Malcolm Sen
University of Massachusetts Amherst, English, Faculty Member
- Ecocriticism, Irish Studies, World Literatures, Postcolonial Theory, Subaltern Studies, South Asian Literature, and 11 morePostcolonial Ecocriticism, Anthropocene, Environmental Humanities, Science Fiction, Neoliberalism, Futurity, Climate Politics, Irish Literature, Climate Change, Postcolonial Studies, and Environmental Studiesedit
Trinity College Dublin, Ireland Taylor and Francis RJPW_A_427524.sgm 10.1080/17449850903273507 Journal of Postcolonial Writing 1744-9855 (print)/1744-9863 (online) Original Article 2009Taylor & Francis 45000000December 2009 Dr... more
Trinity College Dublin, Ireland Taylor and Francis RJPW_A_427524.sgm 10.1080/17449850903273507 Journal of Postcolonial Writing 1744-9855 (print)/1744-9863 (online) Original Article 2009Taylor & Francis 45000000December 2009 Dr MalcolmSen malcolmsen@gmail.com In current ...
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Practice dictates that books such as this one should begin with ruminations on Irish literary culture's special affinity with the natural world. We could certainly begin by noting Gaelic culture's environmental... more
Practice dictates that books such as this one should begin with ruminations on Irish literary culture's special affinity with the natural world. We could certainly begin by noting Gaelic culture's environmental nomenclature, or the Celtic Revival's pastoralist celebrations, or the long historical tradition of dinnseanchas (lore of places) narratives. But such mediations are often built on ideological certainties and nationalist exceptionalisms; they also sometimes speak of uncomplicated relationships between nature and culture, segregating them into distinct categories, as if one is not integrally a part of the other. The contemporary moment shifts such paradigms in no uncertain terms. Here are some of the reasons why: 2019 marked the end of the warmest decade since the mid-nineteenth century; from the time when meteorological data began to be recorded, July 2019 was the hottest month on Earth; and it was also the year in which a new national record of 46˚C was set in France. 1 In the same year India had the longest heatwave in its history with temperatures soaring to 50.55˚C. 2 The subcontinent simultaneously witnessed the wettest monsoon in recorded history up to that point; the monsoon resulted in 1,500 deaths. The year 2019 posed worrisome characteristics of climate change. 3 Between 2015 and 2020, extreme heatwaves killed thousands of people across the world and rapidly spreading mega forest fires decimated land and communities in the western United States and Australia. Equally devastating were the severe water-shortages across countries and the alarming permafrost melt in the Arctic, making legible the aqueous oxymoron of planetary climate chaos: too little and too much water.
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This editorial review essay looks at the culture of publishing and reviewing books about South Asia in Britain in the interwar period.
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This essay explores the environmental aesthetic of Romesh Gunesekara's Reef and analyses its unique commentary on the conflation of political and ecological violence in Sri Lanka. The essay examines the ways in which aesthetic works... more
This essay explores the environmental aesthetic of Romesh Gunesekara's Reef and analyses its unique commentary on the conflation of political and ecological violence in Sri Lanka. The essay examines the ways in which aesthetic works circumscribe the temporal dislocation and conceptual difficulties attributed to slowly evolving environmental degradation. Reef is a novel about the ‘process’ of environmental damage rather than a direct engagement with the causality of such irreversible transformation. Its reticence about a scopic elaboration of environmental destruction mirrors the political and geographical ‘invisibility’ of the despoilation of Sri Lanka's coral reefs.
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Practice dictates that books such as this one should begin with ruminations on Irish literary culture's special affinity with the natural world. We could certainly begin by noting Gaelic culture's environmental nomenclature, or the Celtic... more
Practice dictates that books such as this one should begin with ruminations on Irish literary culture's special affinity with the natural world. We could certainly begin by noting Gaelic culture's environmental nomenclature, or the Celtic Revival's pastoralist celebrations, or the long historical tradition of dinnseanchas (lore of places) narratives. But such mediations are often built on ideological certainties and nationalist exceptionalisms; they also sometimes speak of uncomplicated relationships between nature and culture, segregating them into distinct categories, as if one is not integrally a part of the other. The contemporary moment shifts such paradigms in no uncertain terms. Here are some of the reasons why: 2019 marked the end of the warmest decade since the mid-nineteenth century; from the time when meteorological data began to be recorded, July 2019 was the hottest month on Earth; and it was also the year in which a new national record of 46˚C was set in France. 1 In the same year India had the longest heatwave in its history with temperatures soaring to 50.55˚C. 2 The subcontinent simultaneously witnessed the wettest monsoon in recorded history up to that point; the monsoon resulted in 1,500 deaths. The year 2019 posed worrisome characteristics of climate change. 3 Between 2015 and 2020, extreme heatwaves killed thousands of people across the world and rapidly spreading mega forest fires decimated land and communities in the western United States and Australia. Equally devastating were the severe water-shortages across countries and the alarming permafrost melt in the Arctic, making legible the aqueous oxymoron of planetary climate chaos: too little and too much water.
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How did James Joyce portray the ‘Orient’ in his works? The question may initially seem simplistic if we think of Ulysses. It is well known that not only did the author choose a Jewish man of Eastern European origins as the central... more
How did James Joyce portray the ‘Orient’ in his works? The question may initially seem simplistic if we think of Ulysses. It is well known that not only did the author choose a Jewish man of Eastern European origins as the central character of the book but that he also made multiple references to Turkey, India, China, and other Eastern nations in it. This in turn might suggest that Joyce’s portrayal of the Orient is intricately woven with the wider themes of Ulysses: homecoming, history, language and literature, and is delimiting as a category to be analyzed in isolation. To an extent such a reading has some truth behind it. Joyce’s innovative narrative technique displays cultural heterogeneity even as it reconciles major binaries like Occidental and Oriental civilizations: ‘Jewgreek is greekjew. Extremes meet’ (U 15.2097-8). Joyce’s Orient, at least in Ulysses, could be construed as nothing more than a useful trope. The Orient in such analyses may initially be seen as a signifier of difference which ultimately seeks resolution in an acknowledgement of possible similarity through a ‘tolerant cosmopolitanism’. In the process, not only Jewishness but also the more distant cultures of the Indians and the Chinese may be harnessed.1 Often this democratic spirit of extremes reconciling is hidden behind larger themes. For example, Stephen Dedalus in ‘Proteus’ explicitly correlates the Orient with the Garden of Eden. Yet his reflections overall seem to be existential in import: ‘Spouse and helpmate of Adam Kadmon: Heva, naked Eve. She had no navel. Gaze. Belly without blemish, bulging big, a buckler of taut vellum, no, whiteheaped corn, orient and immortal, standing from everlasting to everlasting’ (U 3.41-4). However, Stephen’s commentary on the cyclic repetition of existence combining the motifs of birth and death, beginning and end, also enunciates an overt Orientalizing of existence; the Orient itself stands as a synonym for
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Dragons, being imaginary creatures, escape the umbra of extinction shadowing multiple species on earth today. We can trace their lineage from Homer (at least in the European tradition) to the personal mount of of Daenerys Targaryen,... more
Dragons, being imaginary creatures, escape the umbra of extinction shadowing multiple species on earth today. We can trace their lineage from Homer (at least in the European tradition) to the personal mount of of Daenerys Targaryen, Drogon, in Game of Thrones; or, from Beowulf to J. R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit. Because they are textual creatures, dragons display a re-silience and capacity to mutate that makes them eloquent ontological signifiers in mythic narratives, as motifs of epistemological uncertainty in folklore and cultural memory, and as embodiments of extra-human/pre-modern intrusions in the workings of history. Whereas Chinese dragons are often beneficial to the human species, European variants (including those found in Celtic folklore) are not. Dragons spell death and destruction; they demand human sacrifices, as in the legend of St. George. Their appearance suggests power and menace of extraordinary dimensions, as in Lewis Carroll’s Jabberwock. (The Jabber-wock was first ...
Financial speculation and capitalist accumulation leave spatial and temporal traces. When the waves of the global financial collapse reached Ireland and culminated in the extreme measure of the comprehensive state guarantee, the receding... more
Financial speculation and capitalist accumulation leave spatial and temporal traces. When the waves of the global financial collapse reached Ireland and culminated in the extreme measure of the comprehensive state guarantee, the receding excesses of the Celtic Tiger revealed a landscape that was gentrified and alienating. The spectrality of the ghost estates of Ireland became a synecdochal signifier of Ireland's ignominious fall from the podium of neoliberal grace and the focus of both popular lament and critical intervention. This essay provides a deferred assessment of the uncanniness of dwelling in post-Celtic Tiger Ireland by concentrating on the socioecological fallout of ruins and the longterm casualties of land speculation: that is, transformations of landscape into real estate, and of place into property. Reading Ireland's ghost estates as ‘imperial formations’ that ‘register the ongoing quality of processes of decimation, displacement, and reclamation’ – to use Ann ...
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Amartya Sen and Jene Dreze, An Uncertain Glory: India and its Contradictions
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Arundhati Roy, Listening to Grasshoppers: Field Notes on Democracy (London: Hamish Hamilton, 2009)
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Arvind Adiga, Between the Assassinations (London: Atlantic Books, 2009)
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Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, The Settlers Cookbook: A Memoir of Love, Migration and Food
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Fatima Bhutto, Songs of Blood and Sword (London: Jonathan Cape, 2010)
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V V Ganeshananthan, Love Marriage (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2008)
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Julia M Wright, Ireland, India and Nationalism in 19th Century Literature (Camb.: CUP, 2007)
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Every reader and scholar of Irish literature is familiar with its extensive genealogy of nature writing, and a ‘sense of place’ found across a great variety of texts. While not unique to Ireland such a rich heritage has produced some of... more
Every reader and scholar of Irish literature is familiar with its extensive genealogy of nature writing, and a ‘sense of place’ found across a great variety of texts. While not unique to Ireland such a rich heritage has produced some of the most enduring and exciting literary and cultural criticisms. However, given our contemporary concerns with environmental issues, of which climate change is one, literary and cultural narratives need to be re-read and re-energized to help us find a language that speaks to current existential anxieties. Unlike the literatures of, let’s say, South Asia, or the Pacific Islands, Irish literature has rarely been read through the urgent lenses offered by the environmental humanities. The ‘environmental humanities’ is an emergent discipline that draws upon cultural and scientific discourses to understand, critique and narrativize environmental issues. What is clear is that the humanities now needs to engage with the multi-scalar and interconnected complexities that define environmental realities. By analyzing texts, current, historical and projected events, and socio-political ecologies, the environmental humanities speaks directly to ‘ecological imperialism’, the financialization and nuclearization of the planet, capitalism’s deep collusion with environmental degradation and climate change and its exponential effects. Perhaps, most importantly, these lectures, which are not only aimed at a scholarly but also a wider audience, display the effect and affect of narrative that help us envision liveable futures. This podcast series hopes to produce some of the conceptual pathways that might bridge the narrative of climate change offered by climate scientists and economists, and the humanities’ deep engagement with the idea of narrative as something that allows conceptual leaps, produces historical, cultural and somatic effects.
The podcasts will be available soon!
The podcasts will be available soon!
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In this episode, Eamonn Ryan deliberates on the collective leap which individuals and nation states need to make for a sustainable, habitable future. He argues that individuals cannot be faced with moral choices about the environment on a... more
In this episode, Eamonn Ryan deliberates on the collective leap which individuals and nation states need to make for a sustainable, habitable future. He argues that individuals cannot be faced with moral choices about the environment on a daily basis. Instead, he indicates that it is through sound governance that environmental habits are nurtured effectively. Ryan also persuasively demonstrates the importance of everyday language and stories for an environmental consciousness. The task for the individual and the national collective is akin to the leap a salmon makes. A habitable future rests on going against the current of traditional and normative modes of behavior.
New modes of inquiry emerged in the last decade as the postcolonial paradigm, which largely defined Irish Studies in the 1990s, came under scrutiny. In particular, women's studies, ecocriticism, and queer theory have come to provide... more
New modes of inquiry emerged in the last decade as the postcolonial paradigm, which largely defined Irish Studies in the 1990s, came under scrutiny. In particular, women's studies, ecocriticism, and queer theory have come to provide complementary representations of labour and poverty in Ulysses which disintegrate category distinctions like human and nonhuman. This argument does not deny the influence of the metropolis, but it does suggest that the interaction with nonhuman others has just as great an impact on an urban novel like Ulysses as the ideologies of an urban intelligentsia. His conclusion is that the organs of the Gilbert schema, posited as symbolic of particular episodes in the novel, represent a union of human with nonhuman animal. To support this conclusion, he draws from his research on the Royal Zoological Society of Ireland, the body responsible for running Dublin Zoo in the Phoenix Park since 1831.
Will be available soon
Will be available soon
In this episode Sharae Deckard analyses the unprecedented commoditization of new ecological commons under neoliberal capitalism and reflects on the importance of environmental humanities approaches to historicize conceptions of... more
In this episode Sharae Deckard analyses the unprecedented commoditization of new ecological commons under neoliberal capitalism and reflects on the importance of environmental humanities approaches to historicize conceptions of environment and configurations of environment. Humanistic approaches challenge the functional economic calculus of profit and loss which broach ecological issues only in terms of cost-benefit analyses or hazard rather than ethics and politics, and encourage the sciences to incorporate historicized analysis of the complexity of social and cultural factors, into conceptions of earth systems and evolving technologies.
An Environmental Humanities conference, poetry reading, and book launch at NYU's Glucksman Ireland House, Saturday, October 8th.
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Oct. 8, 2016. Dúchas: Irish Landscapes, Environmental Legacies event at Glucksman Ireland House, NYU. Panel 1 (10:30-12pm) is Una Chaudhuri, Dale Jamieson, and Malcolm Sen, and will address the emerging field of Environmental Humanities,... more
Oct. 8, 2016. Dúchas: Irish Landscapes, Environmental Legacies event at Glucksman Ireland House, NYU. Panel 1 (10:30-12pm) is Una Chaudhuri, Dale Jamieson, and Malcolm Sen, and will address the emerging field of Environmental Humanities, and the humanities in the age of the Anthropocene. Panel 2 (Christine Cusick, Mary Burke, and Kelly Sullivan) will focus on Ireland’s Environmental legacy, with attention to Tim Robinson. Moya Cannon will give a poetry reading at 3pm. At 5:30, we will launch Unfolding Irish Landscapes.