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

不再在家：当代南亚文学叙事中的乡愁比喻

• 批准号: 2750239
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: University of Warwick
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Studentship
• 财政年份: 2022
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2022 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=studentship-2750239
• 关键词: No; Longer; Home; Tropes; Solastalgia

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.

为了回应Cheryl Glotfelty对环境思考采用“跨学科方法”（1996,p.xxii）的观点，我提出的论文旨在探索当代南亚文学中对Solastalgia的叙述。Solastalgia的概念是指由于环境变化和“与一个人的家庭和领土的现状相关的孤立感”而引起的痛苦（Albrecht 2005,5），可以位于情感生态批评的跨学科领域，该领域旨在辨别人类与自然世界的多种情感参与。与怀旧症相反，Solastalgia唤起了与一个地方相关的积极和消极情绪，而Solastalgia则被定义为一种因想家而产生的不良情绪（Albrecht 2005,48）。考虑到关于Solastalgia的新兴奖学金（Galway et al, 2019;Phillips and Murphy, 2021; Kumar et al, 2021），我的论文旨在了解这种情感在2000年后南亚文学叙事中的表现。这一时期标志着文学作品的稳步增长，越来越多地反映了南亚地区正在发生的大规模环境转变。通过评价所选的主要文本中情感与环境的融合，我打算探索这些文学作品提供的路线，以充分驾驭环境崩溃的情感地形。到目前为止，该研究还评估了南亚文学如何作为表达和处理由生态变化引起的太阳痛的负面情绪的实验室。我建议将我的论文建立在地方作为“感觉价值中心”的观点（Tuan 1974,4）和亲生命假设上，即人类天生倾向于寻求与自然的联系（Wilson1984），随后通过缓慢暴力（Nixon 2011）和哀悼自然（Cunsolo and Landman 2017）的概念探索生态批评的情感转向（Bladow and Ladino 2018）。通过研究各种各样的文学作品，如小说、诗歌、图画叙事、游记和回忆录，这些作品都对生态变化进行了深刻的思考，这项研究将有力地证明，为了评估环境灾难带来的无形而深远的后果，应该考虑到“日光痛”。我要研究的一些主要文本是阿米塔夫·高希的《大错乱》，索纳利·德拉尼亚加拉的《波》，尼哈·辛哈的《狂野与任性》，以及坦苏拉·奥的诗歌选集。虽然这些著作吸引了新兴的学术机构，但它们尚未从情感生态批评的角度进行全面研究。随着气候变化和生态危机成为常言话，一代人呼吁采取更有力的行动应对环境退化，迫切需要加强对情感生态批评的研究。我认为，在南亚文学的背景下，结合一个不断发展的跨学科领域的研究是相关的，因为迄今为止，情感生态批评研究主要以欧美为中心。在生态批判和影响研究正在扩展到包括一系列被忽视但重要的工作的阶段，我认为我的研究结果将有助于对太阳痛症的新理解。