"Greening" Postcolonialism: Ecocritical Perspectives

The essay looks at possible areas of intersection between postcolonial criticism and ecocriticism, two relatively recent critical schools that, despite their obvious differences, share similar concerns with social justice and transformation. Via readings of three recent texts by Arundhati Roy, J. M. Coetzee, and Barbara Gowdy, the essay argues that postcolonial criticism and ecocriticism exist in part as mutual correctives: postcolonial criticism to the culture-blindness of certain strands of ecocriticism, and ecocriticism to the anthropocentric tendencies of postcolonial thought.