Amitav Ghosh: Climate Change Here and Now

Abstract

In this contribution I would like to give back something of the atmosphere of the debate that gave birth to Amitav Ghosh’s essay The Great Derangement. Climate Change and the Unthinkable (2016). By referring to the lectures that preceded its publication and to the introductory presentations of the author on behalf of major scholars of the University of Chicago, and to the questions by the audience, it is possible to reconstruct a whole debate that acquires different meanings in the Anglophone countries and in Europe. Questioning some of the assumptions implied in Amitav Ghosh’s discourse it is possible to better place his text and the relevance of climate change within our literary and philosophical discourse, and to re-think our cultural policies, and didactic engagement, here and now.

Keywords

• Amitav Ghosh. Climate change. Environmental humanities. Literature