糖心传媒

This year糖心传媒檚 Distinguished Visiting Humanist says humanists have a vital role in reframing the climate crisis as rooted in history and culture as much as technology and economics.

Essayist, novelist, and climate change activist听Amitav Ghosh will be on campus in April as the 糖心传媒糖心传媒檚 2021糖心传媒�22听.

糖心传媒淎mitav Ghosh糖心传媒檚 work is truly genre-defying,糖心传媒� says , an associate professor and the chair of the . 糖心传媒淚t employs the tools of fiction, anthropology, history, and philosophy to address the most pressing global concern of our times: the climate crisis of the Anthropocene.糖心传媒�

Born in Kolkata, Ghosh grew up in India, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka. He is the author of more than a dozen books, including the听award-winning novels听The Circle of Reason,听The Calcutta Chromosome,听The Hungry Tide, Sea of Poppies, and Gun Island,听as well as听the nonfiction books The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable and The Nutmeg糖心传媒檚 Curse: Parables for a Planet in Crisis.

His work has been translated into more than 30 languages听and his essays have appeared in听The New Yorker,听The New Republic, and听The New York Times. In 2019,听Foreign Policy听magazine named him one of the most important global thinkers of the preceding decade.

The 糖心传媒檚 annual Distinguished Visiting Humanist program糖心传媒攔eturning after a two-year hiatus due to COVID-19糖心传媒攂rings eminent scholars and public intellectuals to Rochester糖心传媒檚 River Campus to engage with students, faculty, staff, and community members.

Q&A with Amitav Ghosh

There糖心传媒檚 striking attention to historical and ethnographic detail in your fiction. How has your training as an anthropologist influenced your work as a novelist? What do you think about the relationship between historical nonfiction, literary fiction, and ethnographic writing?

Ghosh: I consider myself fortunate in having been exposed to many different forms of writing at different points in my life. I would say that my work as a journalist (which started with my first job and continued through many years of writing for The New Yorker) played a greater part in my career as a writer than anthropology or history. The attention to detail comes, I think, from a reporter糖心传媒檚 habit of taking notes, as much as from my training in anthropology and history. But at the end of the day, I am first and foremost a novelist. I am drawn to fiction for many reasons. One is that to me, since my childhood, this was the form that I loved best. I like telling stories. The other is that fiction allows you access to a more complete form of experience than any other form of writing, in that it gives you the possibility of imagining the inner lives of your characters. Also, you can make worlds.

In the last decade or so, the term听climate fiction, or 糖心传媒渃li fi,糖心传媒� has come to describe literature that tackles issues of climate change, even though such literature predates the term itself. While genre writing on climate change has emerged, you糖心传媒檝e argued that mainstream literary fiction has yet to engage with the climate crisis in a significant way. Can you tell us about your own turn to environmentalism generally糖心传媒攁nd to the climate crisis specifically糖心传媒攊n your writing?

Ghosh: I am not really a fan of this term, largely because I think it diminishes the magnitude of the planetary crisis. As Margaret Atwood famously said, 糖心传媒淚t糖心传媒檚 not just climate change, it糖心传媒檚 everything change.糖心传媒� So to limit our concerns to climate change is to defeat the purpose. I don糖心传媒檛 think we need a different genre to address the reality of what is happening in the world today. In fact, the very existence of such a genre suggests that climate change is something that is not occurring in the here and now.

In your 2016 work听The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable, you examine糖心传媒攁cross the domains of stories, history, and politics糖心传媒攐ur collective inability to understand the implications of climate change and to act accordingly. You conclude on a note of cautious optimism and hope. In the years since, the world has grappled with a听听, the COVID-19 pandemic, and now the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which some have called a 糖心传媒�.糖心传媒� What is your current outlook on humankind糖心传媒檚 ability to address the climate crisis through collective understanding and action?

Ghosh: I have long believed that it is impossible to understand the planetary crisis without taking geopolitics into account. It糖心传媒檚 been clear for a long time that there is a huge gap between the pieties that are regularly mouthed at COP [Conferences of the Parties] summits and the steps that are actually being taken by the nations of the world. Just consider that at affluent nations promised to contribute $100 billion to a fund to help poor countries deal with climate impacts. Not even a tenth of this has materialized in the years since. But in that same period those countries increased their defense spending by $1.5 trillion. In my last book, The Nutmeg糖心传媒檚 Curse, I wrote: 糖心传媒淭o look these facts in the face is to recognize that it is a grave error to imagine that the world is not preparing for the disrupted world of the future. It糖心传媒檚 just that it糖心传媒檚 not preparing by taking mitigatory measures or by reducing emissions: instead, it is preparing for war.糖心传媒� The truth of this is being borne out every day.

You糖心传媒檙e coming to the University of Rochester as the Distinguished Visiting Humanist. What role can or should education in the humanities and the humanistic social sciences play in addressing the climate change crisis?听

Ghosh: I think it糖心传媒檚 a tragedy that the humanities have allowed themselves to be marginalized in the discourse on the planetary crisis, which has come to be largely framed by science, technology, and economics. But in essence the crisis is deeply rooted in history, culture, and global geopolitics. It is vitally important for the humanities to reframe this discourse.

What are you reading?

Ghosh: I just read a really wonderful novel by a young British writer called Laline Paul. It糖心传媒檚 called Pod, and it糖心传媒檚 about a pod of whales. She succeeds splendidly in rising to what I believe to be the most important literary challenge of our time糖心传媒攔estoring voice and agency to other-than-human beings.

Read more