Book Review: The Great Derangement by Amitav Ghosh
Diverting from his usual fictional narrative, Amitav Ghosh takes his reader on a whirlwind journey through an analytical perspective of climate change and its role in the world of literature in his latest book, The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable. The book is separated into three parts: Stories, History, and Politics, as Ghosh provides a critical review of how humanity has slowly fallen into derangement by allowing nature to become a mere backdrop in our multidimensional lives. Ghosh declares: “the climate crisis is also a crisis of culture, and thus of the imagination (Ghosh, 2016)”. He undeniably puts into question one of humanity’s prized and differentiated qualities: symbolic consciousness. As we embark on this journey of deep inquiry, Ghosh inspires us to ask some fundamental questions: how do we confront the shadow side of our imagination? how can the artist evoke an awakening out of the Great Derangement? what can humanity begin to do in order to adapt and alter the negative outcomes of the Anthropocene?
In Part I: Stories, Ghosh puts his reader right in the epicenter of an improbable event that he encountered in New Delhi, India in 1978. It was mid-March, usually a nice and serene period of the year; but unexpectedly, the people of New Delhi found themselves caught up in a “funnel-shaped whirlwind”. Within minutes, the entire region was wrecked with scattered materials everywhere and life buried beneath chaos. Tornadoes are not a common occurrence in India; in fact, this event was a meteorologically historic one. Thus, Indians did not even have the apt vocabulary to describe this unprecedented disaster. As Ghosh explains, “so unfamiliar was this phenomenon that the papers literally did not know what to call it (Ghosh, 2016).” It is through this undesired, but boldly realistic experience that Ghosh finds himself contemplating the role of the climate crisis and its distorted embeddedness in literature.
In pre-modern times, the novel had a more synonymous role with the absurd and the unlikely. However, it is during the modern era that we see a simultaneous rise in the concept of probability and fiction. As the authority of science and material reductionism began to take its course, the spontaneous and ludicrous creativity that stirred the consciousness of artists was concurrently beginning to lose its flame. Nature in all its powerful and mighty glory was no longer at the forefront of the novel’s premise. Overtime, nature found itself lingering in the background of human dread and our everyday life. As Ghosh so eloquently says, “Thus was the novel midwifed into existence around the world, through the banishing of the improbable and the insertion of the everyday (Ghosh, 2016).” Ironically, the pole of certainty that science and mathematics was holding up also induced illusory effects on our role and position as a member of this Earth community. Ghosh slowly ignites a realization in his reader that the modern human is stuck inside a perceptual prison. In other words, the Cartesian-Newtonian paradigm has taken hold of our worldview; but we have reached a point in our evolutionary story where we now have the capacity to reflect on the shortcomings of this mechanistic conception of our world.
Unlike modern society, ancient cultures were in deep relationship with nonhuman agents. Thus, in those days, nature embodied a more grandeur position in the world of literature and storytelling. Ghosh explores the essence of this devolving process, and how humanity slowly stepped into the Anthropocene. He says, “Literary forms have clearly played an important, perhaps critical, part in the process. So, if for a moment, we were to take seriously the premise that I started with - that the Anthropocene has forced us to recognize that there are other, fully aware eyes looking over our shoulders - then the first question to present itself is this: What is the place of the nonhuman in the modern novel? To attempt an answer is to confront another of the uncanny effects of the Anthropocene: it was in exactly the period in which human activity was changing the earth’s atmosphere that the literary imagination became radically centered on the human (Ghosh, 2016).” It is interesting to note here, that although a clear Cartesian dualism is emerging out of the Anthropocene, a blurred distinction between mind and matter are also occurring on the human dimension. On a physical level, humans are rising to extreme power and changing the fundamental geological structures of this planet. Simultaneously, that interaction with matter is having an alchemical effect on the mind and spirit, which is brought forth through the dimension of language.
When it comes to language and words, a mysterious question always emerges: can there be thought without language (language that is encompassed by words)? Up to this point, Ghosh critically emphasizes the role of the novel in relation to the climate crisis. However, he begins to divert from the world of literature and unlocks an indispensable door to our imagination. He questions the very notion of our relationship to language and how we think about the world. Through the lens of anthropologist Eduardo Kohn and his book How Forests Think, Ghosh invites us to investigate this inquisitive dimension: “But how, we might ask, can any question of thought arise in the absence of language? Kohn’s answer is that to imagine these possibilities we need to move beyond language. But to what? Merely to ask that question is to become aware of the multiple ways in which we are constantly engaged in patterns of communication that are not linguistic: as, for example, when we try to interpret the nuances of a dog’s bark; or when we listen to patterns of birdcalls; or when we try to figure out what exactly is portended by a sudden change in the sound of the wind as it blows through trees. None of this is any less demanding, or any less informative, than, say, listening to the news on the radio. We do these things all the time - we could not stop doing them if we tried - yet we don’t think of them as communicative acts. Why? Is it perhaps because the shadow of language interposes itself, preventing us from doing so (Ghosh, 2016)?” The idea that language itself is a barrier, becomes quite evident from the perspective of Kohn. We’re constantly anthropomorphizing the world through the conditioning of human words. So then, we can ponder over whether language has the capacity to simultaneously be a bridge while also being a barrier. It may not be surprising that the consciousness of language embodies a paradoxical nature; as the structures of our universe undeniably embrace contradictory ideas as well.
Ghosh ignites a powerful notion as he questions further: “Would it follow, then, on the analogy of Kohn’s suggestion in relation to forests, that to think about the Anthropocene will be to think in images, that it will require a departure from our accustomed logocentrism? Could that be the reason why television, film, and the visual arts have found it much easier to address climate change than has literary fiction? And if that is so, then what does it imply for the future of the novel (Ghosh, 2016)?” Penetrating the deeply ingrained methodology of language, Ghosh brings light to the shadow side of our consciousness and imagination. Through his inquiry we may begin to envision the bridge that language can build. That being said, that bridge may possibly lie outside the realm of logocentrism, and therefore, it requires a radically new perspective on how we engage and deconditon our relationship with language. Ultimately, it is through the language of art that we may find the capacity to transcend the political and logocentric dimension of the climate crisis, and evoke a sense of compassion and empathy in humanity.
In Part II and III: History and Politics, Ghosh dives deep into the evolutionary path of the Anthropocene; emphasizing on the story of empire and imperialism. While it is easy for most of us to take a critical position of Western dominance and the unintended consequences it brought about through the industrial revolution; Ghosh provides his readers with a more global outlook on how these ideas on development and growth occurred simultaneously throughout the world. Analyzing the historical lineage of scientific ideas, he informs us that, “nineteenth-century European science could never have reached its present height had it not been fertilized by successive wafts from the…knowledge stored up in the East (Ghosh, 2016).” In many ways, Ghosh is providing us with a way to deconstruct the Anthropocene by building a more holistic narrative around the history and evolution of ideas.
Similarly to how the role of nature began to change in literature during the rise of human geological power, matter itself was/is creating an alchemical effect on our thoughts. Metaphysically speaking, ideas don’t belong to a specific person; ideas attach themselves to specific beings, and through that relationship, ideas are manifested into physical reality. “Modernity,” Ghosh quotes the historian Sanjay Subrahmanaym, “was not a “virus” that spread from the West to the rest of the world. It was rather a “global and conjunctural phenomenon,” with many iterations arising almost simultaneously in different parts of the world (Ghosh, 2016).” This notion then, gives humanity a more collective approach towards solving and tackling the climate crisis. While reconciliation of historic events is vital, a transcendence of blaming and shaming must occur in order to truly enter into the age of planetary consciousness. As Ghosh declares: “The climate crisis cannot therefore be thought of as a problem created by an utterly distant “Other” (Ghosh, 2016).”
Ghosh does an extensive job at providing a critical analysis of our relationship to the multiple dimensions in which we interact with the climate crisis. It is evident that his call to action is for artists to take charge in leading and changing the narrative of our times. He invites us to rethink the ways in which we use language, and to be creative in our capacity to develop a new worldview. Ultimately, freedom is a theme that appears to be at the center of this historical unfolding. While the world of science and mathematics has opened a door to the vastness of human intellect, it has also incarcerated the transient nature of the cosmological being. Therefore, the dimension of art is calling out to us; its true form and nature pouring out from the depths of our creative universe, leaping beyond the realm of knowledge; it gently whispers to our inquisitive soul: freedom is here - right at the edge of the known and the unknown.
References
Ghosh, A. (2016). The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable. Chicago, IL:
The University of Chicago Press.
