No Longer at Home: Tropes of Solastalgia in Contemporary South Asian Literary Narratives

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In response to Cheryl Glotfelty's view of adopting "interdisciplinary approaches" (1996, p.xxii) towardsenvironmental thinking, my proposed thesis seeks to explore the narrativization of Solastalgia incontemporary South Asian Literature. The concept of Solastalgia, which denotes distress caused due toenvironmental changes and a "sense of isolation connected to the present state of one's home andterritory" (Albrecht 2005, 5) can be situated in the interdisciplinary field of Affective Ecocriticism thattries to discern the manifold emotional engagements humans have with the natural world. As opposed tonostalgia, which evocates both positive and negative emotions associated with a place, Solastalgia hasbeen conceptualized as an undesirable emotion resulting from a homesickness one feels at home(Albrecht 2005, 48). Keeping in view of the emerging scholarships on Solastalgia, (Galway et al 2019;Phillips and Murphy 2021, Kumar et al 2021) my thesis aims to understand the representation of thisemotion in post-2000 South Asian literary narratives. The period signifies the steady growth of writingsthat increasingly reflect the massive environmental transitions that are occurring in the South Asianregion. By appraising the affect-environment confluence in the chosen primary texts, I intend to explorethe routes these literary works offer to adequately navigate the affective terrain of environmentalbreakdown. Insofar, the study also tasks itself with evaluating how South Asian literature serves as alaboratory for articulating and dealing with negative emotion of Solastalgia arising out of ecologicalalterations.I propose to build my thesis on the ideas of place as "centre of felt value" (Tuan 1977, 4) and thebiophilia hypothesis that humans have an innate tendency to seek connections with nature (Wilson1984), and subsequently explore the affective turn in ecocriticism (Bladow and Ladino 2018) through theconcepts of Slow Violence (Nixon 2011) and Mourning Nature (Cunsolo and Landman 2017). Byresearching an eclectic mix of literary works that offer profound meditation on ecological changes, suchas novels, poems, graphic narratives, travelogues, and memoirs, the research would put forth a strongargument for Solastalgia to be taken into account in order to evaluate the intangible, yet far-reachingconsequences of environmental catastrophes. Some of the key primary texts I would research are TheGreat Derangement by Amitav Ghosh, Wave by Sonali Deraniyagala, Wild and Wilful by Neha Sinha, andselected poems of Temsula Ao.Though these writings have attracted emerging bodies of scholarship,they are yet to be studied comprehensively from an affective ecocritical perspective.With climate change and ecological crises entering common parlance and a generation calling forstronger actions against environmental degradation, there is a pressing need to enhance studies onaffective ecocriticism. I believe a study incorporating an evolving interdisciplinary field in the backdrop ofSouth Asian Literature is relevant as research on affective ecocritical studies has so far been primarilyEuro-American-centric. At a stage when ecocritical and affect studies are expanding to include a range ofoverlooked yet important works, I argue that the outcomes of my research will facilitate a newunderstanding of Solastalgia.