Sounding Ecologies in Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things

This essay engages with the social, cultural, and environmental legacies of colonialism and globalization by investigating acoustic ecologies in Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things. It draws on sound studies, postcolonial ecocriticism, and new materialist perspectives to reveal an aesthetic that combines the act of listening with an environmental awareness in ways that transform matter into both the receptacle and the bearer of silenced indigenous voices. Countering ocularcentric paradigms, it shows that modernity is characterized as much by particular ideas about sound as it is by regimes of visuality and induces a more viscerally engaged, ecologically sensitive humanism.