LITERATURE AND ENVIRONMENT
UNIT I - ECOCRITICISM THEORY
Detailed : Cherryl Glotfelty: “Literary Studies in an Age of Environmental Crisis” J. Scott Bryson’s
‘Introduction’ from Eco poetry
T. V. Reed’s “Towards an Environmental Justice Ecocriticism”
UNIT II – POETRY
Detailed : William Wordsworth’s Hart-Leap Well
Dilip Chitre’s Felling of the Banyan Tree
W .S. Merwin’s For a Coming Extinction
Gary Snyder’s LMFBR
Don McKay’s Song for the Songs of the Blue Jay
Mary Oliver’s Sleeping in the Forest
UNIT III – PROSE
Detailed : Edward Abbey’s “Watching the Birds: The Wind Hover” from Down the River.
Non-Detailed : Vandana Shiva’s “Women’s Indigenous Knowledge and Biodiversity Conservation”
UNIT IV – DRAMA
Detailed : Mahasweta Devi’s Water
UNIT V – FICTION
Non-Detailed : Tania James’ The Tusk that Did the Damage
Ambikasutan Mangad’s Swarga Trans. J. Devika
LITERARY STUDIES IN AN AGE OF ENVIRONMENTAL CRISIS
Cheryll Glotfelty
Introduction:
Literary studies has been with a constant change due to the changes in the
field. There is no proper ecological approach to literature although research says
that it has responded to prevailing or contemporary pressures, but it has ignored
the environmental crisis. The modern education has been limiting itself to race,
class, and gender which were the hot topics of the twentieth century. Many never
knew the earth at all unless and until one heard about oil spills, toxic waste
contamination, extinction of species, battles over public land use, growing hole
in the ozone layer.
In spite of all this, the literary research beside all these environmental
issues was lagging scope when others fields like history, philosophy, law and
religion were making some progress. Various studies also appeared under
headings such as regionalism, pastoralism, human ecology, science and literature,
nature in literature etc. There was a disunity when this was created where the
critics rarely cited one another’s work. Each critic was developing his own
environmental approach. As a consequence eco-criticism did not become a
presence in the major institutions of power in the profession.
BIRTH OF ENVIRONMENTAL LITERARY STUDIES:
In the mid-eighties scholars with collaborative projects planted the literary
studies and in early nineties it grew up. In 1985 Frederick O. Waage edited
Teaching Environmental Literature: Materials, Methods, Resources which was a
great presence if environmental concern and awareness. In 1992 , a new
Association for Study of Literature and Environment was formed with Scott
Slovic elected as first president and in 1995 it had 750 members to host its first
conference. Patrick Murphy had launched a journal Interdisciplinary Studies in
Literature and Environment
Definition of Ecocriticism:
Ecocriticism is the relationship between literature and physical
environment. It is an earth-centred approach to literary studies. Ecocriticism was
possibly coined by William Rueckert in his essay “Literature and Ecology” Some
critics prefer the term ecocriticism because it is short and can be easily made as
ecocritical or ecocritic. Additionally they favour eco over enviro- because
ecocriticism studies about human culture and physical world. Enviro- means
anthropocentric whereas eco can be termed as biocentric.
The Three Stages in the Growth of Ecocriticism:
First stage is when the stereotypes are identified - Eden, Arcadia, virgin
land, swamp, and savage wilderness. When absences are noticed: Where is the
natural world in this text? But nature alone is not the only focus of ecocritical
studies of representation. Other topics also include the frontier, animals, specific
geographical regions, rivers, mountains and many more.
The second stage is the growth of of nature oriented through Henry
Thoreau, John Burroughs, John Muir, Mary Austin, Aldo Leopold, and many
others. Nature writing boasts a rich past, a vibrant present, and a promising future.
This stage also includes identifying fiction and poetry writers whose works
manifests ecological awareness. Figures like Willa Cather, Robinson Jeffers,
W.S. Merwin and many more have received much attention.
In the third stage ecocriticism has branched out into areas like deep ecology
and ecofeminism.
Future of Ecocriticism :
Ecocriticism aims at achieving the following targets in future:
● Consciousness Raising
Ecocriticism is a Consciousness Raising phenomenon about environment.
● Specialist in Literature Department
There should be atleast one specialist scholar in every department to take the
area forward.
Multi Ethnic Movement
It will become a multi ethnic movement when stronger connections are made
between the environment and issues of Social Justice.
● Prescribing environmentally oriented texts for Composition Courses
● One-inter disciplinary Course: Students should be encouraged to take up
inter-disciplinary course.
● Using Recycled paper
● Hosting Conferences
Essays in this collection:
There are three sections in this book reflecting three major phases:
1. First section aims to raise fundamental questions on the relation
between nature and culture. And to provide a theoretical foundation
to built the subsequent discussion of literary works.
2. Second section, focuses on the representation of nature in fiction and
drama.
3. Final section is focused on the environmental literature in
America.(native American stories and Thoreauvian nature of writing
tradition.
Important Essays in Ecocriticism:
● “The Historical Roots of our Ecological Crisis" by Lynn White, Jr. White
claims that the environmental crisis is fundamentally a matter of the beliefs
and value that direct the technology and science. He blames that Judeo-
christian religion for the anthropocentric arragance and dominant attitude
towards the nature.
● In "Nature and Silences" by Christopher Manes he uses the theory of
Micheal Foucault to show how nature has been made silent in Western
discourse.
● William Rueckert coined the new term "ecocriticism" i.e, discover
something about the ecology of literature". He describes poem as a stored
energy. Also adds that reading transfers this energy through the mediators
(critics and teachers) between poetry and the biosphere.
Conclusion:
Thus, ecocriticism has become an established area in the realm of literary
studies and it is here to stay.
Environmental Justice Poetics
Dr. U. Sumathy,
Associate Professor of English,
Government Arts College (Autonomous),
Coimbatore.
The world that was handed down to us was filled with limitless beauty,
elixirine water, fertile soil and life giving air. Now man has turned it
into a toxic spewing hell.
The Text
• Ambigasudan Mangad’s Enmahaje. Trans. Sirpi Balasubramaniam. Kavitha:
Pollachi, 2009.
• A war between capitalism and humanity
• A war between greed and sustenance
• A war that will turn the entire earth a graveyard
• Enmahaje documents the above fear
• A book that shocks the conscience
• Induces just anger in the reader
The Place
• Enmahaje located in Kasarkod dist., North Kerala
• A place of hills and rivers “Nature at its indulgent best”
• The nature of the rivers in Enmahaje
• 1000s of waterholes
• Sorgam: Gold yielding land
• Peacocks, parrots and vultures (that could carry dogs)
• Snakes and tigers worshipped
• Snake shrines and conservation
• Eight different languages and eight customs
• The Jains and their customs
• The Present?
The Present : Flora
• Invaluable forests teeming with biodiversity destroyed
• Monocrop culture: a terror unleashed by govt.
• In Karnataka-Eucalyptus, Himalayas-Pine, Kerala-Acacia
• Why in the name of afforestation, this foreign species?
• In the land of jack fruit and mango, why this killer tree?
• Yield reduced. Plants no longer healthy. Many rot fast.
The Present: Fauna
• No fish, snake, frog, peacock
• Not a drop of honey in the forests
• The last monkey Sugreevan
• Neelakandan’s fear: Two occasions: “What if there is no earthworm too?”
• Crab, “What have you done to all the creatures that faced bravely the struggle for
survival on this earth?”
• Cattle with three legs
A Biodiversity Disaster
• Study by Dr. V. S. Vijayan of Salim Ali Foundation
• Enmahaje Panchayat’s biodiversity: Nilgiri langur, tiger, jackal, wild boar, jungle
cat, mouse deer, mongoose, squirrels, flying fox, black naped hare, sparrow,
parakees, crows, frogs, honey bees, snails
• Everything except human beings disappeared during the spray
• Dead carcasses in plantations
• Fish : Worst affected
• Absence of crows and the aftermath
The Present : Humans
• Parikshit: 7, Body with blisters, greying hair, can make only croaking sounds
• Bagyalakshmi: 13, tongue lolling out
• Anwar: 26, fingers and toes like tentacles
• Abilash: resembles a monkey in appearance and gestures
• Anju: urinary bladder hangs out
• Sujith: 8, with brittle bones
• Haritha: advancing mental derangement ending in suicide
• Mamta: Haritha’s sister also afflicted
• Mentally retarded children chained to posts
• Scores of patients at the medical camp
The Cause
• Aerial spraying of Endosulphan in 5000 hectares in Kasarkod
• For 23 years from 1978 to 2001
• To protect crop from tea mosquito
• The toxic rain sprayed on the hills ran down to mix with streams, rivers throwing open
the doors of hell.
• Organo chlorine remains in the soil
• Physical and mental disorders
• Known cases of death all over the world
• Breast milk: 22.4ppm, blood: 196.4ppm
• 900 times above permissible limit
• Butter has endosulphate
• How much ppm endosulphan in this jack fruit?
• Modified DNA and the recurring consequences for 50 yrs.
The Comparison
• We have heard of Nuclear Holocaust in Hiroshima. A similar bomb is
blasted here. The effect percolates little by little.
The Irony
• When there are no living creatures, how will the tea mosquito alone survive?
• In order to kill the non-existent pest, poison worth crores of rupees is dumped in
this region
The Law
• Precautionary measures:
• Protective gear, covering water bodies, mornings, announcements to be made,
doctors to be sensitized.
• Same insecticide not to be used for more than three years.
• None of the above criteria followed
• Bans in US, Bangladesh and Britain
The Locals’ Interpretation
• Firm belief: Jadathari’s anger and curse. None can escape
• Man-made disasters as fate
• Damodar Shetty on Haritha’s death: Voodoo and witchcraft
• Poor, innocent, uneducated and marginalized
• 25 yrs. to realize the real curse is the poison
• Benign and peace-loving like cows
• Unlike urban dwellers who invite diseases with degraded lifestyles who can also
find cures
• Saradha doesn’t have money to buy rice. How can she afford five surgeries to cure
her daughter?
• Why are these children wronged? The parents who wait for God’s grace did not
err in any way
What is Environmental Justice (EJ)?
• Lawrence Buell, “EJ is community based resistance against toxification of local
environment. It broadens the scope of environmentalism to include the basic needs
of poor and politically less powerful groups.”
• Dorceta E. Taylor, “EJ integrates both social and ecological concerns”
• Oppression and social exploitation is inseparable from rape and exploitation of
natural environment. Health of one depends on the other.
• EJ Paradigm: The right of all individuals to be protected from environmental
degradation.
• EJ aims to redress the disproportionate incidence of environmental contamination
in communities of the poor.
Environmental Racism
• Racial discrimination in environmental policy making and the enforcement of
regulations and laws, the deliberate targeting of people of colour communities for
toxic waste facilities, the official sanctioning of the life threatening presence of
poisons and pollutants and the history of excluding people of colour form the
environmental movement.
• “We all live on the same planet but we don’t breathe in the same air. Some
environments are more equal than others”
• Communities living in sacrifice zones
• Risk burdens localized but benefits generalized
• Disparities created, tolerated and institutionalized by local, state and government
action
Dimensions of EJ
• Converting rivers into ditches and uninhibited sand mining
• Cultivation lands converted to residential plots
• Uncontrolled pollution from industries
• Building of dams in tribal lands
• Their habitats sold to industrialists for their mineral wealth
EJ Movements in India
• Bhopal Gas Tragedy: Methyl Isocyanate Poisoning
• Deaths : 3,000- 8000; 8000 later deaths
• The Continuing Struggle for justice
• The Ticking Bomb: GAIL’s 3,000 cr. Pipeline project through the agricultural
fields of Coimbatore, Erode, Salem, Krishnagiri to Bangalore.
• More than 1,20,000 fruit bearing trees would have to be uprooted for laying the
pipes
• Demand: change the alignment of pipeline
• Collectors directed to firmly enforce law.
Environmental Justice Criticism
• Ecocriticism puts human figures at the margin
• EJ Criticism : T.V. Reed: “To foster new work that understands and elaborates the
crucial connection between environmental concerns and social justice in the
context of ecocriticism”
• What can EJ Criticism Do?
• Focus on texts that show how environmental degradation and hazards affect the
poor.
• How has the class divide lead to greater environmental irresponsibility.
• How can worker safety and environmental safety be brought together?
• Foregrounding texts written by the coloured and the Third World writers
• EJ criticism adds a new dimension to ecocriticism
Enmahaje as an EJ Text
• Novel a refraction of historical actualities
• The poor and the innocent targeted
• The officials do not drink water or tender coconut from Enmahaje
• Records accurately the problem, the affected communities and their struggle for
justice
• Double victimization of Muthalamada endosulfan victims
• 188 living victims; 77 chronically ill
• “As poor Dalit and tribal coolie workers, we remain unorganized. Struggling even
to get a decent pay for the hard work in farm lands, we are incapable of organising
a Kasarkod model struggle”, Chandran to The Hindu
• The deadly manual spray
• NHRC sought an exclusive report
Silent Spring and Enmahaje
• A resonance of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring (1962)
• Documented the detrimental effects of DDT on the environment.
• The ban in 1972
• Neelakandan’s mantra piecered the silence of nature: “Nisaptham poonda
iyarkaiyai nookip painthu paraviyathu”
The Struggle
• Neelakandan, the embittered social activist and his partner Devi
• Jayarajan, the environmental enthusiast, who pays with his life
• Dr. Arunkumar, who sacrifices bright career to serve the poor
• Sriramar, freelance journalist, farmer
• Prakasa, first mentions the link between spray and death of bees
• Leelakumari, the former official, left paralysed
• Formation of Endosulphan Spray Protest Action Committee (ESPAC)
• The initial victory
• The schemes of the “leader” and the minister
• The medical camp
• Affected children as exhibits
• Parikshit’s body taken as a procession
• Jayarajan collects evidence but is murdered
The Apathy
• The interpretation for insecticide
• Endosulphan sprayed in govt. owned plantations by govt. What can anyone do
about it?
• Enquiry commissions submit reports without visiting affected areas
• Twist tales and give clean chit to Endosulphan
• Lab reports meddled with
• Deformities attributed to consanguineous marriages
• Activists threatened arrested on false charges and tortured
• Jayarajan brutally murdered
The Ban and the Continuing Struggle
• Endosulphan banned in 2001
• Same composition in other pesticides
• Marketed with 50 names in India
• The cruel connotation of the brand names: ‘Round Up’, ‘Machete’, ‘Pentagon’,
‘Prowl’ ‘Revenge’
• Our struggle is not only against Endosulphan. It is against all the chemical
pesticides that turn this planet into a desert
Facts about the Struggle
• Only in Mid 1990s people saw the connection
• Media visibility
• Numerous marches and protests
• Medha Pathkar and Arundhati Roy
• Slogan, “Endosulfan Quit India”
• The Hindu 3rd Feb. 2016: Another round of talks with CM. Laxity in
implementing the National Human Rights Commission recommendations. Apathy
of banks
• Endosulfan Virudha Samyukta Samara Samithy : deteriorating health of victims as
they brave the scorching heat.
Enmahaje as Faction
• The Fantasy elements
• The surrealist moments
• The cultural constructs
• The cave as Noah’s Arc
• When the poisonous apocalyptic rain strikes Enmahaje, all the remaining living
creatures will take refuge and live in the cave. Until the rain stops.
• Text as a tool
The Solution
• Pesticides and insecticides to be replaced by herbicides
• Green Revolution and its environmental costs
• Environmentalists need to hear both the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor
• Responsibility to rehabilitate the victims
• Preserve the richness and fertility of the soil for the coming generations.
The Future
Thasaputhro samovabi
Thasapapi samovirutha
Thasaviruthu samamatha
Thasamathaya samathadu
One pond is equal to ten sons
One lake is equal to ten ponds
One mother is equal to ten lakes
One tree is equal to ten mothers
So, one tree is equal to ten thousand sons
