Upamanyu Pablo Mukherjee,Postcolonial Environments (2010)

Rob Nixon, Slow Violence (2011)

Patricia Yaeger (ed.), “Literature in the Ages of Wood, Tallow, Coal...” (2011)

Wai-chee Dimock and Lawrence Buell, Shades of the Planet: American Literature as World Literature (2007)

Ursula Heise, Sense of Place, Sense of Planet: Environmental Imagination of the Global (2008)

Graham Huggan and Helen Tiffen, Postcolonial Ecocriticism: Literature, Animals, Environment (2009)

Bonnie Roos and Alex Hunt, Postcolonial Green: Environmental Politics and World Literature (2010).

Anthony Carrigan, Postcolonial Tourism: Literature, Culture, and Environment (2010)

Elizabeth DeLoughrey and George B. Handley, Postcolonial Ecologies (2011)

Postcolonial Studies and EcocriticismBoth emerge as distinct fields of academic

specialization in the 1970s; institutionally consolidated by the 1990s

Postcolonial studies as a response to end of post-war boom, long downturn, and new imperialist offensives in the 1970s

Ecocriticism as a response to shift in environmental consciousness signalled by, eg., Earth Day, 1970; Stockholm, 1972; Club of Rome report, 1972; ‘Blue Marble’ earth shot, 1972; The Good Life, 1975/ Survivors, 1975.

‘Deep Ecology’ vs. ‘Social Ecology’Deep Ecology (eg. Arne Naess): sought to change the reflexive anthropomorphic

position held by human beings to the environmentto stress the relationality all living and non-living

formsprotest the impact of industrial capitalism on natureBUTStuck in Cartesian binary – human and natural

worldIdealist; lack of attention to material structures that

produce specific socio-ecological configurationsFirst-worldist / typical solution is US-centric – vision

of the pioneer farmer working the land

Social Ecology (eg. Raymond Williams; Ramachandra Guha)

Nature and society as a dialectical unityEmphasis on the particular forms of

economic and social domination enabled by / embedded in specific configurations of socio-ecological relations

Attention to colonial and imperial historiesGuha, “Environmentalism of the Poor” –

struggles over social justice as simultaneously struggles over environmental justice

They dazzle me with the tonnage of cotton or coca that has been exported, the acreage that has been planted with olive trees or grapevines.

I am talking about natural economies that have been disrupted – harmonious and viable economies adapted to the indigenous population – about food crops destroyed, malnutrition permanently introduced, agricultural development oriented solely toward the benefit of the metropolitan countries, about the looting of products, the looting of raw materials. Cesaire, Discourse on Colonialism

“Yet it seems largely true that the conceptual importance of the environment to anti-colonial struggles in Africa, Asia and the Latin American countries appears to be ignored in the foundational writings of the triumvirate of Edward Said, Homi Bhabha and Gayatri Spivak that formed the academic field of postcolonial studies in the mid-1970s and 1980s.” Postcolonial Environments, 48

“Once we have grasped this idea of postcolonial India as a globalized entity within a world-system, it is impossible not to see that its condition speaks simultaneously at local and global, specific and general, levels. What is happening in India is also happening, has happened and will happen in the rest of Asia, Africa and Latin America. Since at the heart of both colonialism and neo-colonialism lies the historical fact of unfolding, expanding capital, India (and all the other ‘new’ postcolonies) can be seen as a part of a singular, but radically uneven, world.”Postcolonial Environments, 7

“Instead of divvying up literary works into hundred-year intervals (or elastic variants like the long eighteenth or twentieth century) or categories harnessing the history of ideas (Romanticism, Enlightenment), what happens if we sort texts according to the energy sources that made them possible?” Yaeger, “Editor’s Column”, 305

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BgRYncR1Nog

“Roadunner”, The Modern Lovers (1970)

Roadrunner, roadrunnerGoing faster miles an hourGonna drive past the Stop 'n' ShopWith the radio onI'm in love with MassachusettsAnd the neon when it's cold outsideAnd the highway when it's late at nightGot the radio onI'm like the roadrunner

AlrightI'm in love with modern moonlight128 when it's dark outsideI'm in love with MassachusettsI'm in love with the radio onIt helps me from being alone late at nightIt helps me from being lonely late at nightI don't feel so bad now in the carDon't feel so alone, got the radio onLike the roadrunner

That's rightSaid welcome to the spirit of 1956Patient in the bushes next to '57The highway is your girlfriend as you go by quickSuburban trees, suburban speedAnd it smells like heavenAnd I say roadrunner onceRoadrunner twiceI'm in love with rock & roll and I'll be out all nightRoadrunnerThat's right

Well nowRoadrunner, roadrunnerGoing faster miles an hourGonna drive to the Stop 'n' ShopWith the radio on at nightAnd me in love with modern moonlightMe in love with modern rock & rollModern girls and modern rock & rollDon't feel so alone, got the radio onLike the roadrunner

The dominant energy sources through which the world-system as re-made itself; the “great energy transitions of the modern world”:

Peat and charcoal – 1450s-1830sCoal – 1750s-1950sOil and natural gas – 1870s-present.

Moore, “Transcending the Metabolic Rift”, 22.

1760-1810 1820-1860 1870-1910 1950-1960 1970-Present

Gothic Form

Castle of Otranto, 1764

Dracula, 1897

Texas Chainsaw Massacre, 1974

Moore, “Sometime after 1760, the ‘first’ agricultural revolu-tion was showing clear signs of exhaustion. Within Eng-land, per-acre yield growth stagnated after mid-century, and most of European agricul-ture experienced the same ef-fect.”

Podobnik, “coal panics”;“end of the expansionary cycle of the globalcoal system”

Oil shocks, 1973, 1979; long downturn

Peat/Charcoal Coal (1750s-1950s) Oil and natural gas (1870s-present)(1450s-1830s)