World Literature and Cultures of the Environment

Abstract

Cultures in the plural seek to foreground this multiplicity and heterogeneity of ecological systems, of environmental perceptions and experiences, and of representations of ecological processes and crises. This chapter shows that the Anthropocene concept has outlived its usefulness for environmental writing and research, whereas the paradigm of world literature may continue to thrive if it reconceives itself as “world justice literature”. It continues with colonialism, postcolonialism, and the Columbian Exchange, the enormous reshuffling of the Earth’s species that went along with the creation of global inequalities that shape the world politically, economically, and ecologically to this day, an interface that postcolonial ecocriticism has made great strides in exploring. Experimental and non-realist texts began to feature with greater frequency in ecocritical theory and practice. Ecocritics highlighted European colonialism as a crucial force that – often violently – transformed natural as well as social systems from the sixteenth century onward in ways that shaped perceptions of and literatures about nature.