Oceanic Epistemologies and Trans-corporeality: Reimagining Amitav Ghosh through Anthropocene Narratives

Abstract

The emergence of blue humanities has revolutionized the correlation between marine space and human society through its critical framework in contemporary literary studies, thereby gaining prominence over the last few years in responding to the environmental crises of the Anthropocene. In exploring the ocean studies, Amitav Ghosh’s fictional narratives delve deep into the hydro studies, climate change, and the entwining of human and subhuman worlds. This paper studies Ghosh’s works through blue humanities by adopting Philip E. Steinberg, Elizabeth DeLoughrey, and Stacy Alaimo as a theoretical framework. Steinberg’s work on the ocean as a place of flows and links gives a geopolitical view. DeLoughrey’s postcolonial ecocriticism shows the colonial histories in ocean spaces. Alaimo’s idea of trans-corporeality points to real connections between human bodies and the ocean environment. This article attempts to redress this long-standing gap within postcolonial literary studies and oceanic humanities by analysing Ghosh’s texts through the lens of these disciplines to open new views on the ocean’s representation due to ecological and cultural negotiations. While existential ventures and post-colonialism in Ghosh’s works exist, there has so far not been an oriented effort to look at his corpus in terms of maritime humanities.