The Caribbean : aesthetics, world-ecology, politics / [electronic resource]
Campbell, Chris(Chris C.),editor.
Niblett, Michael,editor.
Bringing together the work of literary critics, social scientists, activists, and creative writers, this edited collection explores the complex relationships between environmental change, political struggle, and cultural production in the Caribbean. It ranges across the archipelago, with essays covering such topics as the literary representation of tropical storms and hurricanes, the cultural fallout from the Haitian earthquake of 2010, struggles over the rainforest in Guyana, and the role of colonial travel narratives in the reorganization of landscapes. The collection marks an important contribution to the fields of Caribbean studies, postcolonial studies, and ecocriticism. Through its deployment of the concept of 'world-ecology', it offers up a new angle of vision on the interconnections between aesthetics, ecology, and politics. The volume seeks to grasp these categories not as discrete (if overlapping) entities, but rather as differentiated moments within a single historical process. The 'social' changes through which the Caribbean has developed have always involved changes in the relationship between humans and the rest of nature; and these changes have long been entangled with the emergence of new kinds of cultural production. The contributors to this collection provide a series of unique insights into the relationship between aesthetic practice and specific ecological processes and pressure-points in the region. More than ever Caribbean writers and artists are engaging explicitly with environmental concerns in their work; this volume responds to that trend by bringing literary and cultural criticism into sustained dialogue with debates around local, national, and regional ecological issues.
Specialized.
Acknowledgements -- Introduction: Critical Environments: World-Ecology, World Literature, and the Caribbean -- Prologue: The Brutalization of Truth -- Catastrophes and Commodity Frontiers: 1. The Political Ecology of Storms in Caribbean Literature -- 2. Zombies, Gender, and World-Ecology: Gothic Narrative in the Work of Ana Lydia Vega and Mayra Mon -- 3. Gade nan mizè-a m tonbe: Vodou, the 2010 Earthquake, and Haiti's Environmental Catastrophe -- Ecological Revolutions and the Nature of Knowledge -- 4. 'The Abstract Globe in One's Head': Robert Schomburg, Wilson Harris, and the Ecology of Modernism -- 5. Mining and Mastery: Ethnography and World-Ecology in the Work of Charles Barrington Brown -- 6. Hegemony in Guyana: REDD-plus and State Control overIndigenous Peoples and Resources --  Economies of Extraction: Restructuring and Resistance -- 7. Ecopoetics of Pleasure and Power in Oonya Kempadoo's Tide Running -- 8. Jamaica and the Beast: Negril and the Tourist Landscape -- 9. Ecology, Identity, and Colonialism in Martinique: The Discourse of an Environmental NGO (1980-2011) -- Epilogue: Tingaling -- Notes on Contributors -- Index
Specialized.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 07 Jul 2017).
Bringing together the work of literary critics, social scientists, activists, and creative writers, this edited collection explores the complex relationships between environmental change, political struggle, and cultural production in the Caribbean. It ranges across the archipelago, with essays covering such topics as the literary representation of tropical storms and hurricanes, the cultural fallout from the Haitian earthquake of 2010, struggles over the rainforest in Guyana, and the role of colonial travel narratives in the reorganization of landscapes. The collection marks an important contribution to the fields of Caribbean studies, postcolonial studies, and ecocriticism. Through its deployment of the concept of 'world-ecology', it offers up a new angle of vision on the interconnections between aesthetics, ecology, and politics. The volume seeks to grasp these categories not as discrete (if overlapping) entities, but rather as differentiated moments within a single historical process. The 'social' changes through which the Caribbean has developed have always involved changes in the relationship between humans and the rest of nature; and these changes have long been entangled with the emergence of new kinds of cultural production. The contributors to this collection provide a series of unique insights into the relationship between aesthetic practice and specific ecological processes and pressure-points in the region. More than ever Caribbean writers and artists are engaging explicitly with environmental concerns in their work; this volume responds to that trend by bringing literary and cultural criticism into sustained dialogue with debates around local, national, and regional ecological issues.
Aesthetics, Modern
Aesthetics, Modern
Arts
Human ecology
Social change
Postcolonialism