AFFECTIVE GEOGRAPHIES AND THE ANTHROPOCENE: Reading Shubhangi Swarup’s Latitudes of Longing

This paper is a critical reading of the affective and emotional geographies imagined in the "Islands" plot-line of Shubhangi Swarup’s novel Latitudes of Longing (2018). The paper argues that Swarup presents the case of a rethinking environmental aesthetics that conveys a deeper sense of sp...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of Dharma
Main Author: Jayagopalan, Gaana (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
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Published: Dharmaram College 2021
In: Journal of Dharma
Year: 2021, Volume: 46, Issue: 2, Pages: 165-182
Further subjects:B Ecocriticism
B Anthropocene
B affect studies
B ecological thought
B Shubhangi Swarup
B Latitudes of Longing
B emotional geographies
Online Access: Volltext (kostenfrei)
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Summary:This paper is a critical reading of the affective and emotional geographies imagined in the "Islands" plot-line of Shubhangi Swarup’s novel Latitudes of Longing (2018). The paper argues that Swarup presents the case of a rethinking environmental aesthetics that conveys a deeper sense of space, time, and place. By creating an ambient poetics to negotiate human and non-human interconnect­edness, the paper demonstrates the strength of novelistic traditions and their potential to generate an idea of affect that is transcorporeal - as one not located only in the site of the human body, instead, emanating from a more nuanced interconnectedness between the human and the non-human world. Informed by ‘affective ecocriticism’ and Zayin Cabot’s ‘multiple ontologies approach’ that generates ‘ecologies of participation,’ the paper closely reads the "Islands" section to establish how literary illustrations provide an instance to widen the horizons of environmental engagement and generate a narrative imagination that encompasses a larger ecosystem cutting across geological spacetimes in the Anthropocene. Swarup’s use of fiction is critically used to generate an ecoaesthetics that leads to a more informed ethical action towards recognizing the interconnectedness of living and non-living forms that create sustainable ecologies.
ISSN:0253-7222
Contains:Enthalten in: Journal of Dharma