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Can the Sublime Be Postcolonial? Aesthetics, Politics, and Environment in Amitav Ghosh’s The Hungry Tide

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 July 2014

Jana María Giles
Jana María Giles*
Affiliation:
University of Louisiana–Monroe
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Abstract

Set in the vast Sundarban mangrove forest of Bangladesh in the shadow of the colonial past and the 1979 Morichjhapi massacre, The Hungry Tide traces the transformation of three metropolitan characters from disengaged spectators to invested insiders. The novel may be read as elaborating the theories of Jean-François Lyotard, whose revision of the sublime as the “differend” in both aesthetics and politics provides a compelling context for exploring the postcolonial sublime. Suggesting ecocentric ways of engaging the world that loosen the bonds of the colonial past and critiquing the failure of the postcolonial state and the new cosmopolitanism, Ghosh rewrites aesthetics as interconnected with ethics and politics. In his novel, the postcolonial sublime no longer reifies metaphysical or anthropocentric pure reason, but instead enables discovery of our interpenetration with the natural world, spurring us to witnessing and activism in partnership with those who have been rendered silent and invisible.

Keywords

SublimeJean-François LyotardPostcolonial theoryEnvironmentalismEcocriticismAnthropoceneAmitav Ghosh
Type
Articles
Information
Cambridge Journal of Postcolonial Literary Inquiry , Volume 1 , Issue 2 , September 2014 , pp. 223 - 242
Copyright
© Cambridge University Press 2014 

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