Eco-Critical Study of The Black Hill

Abstract

The present paper aims to critically provide an eco-reading of The Black Hill, a novel by Mamang Dai where the environment is the central theme of human history, memory and identity in the context of the novel. The novel can deal with the local worldviews in Arunachal Pradesh by making them understand that forests, rivers and mountains are sacred places that enable them to maintain material lives and spiritual attachments. Through a close reading of this text this paper will explore the ways the themes of land, ecological kinship, and animistic spirituality in the narrative foreground of Dai, and features of tension created out of colonial exploitation, displacement and extractive policies.

As the discussion shows, The Black Hill is interdisciplinary as it spans both literature and environmental science. Its depictions of subsistence culture, biodiversity, and ecological processes are aligned to contemporary scientific concerns of sustainability, conservation, and climate change. At the same time, the activity of Dai is an ecology discourse because it contains the cultural memory and declares the moral responsibilities to the more-than-human world. The novel finds its place in the modern ecological humanities and environmental ethics through the comparison of the ecological ethics of the native peoples to the colonial pasts of land ownership.

The paper will argue that Dai’s fiction is both a cultural artefact and an ecological archive which could offer some perspectives on sustainable living and policy of conservation. It also emphasizes the urgency of the interdisciplinary approach forming a connection between indigenous literature, ecology, and political structures. In this, The Black Hill provides an insight into how to fulfill ecological justice and sustainable futures.