The great derangement: climate change and the unthinkable

Amitav Ghosh has written a remarkable book that provides thought-provoking insights on the collective inability of writers, scholars and policy-makers to grapple with the global climate crisis. Ghosh notes that history has shown that nature, even in its ‘unpredictable’ form, was not always far removed from literature and politics. How, then, has the culture of narratives and politics rendered the interconnectedness of Gaia unthinkable? This is the central question explored by Ghosh in his book. Modernity and science, the author points out, have promoted cultures where instinctive awareness of the earth's unpredictability has been gradually displaced by the predictability of bourgeois life. According to Ghosh, nature and the unheard in modern narratives have been sidelined, while everyday bourgeois life has moved into the foreground. But he also argues that capitalism-centric narratives of the climate crisis overlook an important aspect of global warming: empire and imperialism. Empires' quest for power and security through mastery and conquest led to the building of cities near oceans. Coastline cities including Mumbai, Madras, New York, Singapore and Hong Kong—all brought into being through processes of colonization—are now among those that are most directly threatened by climate change. The colonial art of governmentality through coercive and protectionist measures ensured that colonizing countries had a strong hold over technologies, along with production and consumption of commodities, leading to global inequities. Capitalism and imperialism are dual aspects of the same reality, where authority and markets interact with each other in processes of wealth circulation.