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Are we deranged? Award-winning essayist and novelist Amitav Ghosh argues that future generations may think so. How else to explain our imaginative failure in the face of global warming? The Great Derangement examines our inability-at the level of literature, history, and politics-to grasp the scale and violence of climate change. The extreme nature of today's climate events, Ghosh asserts, make them peculiarly resistant to current modes of thinking and imagining. This is particularly true of show more serious literary fiction: hundred-year storms and freakish tornadoes simply feel too improbable; they are automatically consigned to genres like science fiction. In the writing of history, too, the crisis has sometimes led to gross simplifications, but the carbon economy is a tangled story with many contradictory and counterintuitive elements. Ghosh ends by suggesting that politics, much like literature, has become a matter of personal moral reckoning rather than an arena of collective action, and that limitation comes at great cost. The climate crisis asks us to imagine other forms of human existence-a task to which fiction, Ghosh argues, is the best suited of all cultural forms. His book serves as a great writer's summons to confront the most urgent task of our time. show lessTags
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Lucid, scholarly prose that doesn't use a lot of jargon even on this technical topic. The thing is, though, it is not particularly a scientific book, so it doesn't really elucidate the issue of global warming so much as the issue of literature and art ignoring global warming. Still, literature and art do have their fair share of jargon, and avoiding that shows that the author recognized his need to reach a wider audience. That said, this book had some great advantages in that it managed to address the issue without being either Euro-centric or Ameri-centric, and was not an apologia for the total innocence of non-European countries in the production of greenhouse gases that are warming our planet. The discussion about the failure of art show more and literature to address this mammoth problem struck home to someone who has one foot in science and one in theatre, as I recognize and bemoan the problem he expressed so eloquently. I could add that, whenever someone does manage to get a work out there that addresses an environmental issue, the audience will tend to re-interpret it as having some message about non-environmental issues, usually immigration or social justice. The only issue I take with this book is that he does some fancy footwork to dance around the elephant in the room that screams out between the lines of his own work, that of runaway population growth. And he condemns the entirely of modernity, while taking special aim at consumerism, never recognizing that we could find way to have modern medicine and other benefits without the excess consumerism. Then, after taking aim (justifiably) at excess consumerism, he denies that individuals can make any difference by changing their buying habits. I realize that there does have to be a collective action, but he fails to recognize that it has to start somewhere, and that modeling better behavior has been shown to be effective in getting those behaviors to become the norm. Overall, a satisfying, but not totally satisfying, work. show less
This is exhortation to think apocalyptically from a writer of several outstanding books. I know the author as a novelist, but he offers a literary perspective on one of the most significant existential issues of our time. He does this effectively in a captivating extended essay.
He contends that the bourgeois experience is the foundation of the modern novel, which emphasizes linear time, individual moral journeys, and the predictable rhythms of everyday life. Climate events (such as superstorms or sharp sea level rise) are abrupt, extreme, and collective; they just seem too unlikely or "unrealistic" for the prevailing literary genre. According to Ghosh, this emphasis on the individual has led to a more widespread cultural exile of the show more concept of the collective, which is exactly what is required to solve a collective problem such as global warming.
Ghosh examines the historical factors that contributed to the current crisis, highlighting the ways in which colonialism, empire, and the emergence of the carbon economy are all intertwined. The book emphasizes that Asia, with its population and rapid industrialization, is central to both the causes and potential solutions of the climate crisis, but also faces the most devastating human consequences. He draws attention to the historical injustice that allowed the West to develop through carbon-intensive industrialization while limiting similar paths for countries in the Global South.
The book argues that contemporary political systems are inadequate in addressing the issue, pointing out that political discourse has shifted too much toward individual moral reckoning as opposed to systemic, group action. According to Ghosh, the self-interested nation-states that make up the current global political structure are essentially unable to coordinate the required worldwide response. He points out that the planet just cannot support the same high-consumption, resource-intensive lifestyle, challenging the Western-promoted idea that all countries can and should strive for it. He points to figures like Gandhi as having provided an alternate, low-carbon path that was ultimately rejecte show less
He contends that the bourgeois experience is the foundation of the modern novel, which emphasizes linear time, individual moral journeys, and the predictable rhythms of everyday life. Climate events (such as superstorms or sharp sea level rise) are abrupt, extreme, and collective; they just seem too unlikely or "unrealistic" for the prevailing literary genre. According to Ghosh, this emphasis on the individual has led to a more widespread cultural exile of the show more concept of the collective, which is exactly what is required to solve a collective problem such as global warming.
Ghosh examines the historical factors that contributed to the current crisis, highlighting the ways in which colonialism, empire, and the emergence of the carbon economy are all intertwined. The book emphasizes that Asia, with its population and rapid industrialization, is central to both the causes and potential solutions of the climate crisis, but also faces the most devastating human consequences. He draws attention to the historical injustice that allowed the West to develop through carbon-intensive industrialization while limiting similar paths for countries in the Global South.
The book argues that contemporary political systems are inadequate in addressing the issue, pointing out that political discourse has shifted too much toward individual moral reckoning as opposed to systemic, group action. According to Ghosh, the self-interested nation-states that make up the current global political structure are essentially unable to coordinate the required worldwide response. He points out that the planet just cannot support the same high-consumption, resource-intensive lifestyle, challenging the Western-promoted idea that all countries can and should strive for it. He points to figures like Gandhi as having provided an alternate, low-carbon path that was ultimately rejecte show less
I have been lamenting the lack of novels about climate change for a long time, so was delighted to see that Amitav Ghosh had written a book on the subject. Although the reasons for this deficiency in modern literature are the central enquiry of ‘The Great Derangement’, there is a great deal more to it than that. Ghosh advances a resolutely Asian-centric perspective on climate change, which is refreshingly different from the US and European narratives that dominate climate change writing. As he points out, this dominance is not only because the US and Europe have been disproportionately responsible for greenhouse gas emissions; anglophone countries are home to most of the climate change deniers and the climate scientists. Yet, as he show more points out, the extreme weather events that are becoming more frequent and severe due to climate change have a much greater impact in Asia. Ghosh illustrates this with the example of Mumbai’s vulnerability to cyclones and storm surges.
Ghosh’s thesis about the lack of climate change novels has multiple overlapping facets. One concerns the ‘partitioning’ of nature from culture, a second the separation of science fiction from literary fiction, a third the centring of ‘human consciousness, agency and identity’ in the arts. The latter point is developed specifically with regard to modern novels, which according to John Updike must involve ‘individual moral adventure’. As Ghosh explains, this emphasis on individual interiority over community and disregard for nature is heavily linked to Western political economy more generally. It doesn’t necessarily apply in Asia, although literature is becoming increasingly globalised. Like me, Ghosh finds so-called ‘cli-fi’ unsatisfactory and articulates why very neatly:
Ghosh’s analysis helped me to consolidate my own thoughts about those novels I have read that are concerned with climate change, few as they are. The good: [b:Flight Behaviour|15705026|Flight Behaviour|Barbara Kingsolver|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1345180767s/15705026.jpg|18945788] by Barbara Kingsolver, [b:The Rapture|6386076|The Rapture|Liz Jensen|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1320489290s/6386076.jpg|6574300] by Liz Jensen, and [b:The Carbon Diaries 2015|4935015|The Carbon Diaries 2015 (Carbon Diaries, #1)|Saci Lloyd|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1273722854s/4935015.jpg|5000676] and sequel by Saci Lloyd. All four extrapolate the effects of climate change in the near-present and how they alter people’s lives. Each is compelling, thought-provoking, distinctive, and narrated by a relatively vulnerable person (an under-educated woman in rural America; a social worker and her charge; a teenage girl). These novels are not about people who can buy themselves out of the effects of climate change, as current culture often seems to assume we all will.
The bad: [b:The Lamentations of Zeno|25893848|The Lamentations of Zeno|Ilija Trojanow|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1455505402s/25893848.jpg|17780593] by Ilija Trojanow and [b:Solar|7140754|Solar|Ian McEwan|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1320510358s/7140754.jpg|7404751] by Ian McEwan (which I couldn’t finish) are about middle aged men’s collapsing marriages and say nothing meaningful about the effects of climate change on anyone, let alone the vulnerable. They use it as set-dressing, perhaps to disguise the extreme conventionality and tedium of the actual plots. I felt tricked by both, as the blurbs led me to believe that they were novels about climate change.
The best climate change novel I’ve read is technically sci-fi as it’s set in the future: [b:New York 2140|29570143|New York 2140|Kim Stanley Robinson|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1471618737s/29570143.jpg|49898123] by Kim Stanley Robinson. What distinguishes it from cli-fi is both its systematic world-building, continuity with the present, and refusal to treat climate change as hopeless. The plot concerns a diverse group of people who live in the same block of flats and co-operate to fight against structural neoliberal forces, rather than an insular group saving only themselves from apocalyptic collapse. The main character is a city damaged but not destroyed by sea level rise. Not only does [b:New York 2140|29570143|New York 2140|Kim Stanley Robinson|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1471618737s/29570143.jpg|49898123] portray daily life in a climate changed world rather than using it a generic disaster background (cf [b:The Water Knife|23209924|The Water Knife|Paolo Bacigalupi|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1411059576s/23209924.jpg|25129883]), but it demonstrates that there is hope for improvement. I wish more literary or science fiction did this! I fear that ‘speculative’ fiction, anything not concerned exclusively with the emotional lives of middle class Western families, is increasingly getting pushed onto the sci-fi (or crime/thriller) shelves. Yet the current conventions of sci-fi favour thriller plots centred on individual survival and/or futuristic settings with little applicability to the present day.
In addition to lamenting the lack of climate change-centric fiction, Ghosh presents a very interesting angle on responsibility for climate change. He argues that it is capitalism and imperialism are of equal importance and that ‘while [they] are certainly dual aspects of a single reality, the relationship between them is not, and has never been, a simple one’. I found this very thought-provoking as I, admittedly, have always blamed capitalism for climate change and considered imperialism to be one of capitalism’s especially vicious manifestations. Although a detailed history of empire and capital’s entwined links to industrialisation and fossil fuel based economies would take up a much longer book than this concise one, Ghosh summarises his point convincingly in India’s case. It was imperialism that dictated the nature and tempo of India’s engagement with global capitalism, and thus the trajectory of its carbon emissions. These particular chapters reminded me of my impatience for the sequel to [b:Fossil Capital: The Rise of Steam Power and the Roots of Global Warming|25614450|Fossil Capital The Rise of Steam Power and the Roots of Global Warming|Andreas Malm|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1449996772s/25614450.jpg|44301257] by Andreas Malm, likely to be titled ‘Fossil Empire’, which is expected to explain how coal-based industrialisation came to be exported from Britain to the world.
Amitav Ghosh is an articulate, wise, and incisive writer and this book repaid careful reading. Among his analyses are some notable comments on politics:
This reminded me of the current drive for more inclusive characters in fiction, because a wider range of people wish to see themselves represented. I am very sympathetic to this desire, however personally I am much more eager for novels about climate change than novels in which people like me are represented. As things stand, there are hardly any of either. Ideally I’d like both, but to me ignoring the existential threat to humanity’s survival is a more immediate issue, especially as it is the vulnerable and underrepresented that will suffer most as a consequence of climate change. And the two desires are the very opposite of mutually exclusive; the wealthy, white, able, cis, heterosexual men of this world are most likely to be able to avoid confronting climate change. (This was part of the reason why [b:The Lamentations of Zeno|25893848|The Lamentations of Zeno|Ilija Trojanow|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1455505402s/25893848.jpg|17780593] and [b:Solar|7140754|Solar|Ian McEwan|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1320510358s/7140754.jpg|7404751] proved so disappointing - they centred on men who suffered none of its effects and could thus waste all their energy on extramarital affairs.) It also occurs to me that during the Cold War nuclear destruction was not as rare and exceptional a topic for fiction as climate change is today.
Returning to politics, Ghosh makes this specific point which echoes [b:Why We Disagree about Climate Change: Understanding Controversy, Inaction and Opportunity|6442472|Why We Disagree about Climate Change Understanding Controversy, Inaction and Opportunity|Mike Hulme|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1348668160s/6442472.jpg|6632438], if I recall correctly:
By comparing the Pope’s encyclical on climate change with the 2016 Paris Agreement, Ghosh then demonstrates that this morality truly is a mere residue. What power can it command against the weight and complexity of the carbon economy? Towards the end of the book, Ghosh turns to the arena in which climate change’s seriousness is not contested: the military-security establishment. This makes for an unsurprisingly downbeat ending, concerned as it is with ‘the politics of the armed lifeboat’. Nonetheless, I have read more depressing and much less thoughtful books about climate change. The impact of this one is disproportionate to its short length and I hope it will spur further discussion on the treatment of climate change in fiction. Novelists don’t necessarily have a duty to write about issues of contemporary concern, but why wouldn’t they? Surely there is more inspiration to be found in drought-induced migrations, extreme weather events, and eroding coastlines than the tired topic of marital difficulties? It isn't as if there is binary choice between human stories and those concerned with nature; that dichotomy has been fundamentally undermined by the advent of the Anthropocene. Where are the novels that explore how people feel about climate change? The ambivalent, paradoxical, fatalistic, confused, and frightened emotions evoked by something so much larger than our minds can easily encompass deserve analysis by gifted novelists, and soon. show less
Ghosh’s thesis about the lack of climate change novels has multiple overlapping facets. One concerns the ‘partitioning’ of nature from culture, a second the separation of science fiction from literary fiction, a third the centring of ‘human consciousness, agency and identity’ in the arts. The latter point is developed specifically with regard to modern novels, which according to John Updike must involve ‘individual moral adventure’. As Ghosh explains, this emphasis on individual interiority over community and disregard for nature is heavily linked to Western political economy more generally. It doesn’t necessarily apply in Asia, although literature is becoming increasingly globalised. Like me, Ghosh finds so-called ‘cli-fi’ unsatisfactory and articulates why very neatly:
But cli-fi is made up of disaster stories set in the future, and that, to me, is exactly the rub. The future is but one aspect of the age of human-induced global warming: it also includes the recent past and, most significantly, the present. [...]
[Climate change] is precisely not an imagined ‘other’ world apart from ours; nor is it located in another ‘time’ or ‘dimension’. By no means are the events of the era of global warming the stuff of wonder tales; yet it is also true that in relation to what we think of as normal now, they are in many ways uncanny; and they have indeed opened a doorway into what we might call a ‘spirit world’ - a universe animated by non-human voices.
Ghosh’s analysis helped me to consolidate my own thoughts about those novels I have read that are concerned with climate change, few as they are. The good: [b:Flight Behaviour|15705026|Flight Behaviour|Barbara Kingsolver|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1345180767s/15705026.jpg|18945788] by Barbara Kingsolver, [b:The Rapture|6386076|The Rapture|Liz Jensen|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1320489290s/6386076.jpg|6574300] by Liz Jensen, and [b:The Carbon Diaries 2015|4935015|The Carbon Diaries 2015 (Carbon Diaries, #1)|Saci Lloyd|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1273722854s/4935015.jpg|5000676] and sequel by Saci Lloyd. All four extrapolate the effects of climate change in the near-present and how they alter people’s lives. Each is compelling, thought-provoking, distinctive, and narrated by a relatively vulnerable person (an under-educated woman in rural America; a social worker and her charge; a teenage girl). These novels are not about people who can buy themselves out of the effects of climate change, as current culture often seems to assume we all will.
The bad: [b:The Lamentations of Zeno|25893848|The Lamentations of Zeno|Ilija Trojanow|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1455505402s/25893848.jpg|17780593] by Ilija Trojanow and [b:Solar|7140754|Solar|Ian McEwan|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1320510358s/7140754.jpg|7404751] by Ian McEwan (which I couldn’t finish) are about middle aged men’s collapsing marriages and say nothing meaningful about the effects of climate change on anyone, let alone the vulnerable. They use it as set-dressing, perhaps to disguise the extreme conventionality and tedium of the actual plots. I felt tricked by both, as the blurbs led me to believe that they were novels about climate change.
The best climate change novel I’ve read is technically sci-fi as it’s set in the future: [b:New York 2140|29570143|New York 2140|Kim Stanley Robinson|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1471618737s/29570143.jpg|49898123] by Kim Stanley Robinson. What distinguishes it from cli-fi is both its systematic world-building, continuity with the present, and refusal to treat climate change as hopeless. The plot concerns a diverse group of people who live in the same block of flats and co-operate to fight against structural neoliberal forces, rather than an insular group saving only themselves from apocalyptic collapse. The main character is a city damaged but not destroyed by sea level rise. Not only does [b:New York 2140|29570143|New York 2140|Kim Stanley Robinson|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1471618737s/29570143.jpg|49898123] portray daily life in a climate changed world rather than using it a generic disaster background (cf [b:The Water Knife|23209924|The Water Knife|Paolo Bacigalupi|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1411059576s/23209924.jpg|25129883]), but it demonstrates that there is hope for improvement. I wish more literary or science fiction did this! I fear that ‘speculative’ fiction, anything not concerned exclusively with the emotional lives of middle class Western families, is increasingly getting pushed onto the sci-fi (or crime/thriller) shelves. Yet the current conventions of sci-fi favour thriller plots centred on individual survival and/or futuristic settings with little applicability to the present day.
In addition to lamenting the lack of climate change-centric fiction, Ghosh presents a very interesting angle on responsibility for climate change. He argues that it is capitalism and imperialism are of equal importance and that ‘while [they] are certainly dual aspects of a single reality, the relationship between them is not, and has never been, a simple one’. I found this very thought-provoking as I, admittedly, have always blamed capitalism for climate change and considered imperialism to be one of capitalism’s especially vicious manifestations. Although a detailed history of empire and capital’s entwined links to industrialisation and fossil fuel based economies would take up a much longer book than this concise one, Ghosh summarises his point convincingly in India’s case. It was imperialism that dictated the nature and tempo of India’s engagement with global capitalism, and thus the trajectory of its carbon emissions. These particular chapters reminded me of my impatience for the sequel to [b:Fossil Capital: The Rise of Steam Power and the Roots of Global Warming|25614450|Fossil Capital The Rise of Steam Power and the Roots of Global Warming|Andreas Malm|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1449996772s/25614450.jpg|44301257] by Andreas Malm, likely to be titled ‘Fossil Empire’, which is expected to explain how coal-based industrialisation came to be exported from Britain to the world.
Amitav Ghosh is an articulate, wise, and incisive writer and this book repaid careful reading. Among his analyses are some notable comments on politics:
...the public sphere, where politics is performed, has been largely emptied of content in terms of the exercise of power: as with fiction, it has become a forum for secular testimony, a baring-of-the-soul in the world-as-church. Politics, as thus practised, is primarily an exercise in personal expressiveness. Contemporary culture in all its aspects (including religious fundamentalisms of almost every variety) is pervaded by this expressivism, which is itself ‘to a significant degree a result of the strong role of Protestant Christianity in the making of the modern world’ [writes Roy Scranton].
This reminded me of the current drive for more inclusive characters in fiction, because a wider range of people wish to see themselves represented. I am very sympathetic to this desire, however personally I am much more eager for novels about climate change than novels in which people like me are represented. As things stand, there are hardly any of either. Ideally I’d like both, but to me ignoring the existential threat to humanity’s survival is a more immediate issue, especially as it is the vulnerable and underrepresented that will suffer most as a consequence of climate change. And the two desires are the very opposite of mutually exclusive; the wealthy, white, able, cis, heterosexual men of this world are most likely to be able to avoid confronting climate change. (This was part of the reason why [b:The Lamentations of Zeno|25893848|The Lamentations of Zeno|Ilija Trojanow|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1455505402s/25893848.jpg|17780593] and [b:Solar|7140754|Solar|Ian McEwan|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1320510358s/7140754.jpg|7404751] proved so disappointing - they centred on men who suffered none of its effects and could thus waste all their energy on extramarital affairs.) It also occurs to me that during the Cold War nuclear destruction was not as rare and exceptional a topic for fiction as climate change is today.
Returning to politics, Ghosh makes this specific point which echoes [b:Why We Disagree about Climate Change: Understanding Controversy, Inaction and Opportunity|6442472|Why We Disagree about Climate Change Understanding Controversy, Inaction and Opportunity|Mike Hulme|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1348668160s/6442472.jpg|6632438], if I recall correctly:
The public politics of climate change is itself an illustration of ways in which the moral-political can produce paralysis. Of late, many activists and concerned people have begun to frame climate change as a ‘moral issue’. This has become almost a plea of last resort, appeals of many other kinds having failed to produce concerted action on climate change. So, in an ironic twist, the individual conscience is now increasingly seen as the battleground of choice for a conflict that is self-evidently a problem of the global commons, requiring collective action: it is as if every other resource of democratic governance had been exhausted, leaving this residue - the moral.
By comparing the Pope’s encyclical on climate change with the 2016 Paris Agreement, Ghosh then demonstrates that this morality truly is a mere residue. What power can it command against the weight and complexity of the carbon economy? Towards the end of the book, Ghosh turns to the arena in which climate change’s seriousness is not contested: the military-security establishment. This makes for an unsurprisingly downbeat ending, concerned as it is with ‘the politics of the armed lifeboat’. Nonetheless, I have read more depressing and much less thoughtful books about climate change. The impact of this one is disproportionate to its short length and I hope it will spur further discussion on the treatment of climate change in fiction. Novelists don’t necessarily have a duty to write about issues of contemporary concern, but why wouldn’t they? Surely there is more inspiration to be found in drought-induced migrations, extreme weather events, and eroding coastlines than the tired topic of marital difficulties? It isn't as if there is binary choice between human stories and those concerned with nature; that dichotomy has been fundamentally undermined by the advent of the Anthropocene. Where are the novels that explore how people feel about climate change? The ambivalent, paradoxical, fatalistic, confused, and frightened emotions evoked by something so much larger than our minds can easily encompass deserve analysis by gifted novelists, and soon. show less
This was my second read, and it did not eliminate the problems I had on the first. First, yes, we are, globally, deranged. Some more than others. I do not think that Ghosh's solution to return to religion as a source for climate action, and an embodied understanding of the nonhuman world, however, is going to work out in the way he hopes (the pope's Laudato si notwithstanding). Ghosh is far to sweeping in his conclusions about rational thinking versus religious (or extra-rational) thinking here.
My criticisms are shared by many other commentators, namely that while Ghosh is strong on the history of Asia and right to criticize mainstream (i.e., non-speculative fiction) for its neglect of climate change as a central theme, his indictment show more of the realist novel as totally absorbed in John Updike's "individual moral adventure" as bourgeoisie self-indulgence (consider the source) is far too sweeping a generalization. This suggests that either Ghosh's reading scope is quite limited, or that he fails to read carefully. Many "realist" novelists from the past two centuries engage with nature in ways that anticipate environmentalist and global warming concerns--the signs are there to see, and it is the failure to read signs that is the real issue. Mary Barton describes the pollution of the River Irk in industrial Manchester in Mary Barton; Moby Dick is famous for its cataloguing of cetaceans; Heart of Darkness is, implicitly, about the slaughter of millions of elephants. Countless novels detail the gloomy fog over London that was the result, it is now well-known, of particulate matter in the atmosphere due to burning fossil fuels. Scores of academic scholars have already written about these issues. The problem is not with the realist novel, but with the reader. Ghosh has walked back from his argument since, and his new novel, Gun Island, attempts to rectify the situation by explicitly dealing with climate change as a theme. I'm currently reading that novel. show less
My criticisms are shared by many other commentators, namely that while Ghosh is strong on the history of Asia and right to criticize mainstream (i.e., non-speculative fiction) for its neglect of climate change as a central theme, his indictment show more of the realist novel as totally absorbed in John Updike's "individual moral adventure" as bourgeoisie self-indulgence (consider the source) is far too sweeping a generalization. This suggests that either Ghosh's reading scope is quite limited, or that he fails to read carefully. Many "realist" novelists from the past two centuries engage with nature in ways that anticipate environmentalist and global warming concerns--the signs are there to see, and it is the failure to read signs that is the real issue. Mary Barton describes the pollution of the River Irk in industrial Manchester in Mary Barton; Moby Dick is famous for its cataloguing of cetaceans; Heart of Darkness is, implicitly, about the slaughter of millions of elephants. Countless novels detail the gloomy fog over London that was the result, it is now well-known, of particulate matter in the atmosphere due to burning fossil fuels. Scores of academic scholars have already written about these issues. The problem is not with the realist novel, but with the reader. Ghosh has walked back from his argument since, and his new novel, Gun Island, attempts to rectify the situation by explicitly dealing with climate change as a theme. I'm currently reading that novel. show less
The Great Derangement is Amitav Ghosh's attempt to understand why we make such terrible decisions when it comes to dealing with climate change. His thesis, if it can be summed up, is that both capitalism and colonialism created global inequities of power and wealth that would need to be dismantled for climate action to succeed, at least without compromising the freedom-and-progress narrative that legitimizes them.
I enjoyed the book greatly and his writing is beyond gorgeous, but I'm not entirely persuaded. I think, in sections, he is on to something: Part 1, dealing with literary fiction, which he suggests as having excluded the improbable as a valid subject for exploration and therefore is poorly equipped for dealing with an era in show more which the improbable has become a daily occurrence, was compelling. I couldn't help but think of counter-examples while I was writing ([a:David Mitchell|6538289|David Mitchell|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1409248688p2/6538289.jpg], [b:Fifteen Dogs|23129923|Fifteen Dogs|André Alexis|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1447727528s/23129923.jpg|42677741], [b:The Humans|16130537|The Humans|Matt Haig|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1353739654s/16130537.jpg|21955852], [b:Not Dark Yet|24796166|Not Dark Yet|Berit Ellingsen|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1429097911s/24796166.jpg|44432239], etc.) so I don't know if I think it's as universal as he states, but I do think there's truth to the claim that literary fiction deals so closely with daily minutiae and interior states that something like a hundred-year-storm or drought would be difficult to turn into a literary work.
But then Part 3, in which he deals with politics, is not as compelling. His analysis of global politics and inequities I think is quite accurate, but his inability to see activism on behalf of identities as being grounded in collectives rather than the individual person was frankly strange (there's a lot of women, Ghosh).
[b:Living in Denial: Climate Change, Emotions, and Everyday Life|10300309|Living in Denial Climate Change, Emotions, and Everyday Life|Kari Marie Norgaard|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1367782919s/10300309.jpg|15202275] and [b:Don't Even Think About It: Why Our Brains Are Wired to Ignore Climate Change|18594475|Don't Even Think About It Why Our Brains Are Wired to Ignore Climate Change|George Marshall|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1405300995s/18594475.jpg|26340874] were both better, more scientific, and more quantitative explorations of personal and societal (rather than economic) climate denialism, and made more compelling overall arguments. That said, Ghosh's critiques of western/american exceptionalism and the arguments that give their empires legitimacy was fantastic and he made a lot of excellent points. Maybe someone else can collect the data in support of his arguments. show less
I enjoyed the book greatly and his writing is beyond gorgeous, but I'm not entirely persuaded. I think, in sections, he is on to something: Part 1, dealing with literary fiction, which he suggests as having excluded the improbable as a valid subject for exploration and therefore is poorly equipped for dealing with an era in show more which the improbable has become a daily occurrence, was compelling. I couldn't help but think of counter-examples while I was writing ([a:David Mitchell|6538289|David Mitchell|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1409248688p2/6538289.jpg], [b:Fifteen Dogs|23129923|Fifteen Dogs|André Alexis|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1447727528s/23129923.jpg|42677741], [b:The Humans|16130537|The Humans|Matt Haig|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1353739654s/16130537.jpg|21955852], [b:Not Dark Yet|24796166|Not Dark Yet|Berit Ellingsen|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1429097911s/24796166.jpg|44432239], etc.) so I don't know if I think it's as universal as he states, but I do think there's truth to the claim that literary fiction deals so closely with daily minutiae and interior states that something like a hundred-year-storm or drought would be difficult to turn into a literary work.
But then Part 3, in which he deals with politics, is not as compelling. His analysis of global politics and inequities I think is quite accurate, but his inability to see activism on behalf of identities as being grounded in collectives rather than the individual person was frankly strange (there's a lot of women, Ghosh).
[b:Living in Denial: Climate Change, Emotions, and Everyday Life|10300309|Living in Denial Climate Change, Emotions, and Everyday Life|Kari Marie Norgaard|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1367782919s/10300309.jpg|15202275] and [b:Don't Even Think About It: Why Our Brains Are Wired to Ignore Climate Change|18594475|Don't Even Think About It Why Our Brains Are Wired to Ignore Climate Change|George Marshall|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1405300995s/18594475.jpg|26340874] were both better, more scientific, and more quantitative explorations of personal and societal (rather than economic) climate denialism, and made more compelling overall arguments. That said, Ghosh's critiques of western/american exceptionalism and the arguments that give their empires legitimacy was fantastic and he made a lot of excellent points. Maybe someone else can collect the data in support of his arguments. show less
First essay far and away the best, at least if you are thirsting for relevant literary theory in the age of global warming, as I am. The final, "political" essay the weakest, for anyone who has already been jumping up and down in front of buildings shouting about the issue for some time, anyway. It's all stuff we already know.
It was all interesting until the author realized he had no solutions for the problems he presented and punted to religion. More than punting, he gushed over Pope Francis and claimed religious groups would save us. Are those the religious groups that fight against women's rights? LGBT+ rights? Appealing to a Pope who is complicit with child sexual abuse, among other things, is disgusting. If you read it, the first part gives you some things to think about, which is why it still gets three stars. As I come to my senses, I will likely make it a two. Though my conscious is telling me it should be a 1 just for this stupid stance.
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Born in Calcutta, and spent his childhood in Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and Northern India. He studied in Delhi, Oxford, and Egypt and taught at various Indian and American universities. Author of a travel book and three acclaimed novels. Ghosh has also written for GRANTA, THE NEW YORKER, THE NEW YORK TIMES, and THE OBSERVER. He lives in New York City show more with his wife and two children. (Publisher Provided) Amitav Ghosh was born in Calcutta, India on July 11, 1956. He studied in Delhi, Oxford and Alexandria. His first book, The Circle of Reason, won France's Prix Médicis. He has won several other awards including the Sahitya Akademi Award and the Ananda Puraskar for The Shadow Lines, the Arthur C. Clarke award for The Calcutta Chromosome, and the Crossword Book Prize for The Hungry Tide and Sea of Poppies. His other works include In an Antique Land, Dancing in Cambodia, The Glass Palace, and River of Smoke. In 2007, he was awarded the Padma Shri, one of India's highest honors, by the President of India. He made the New Zealand Best Seller List in 2015 with his title Flood of Fire. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
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Common Knowledge
- Canonical title
- The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable
- Original title
- The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable
- Original publication date
- 2016
- Dedication
- FOR MUKUL KESAVAN
In memory of the 1978 tornado - First words
- Who can forget those moments when something that seems inanimate turns out to be vitally, even dangerously alive?
- Last words
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)I would like to believe that out of this struggle will be born a generation that will be able to look upon the world with clearer eyes than those that preceded it; that they will be able to transcend the isolation in which humanity was entrapped in the time of its derangement; that they will rediscover their kinship with other beings, and that this vision, at once new and ancient, will find expression in the transformed and renewed art and literature.
- Blurbers
- Klein, Naomi
- Original language
- English
Classifications
- Genres
- Literature Studies and Criticism, Science & Nature, Nonfiction
- DDC/MDS
- 809.9336 — Literature & rhetoric Literature, rhetoric & criticism History, description, critical appraisal of more than two literatures Literature displaying specific features, miscellaneous writings Literature displaying other aspects Literature dealing with specific themes and subjects Physical and natural phenomena
- LCC
- PN56 .C612 .G48 — Language and Literature Literature (General) Literature (General) Theory. Philosophy. Esthetics
- BISAC
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- 632
- Popularity
- 45,975
- Reviews
- 16
- Rating
- (4.01)
- Languages
- 6 — English, French, German, Italian, Swedish, Turkish
- Media
- Paper, Audiobook, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 21
- ASINs
- 5
