Zitationsvorschlag
Lizenz (Kapitel)
Dieses Werk steht unter der Lizenz Creative Commons Namensnennung - Weitergabe unter gleichen Bedingungen 4.0 International.
Identifier (Buch)
Veröffentlicht
The Sixth Extinction and Postcolonial Literature: Dairy Production, Vulture Extinction, and Arundhati Roy’s The Ministry of Utmost Happiness
ABSTRACT This chapter reflects on the relationship between postcolonial literature and mass extinction. To do so, I begin by situating the current worldwide loss of biodiversity within the context of the wider planetary crisis of climate change. I then explicate the concepts of ‘extinction’ and ‘mass extinction’ before juxtaposing them both with the recent scientific development of the ‘Sixth Extinction’ thesis, which posits that we are living through a human-induced, or as I call it socially produced, mass extinction event. From here, the chapter turns to the Indian subcontinent, examining one local example of the Sixth Extinction in process: the rapid decline of India’s vulture species across the past three decades. Finally, the chapter ends with a close reading of Arundhati Roy’s The Ministry of Utmost Happiness (2017), a novel which begins with—and is thus framed by—this story of vulture extinction. I argue that Roy’s novel, while self-consciously electing to ‘notice’ the vultures’ passing, also casts doubt on the power of literary noticing as such, thus declining to valorize storytelling as a response to mass extinction.
KEYWORDS Arundhati Roy, postcolonial literature, the Sixth Extinction
