Postcolonial Environments: Nature, Culture and the Contemporary Indian Novel in English

研究背景：“环境”现在是一个真正的全球流行语，每天都出现在从小报头版到联合国报告的所有内容中。然而，当一位美国政治家被誉为“绿色先驱”时，其他人却否认“全球变暖”的现实;印度和中国领导人谴责“环保主义者的担忧”，并坚持他们国家的发展权，但来自他们自己国家的活动家揭露了这种“发展”所导致的大规模环境和社会退化。这些争论标志着人文和社会科学中那些声称与全球状况具有紧迫相关性的领域--如环境和后殖民研究。然而，直到最近，这两个领域都被“全球北方”的历史和环境事件所主导。“全球南方”的特殊性很少被用来挑战，测试或修改这些概念模型。但这种情况正在迅速改变，环境和后殖民研究现在都站在快速转变的边缘。例如，自然界的“深层生态”概念现在正在让位于来自亚洲、非洲和拉丁美洲的“社会生态”概念。再一次，“后殖民研究”现在通过将环境成分融入所有这些调查中来质疑其移民，文化，历史，自然的创始概念。我的研究项目旨在同时解释这些转变，使“社会生态学”和文化研究相互对话，并提供一个理论模型，可用于调查实际存在的环境事实和“后殖民”世界的文化反应之间的关系。为了说明我的论点，我选取了一个这样的文化回应--当代印度英语小说。我的分析表明，环境是关键的主题和形式的重要性，这一文献。我看过的小说反复把人类迁徙、城市贫民窟、森林砍伐、自然灾害、毒性等问题放在故事的核心位置，总之，就是“南方”的环境问题。与此同时，为了涵盖这一广阔而不断变化的画布，他们与周围的其他文化形式进行对话和交流，如戏剧，音乐，电影。通过这样做，他们产生了形式上的创新，使他们有别于欧洲和北美的经典小说。换句话说，正是当代印度的环境现实产生了印度英语小说通常所具有的异国情调。最后，我的研究表明，这种模式的环境，文化和历史之间的关系也可以适用于非洲和拉丁美洲。研究问题：在我的研究项目中，我的目标是解决一些主要来自“全球南方”的历史和物质现实的问题-森林砍伐，干旱，国内移民，城市贫民窟，土壤毒性和我们称之为文学的象征性行为之间的关系是什么？环境现实与文化形式之间是否存在结构性关系？如果是这样的话，我们是否可以将“南半球”的一个地区，即当代印度的环境与文化之间的关系作为一个与世界早期相关的模式？研究成果：我将制作一本专著长度的研究，题为“后殖民环境：自然，文化和当代印度英语小说”，合同将于2009年3月交付给出版商Palgrave Macmillan，并于当年晚些时候出版。研究方法：我将使用历史档案，科学研究，政府政策文件和文学/文化文本来展示环境事实是如何理解的，以及文学和文化文本的具体形式和结构是如何通过这种理解来塑造的。

Research Context: 'Environment' is a truly global buzzword now, appearing daily in everything from tabloid frontpages to U.N. reports. Yet, while one U.S. politician is acclaimed as a 'green warrior', others deny the very reality of 'global warming'; Indian and Chinese leaders decry 'conservationist concerns' and assert their nation's right to develop but activists from their own countries expose the massive environmental and social degradation that has resulted from such 'development'. These debates have marked those fields in the humanities and social sciences that claim urgent relevance to the global condition - such as environmental and postcolonial studies. Yet, until very recently, both these areas were dominated by concepts that grew out of the historical and environmental events of the 'global north'. Very little of the specificities of the 'global south' was used to challenge, test or modify these conceptual models. But this situation is fast changing, and both environmental and postcolonial studies now stand on the verge of rapid transformation. For example, 'deep ecological' concepts of nature are now giving way to 'social ecological' concepts arising out of Asia, Africa and Latin America. Again, 'postcolonial studies' is now questioning its founding concepts of migration, culture, history, nature by integrating an environmental component into all these enquiries. My research project aims to simultaneously account for these transformations, bring 'social ecology' and cultural studies into dialogue with each other and provide a theoretical model that can be used to investigate the relationship between the actually existing environmental facts and the cultural responses to it in the 'postcolonial' world. I take one such cultural response - the contemporary Indian novel in English, in order to illustrate my arguments. My analysis shows that environment is of key thematic and formal importance to this literature. The novels I look at repeatedly place the issues of human migration, city slums, deforestation, natural catastrophes, toxicity, in short, 'southern' environmental issues at the heart of their stories. At the same time, in order to encompass this vast and shifting canvass, they enter into conversations and exchanges with other cultural forms that surround them, such as theatre, music, films. By doing this, they produce formal innovations that separate them from canonical Euroepan and north American novels. In other words, it is contemporary Indian environmental reality that produce the exotic flair that is routinely attributed to Indian English language novels. I conclude the study by showing that this model of the relationship between environment, culture and history can also be applied to Africa and Latin America.'Research Questions: In my research project I aim to address a number of questions arising primarily out of the historical and material realities of the 'global south'- what is the relationship between the 'environmental' facts of deforestation, droughts, internal migration, urban slums, soil toxicity and the symbolic act we call literature? Is there a structural relationship between environment realities and cultural forms? If so, can we use the relationship between the environment and cultures of one area of the 'global south', contemporary india, as a model that will be relevant to the erst of the world? Research Outputs: I will produce a monograph-length study titled 'Postcolonial Environments: Nature, Culture and the Contemporary Indian Novel in English', which is contracted to be delivered to the publisher Palgrave Macmillan in March 2009 for publication later that year. Research Method: I will use historical archives, scientific studies, government policy documents and literary/cultural texts to show how environmental facts are understood, and how the specific form and structure of literary and cultural texts are shaped by this understanding.