Room Number: TRS 1-075
Join the Meeting: https://ryerson.zoom.us/j/94358966538?pwd=ZlZTNEl4Tnh3L0NVWUQ4OGJCUWprZz09
Chair: Jill Planche (Toronto Metropolitan U)
Speakers:
Cheryl Lousley (Lakehead U), “History Lessons & Political Ecologies: Tsitsi Dangarembga’s Nervous Conditions and the Tragedy of the Commons”
Prateek Paul (Columbia U), “Explosion, Implosion, and Aftermath: COVID and the Commons During the Second Wave in India”
Moumita Roy (Jamia Millia Islamia U), “Green Thought in South Asia: Resisting Neo-Imperialism through Literature”
Paper Summaries:
Cheryl Lousley (Lakehead U), “History Lessons & Political Ecologies: Tsitsi Dangarembga’s Nervous Conditions and the Tragedy of the Commons”
Dangarembga’s 1989 novel Nervous Conditions offers critical insight into environment and development conversations, particularly Garrett Hardin’s discredited “tragedy of the commons” parable, when considered in relation to the 1986 Harare, Zimbabwe, public hearings of the World Commission on Environment and Development, whose 1987 report “Our Common Future” launched sustainable development.
Prateek Paul (Columbia U), “Explosion, Implosion, and Aftermath: COVID and the Commons During the Second Wave in India”
This paper aims to understand the tragedy of the (ruptured) commons in COVID-struck India. It argues that the second wave had a radical impact on one’s understanding of ownership of and access to—the two notions of ‘public’—and control over public spaces, resources and institutions in India.
Moumita Roy (Jamia Millia Islamia U), “Green Thought in South Asia: Resisting Neo-Imperialism through Literature”
The paper aims at exploring new writings in South Asia resisting neo-imperialist projects rupturing ecological balance with an urgency to revisit ecocritical thoughts under the postcolonial rubric. It revisits thinkers on ‘planetarity’ and postcolonial ecocriticism owing their allegiance to the global south to evoke an urgency at contesting ‘tragedy’, ‘trauma’ and ‘transition’ in times of pandemic.