Multiscalar Temporalities in Postcolonial Climate Fiction

Abstract

In the context of postcolonial ecocriticism and environmental time studies, I analyse different but interrelated scenes of confrontations between human history, ‘generational time’, deep time and myth to highlight a trend towards multiscalar temporalities in Anglophone climate fiction. Co-reading Amitav Ghosh’s The Hungry Tide (2004), Gun Island (2019) and Mahasweta Devi’s “Pterodactyl, Puran Sahay and Pirtha” ([1989] 1995), I focus on the texts’ multi-generational character constellations and their specific confrontations with geological time to reveal the literary strategies to capture the “slow violence” (Nixon 2011, 2) of global warming.

Keywords

• Amitav Ghosh. Biosemiotics. Ecocriticism. Ethicology. Gun Island. Mahasweta Devi. Multiscalar temporalities. New materialism. The Hungry Tide