“To err is human, that is your doom and delight" : uncovering nonhuman agency in the environmental literature of the global south

Abstract

This dissertation analyses three environmental texts from the Global South, focusing on presentations of environmental decline in the neoliberal era as inherently connected to histories of colonial oppression in the past and the continuation of colonial ideologies and power structures in the present. The textual analyses in this dissertation uncover depictions of nonhuman agency and distributed networks of agency between human and nonhuman actors. The first novel analysed is Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things (1997), which exposes the inherent connections between the systemic oppression of the most marginalised characters and the degradation of the natural environment in India as a result of state-sanctioned development projects. Ultimately, the representation of nonhuman nature as an active agent in the tragedies that occur in the novel champion a more interdependent relationship with nonhuman nature. The next is Namwali Serpell’s The Old Drift (2019). The discussion of the novel focuses primarily on the assertive and agential presence of the swarm chorus of mosquitoes that guide and provide commentary on the narrative. It examines the destructive effects of Western development discourse and neoliberal globalisation on Zambian ecologies. Finally, the dissertation analyses Rita Indiana’s Tentacle (2018), showing how the novel’s temporally fluid narrative and its investment in the materiality of oceanic interconnection exposes the intrinsic connection between the decimation of Caribbean marine environments in the neoliberal era and anthropogenic climate change to the legacies of colonialism and the perpetuation of these legacies by the capitalist world-system.