022-00783-9. Epub 2022 Aug 1.
Amitav Ghosh's (2021) offers an incisive template of the intersecting history of Anthropocene and colonisation. The parables retold by Ghosh transport us to a sequestered past obscured by a Eurocentric discourse on colonial modernity. However, it is the same history which is now falling apart to reveal the devastating trajectory of the omnicidal enterprise carried out by the earliest colonising forces. The mapping of anthropogenic activities also helps us identify the locus of the philosophy that has bolstered the impetus of these forces. On one hand, the mechanistic view of life propagated by the colonisers had initiated the inception of colonial modernity; on the other hand, its boomeranging effect coupled with the "great acceleration" (133) has reached a tipping point leading to the present-day environmental crisis. Ghosh's book is a percipient warning for denialists who believe that the earth is an inert entity and that non-humans are brute forces to be subjugated. To counter this climate crisis, Ghosh comes up with some reversal strategies in which storytellers and indigenous communities may play an active role in restoring "Gaia" with all its vitality.
阿米塔夫·戈什(2021年)提供了一个关于人类世与殖民化交织历史的深刻模板。戈什重述的寓言故事将我们带回到一个被欧洲中心主义的殖民现代性话语所遮蔽的隐秘过去。然而,正是这段相同的历史如今正在瓦解,揭示出最早的殖民势力所实施的全杀式事业的毁灭性轨迹。对人类活动的映射也有助于我们确定支撑这些势力动力的哲学根源。一方面,殖民者所宣扬的机械生命观开启了殖民现代性的开端;另一方面,其回旋效应与“大加速”(第133页)相结合,已达到一个临界点,导致了当今的环境危机。戈什的书是对那些否认主义者的敏锐警告,他们认为地球是一个惰性实体,非人类是有待征服的蛮力。为应对这场气候危机,戈什提出了一些扭转策略,其中讲故事的人和本土社区可能会在恢复充满活力的“盖亚”过程中发挥积极作用。