Ecospectrality - Haunting and Environmental Justice in Contemporary Anglophone Novels

List of contents

Acknowledgements

Introduction: Holding Open the Door of Haunting

Part 1: Materializing Environmental Threats


1. Urban Hauntings: On Ghosts and Garbage in GraceLand


2. Spectral Toxicity in Michelle Cliff's No Telephone to Heaven

Part 2: Materializing Environmental Knowledges


3. Haunted Histories, Animate Futures: Recovering Noongar Knowledge through
Kim Scott's That Deadman Dance


4. Mapping Modes of Inhabitance: Haunting, Homing, and the Cartographic
Imagination in Henrietta Rose-Innes's The Rock Alphabet


5. Life in the Graveyard: Architectures of Survival and Extinction in Arundhati
Roy's The Ministry of Utmost Happiness

Conclusion: Plotting Just Futures in the Company of Ghosts

Notes

Bibliography

About the author

Laura A. White is Associate Professor of English at Middle Tennessee State University, USA.

Summary

Along with humans and animals, ghosts populate the pages of contemporary Anglophone novels. Analysing novels from across the world—including Australia, Nigeria, South Africa, India, and Jamaica, this book explores how these ghosts can help readers to perceive difficult-to-visualise environmental threats and access marginalised environmental knowledge. Instead of prompting fear, these hauntings foster understanding across species and generations to enable inclusive formulations of environmental justice.

Drawing on the latest work in postcolonial ecocriticism, hauntology, and environmental philosophy and such literary texts as GraceLand, No Telephone to Heaven, The Rock Alphabet, and The Ministry of Utmost Happiness, Ecospectrality is an essential read for anyone working in the environmental humanities today.

Foreword

Explores how contemporary Anglophone writers - including from Africa, Australia, India and the Caribbean - use the figure of the ghost to grapple with issues of environmental justice and knowledge.

Product details

• Authors: Laura A White, Laura A. White
• Assisted by: Greg Garrard (Editor), Richard Kerridge (Editor)
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 31.12.2021
• EAN: 9781350243248
• ISBN: 978-1-350-24324-8
• No. of pages: 224
• Dimensions: 158 mm x 236 mm x 22 mm
• Series: Environmental Cultures
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > Linguistics and literary studies > General and comparative literary studies; LITERARY CRITICISM / Semiotics & Theory, LITERARY CRITICISM / Modern / 20th Century, Literary studies: from c 1900 -, Literary studies: post-colonial literature, Literary theory, Literary studies: c 1900 to c 2000, Literary studies: postcolonial literature