Forms of Planetary Criticism in In the Castle of My Skin (1953) by George Lamming

Abstract

The novel In the Castle of My Skin (1953) by Barbadian author George Lamming can be reread from a planetary perspective (Spivak 2003; Pratt 2022). In this way, two large areas of inquiry into alterity become evident that link the human with the non-human as forms of resistance to colonial modernity. On the one hand, a planetary melancholy (Apter 2013), which comes into tension with post-imperial melancholy (Gilroy 2004), becomes noticeable in the processes of loss of young G. in the face of the disintegration of the colonial world and childhood from of the emergence of the climatic force, the flood of the first chapter. On the other hand, two forms of criticism within the narrative that warn about the collapse of the colonial world, which are thought through a previous tradition in the character of the Old Man (Jonas 1988) and planetary humanism (Gilroy 2000) in the character of Trumper. These are complex procedures that deactivate the usual readings of the conflicts between nature and culture to reread not only new forms of resistance to the colonial modernity of the 20th century, but also inscribe the work outside the field of World Literature.

Keywords

• Lamming
• In the Castle of my Skin
• planetarity
• melancholy
• modernity