Content area
Full Text
PostcolonialEcomticism: Literature, Animals, Environment. By Graham Huggan and Helen Tiffin. London: Routledge, 2010. 250 p. ISBN (pb): 978-0-415-34458-6, £20.99; (eb): 978-0-203-49817-0.
Reviewed by Travis Y Mason
It makes sense that the first critical introduction to postcolonial ecocriticism is a col- laborative effort by Graham Huggan and Helen Tiffin. Both authors have established influential profiles as postcolonial theorists whose work is recognized and cited interna- tionally, and both have been at the front of the nascent field of green postcolonialism. Huggan's "'Greening' Postcolonialism: Ecocritical Perspectives," published in 2004, ex- plicitly engages two distinctive fields and demonstrates how they relate in a cross-cultu- ral context, while Tiffin's "Unjust Relations: Post-Colonialism and the Species Bounda- ry" from 2001 brings concerns for nonhuman animals to bear on decades of culturally and socially minded work. Together, they edited a special "Green Postcolonialism" issue of Interventions in 2007 (which includes a contribution from Susie O'Brien, whose 2001 article "Articulating a World of Difference: Ecocriticism, Postcolonialism, and Globa- lization" is another foundational touchstone). Familiarity with this concise and highly relevant book from die new century's first decade should reveal few surprises.
The introduction identifies fraught tensions among "the burgeoning alliance between postcolonial and environmental studies," beginning with seemingly obvious congruence - empire and colonization have always affected people and land - and perceived division - postcolonialism is predominantly anthropocentric, and ecocriticism patently ecocen- tric. Reconciling this tension is not the purpose of this book; rather, a focus on how die tension plays out in historical, cultural (literary), ethical/political, and biological ways shapes the book's agenda. If the...