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Amitav Ghosh: The Nutmeg’s Curse: Parables for a Planet in Crisis

2022; Springer Science+Business Media; Volume: 13; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1007/s41020-022-00170-z

2364-4869

Surabhi Singh,

Indian History and Philosophy

As a work of creative non-fiction, this book is not easily categorised.The book takes forward concerns about the relationship between literature, history, ecology, colonialism, migration and climate change that Ghosh inaugurated in The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable. 5These concerns have also been consistently addressed by Ghosh in his novels. 6 Through a rich cultural and literary history of colonialism in the Southeast Asian islands of Banda, 7 and settler colonialism in North America, 8 Ghosh assembles a rich and layered context for the reader to make sense of the ecological crisis of climate change in the present.In doing this, Ghosh attempts to move the conversation away from the current hyper-technical and scientific debate that focuses almost singularly on carbon emissions, their offsetting, glacial temperatures, and rising sea-levels.Instead, he asks the reader to reckon with the past of colonial exploitation, and in this reckoning, as per Ghosh, lies a solution to the crisis.This foregrounding helps Ghosh frame the current arguments on climate change, which can be broadly divided into two-(i) who is responsible for the current crisis of climate change that is affecting the entire planet, and (ii) what fundamental changes can we make now to manage the crisis?In answering the first question, Ghosh takes on a deeply moral debate-or judgement.Western ideals that look at the world as a 'resource', 9 nature as 'subdued and cheap', 10 the planet as 'inert', 11 and any indigenous ways of living as 'savage' 12 are compellingly challenged.These Western ways of thinking, 13 propagated consciously by Western philosophers, thinkers, and politicians, 14 and the Western ways of living, in a fashion of consumeristic rapture that views nature as only a 'resource', 15 are linked to the current ecological crisis.