The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable

Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2016

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 1, Chapters 1-9

Part 1, Chapters 10-18

Part 2

Part 3

Key Figures

Themes

Index of Terms

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

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Themes

Nonhuman Agency

Across all three sections of The Great Derangement, Ghosh reveals a world shaped as much by the agency of nonhuman actors as by humans. Throughout the book, Ghosh argues that nonhuman entities including plants, animals, landscapes, weather systems, and even the planet itself demonstrate the same “elements of agency and consciousness” as humans (63). Ghosh argues that nonhuman entities shape human behavior and alter their own behavior in response to the climate crisis. The nonhuman world is always communicating with humans, Ghosh argues, and humans must learn to listen. He contrasts this worldview with that of Enlightenment-era philosophers like René Descartes, who argued that only humans have intelligence, agency, and consciousness.

In The Great Derangement, Ghosh argues that the challenges of “the Anthropocene [have] forced us to recognize that there are other, fully aware eyes looking over our shoulders” and monitoring our response to the crisis (65). These “fully aware eyes” invite us to address the climate crisis in collaboration with the nonhuman world around us. His description of the Sundarban forest, which is often the site of deadly encounters between humans and tigers, offers a clear view of this mutual awareness: “[T]o look into the tiger’s eyes is to recognize a presence of which you are already aware; and in that moment of contact you realize that this presence possesses a similar awareness of you, even though it is not human” (29). Rather than viewing the agency of nonhuman beings as a threat, Ghosh encourages readers to engage with the nonhuman as equally curious partners.

Ghosh frames his arguments about nonhuman agency as a recognition of prior fact—that is, “an already existing awareness that makes possible the passage from ignorance to knowledge” (4)—rather than a new idea emerging out of the Anthropocene. In other words, Ghosh argues that people throughout history have acknowledged the agency of the nonhuman; as he notes, “to the great majority of people everywhere, it has always been perfectly evident that dogs, horses, elephants, chimpanzees, and many other animals possess intelligence and emotions” (64). Only in the modern world, “in one, very brief era, lasting less than three centuries, did a significant number of [humans] believe that planets and asteroids are inert” (3). He argues that increased academic interest in nonhuman beings in the era of climate change “suggests—indeed proves—that nonhuman forces have the ability to intervene directly in human thought” (31). He contrasts these arguments with the Enlightenment philosophy of René Descartes, who argued that animals are mindless automatons and that only humans have agency. Ultimately, Ghosh demonstrates that Descartes’s worldview, and indeed the modern world, are built on a faulty misunderstanding of life on Earth. Ghosh’s insistence on nonhuman agency is central to his arguments about confronting the climate crisis.

The Interconnectedness of Climate and Culture

Throughout The Great Derangement, Ghosh argues that climate change and cultural production (art, literature, movies, and television) are intricately interconnected and that artists have a responsibility to seriously engage the challenges of the climate crisis. Ghosh’s arguments about the connection between climate and culture appear across the book but are most prominent in the first section.

In the first section of the book, Ghosh argues that “culture creates desires—for vehicles and appliances, for certain kinds of gardens and dwellings—that are among the principal drivers of the carbon economy” (9). As an example of how culture creates desires, he points to the common desire for a tropical vacation:

[W]hen we see an advertisement that links a picture of a tropical island to the word paradise, the longings that are kindled in us have a chain of transmission that stretches back to Daniel Defoe and Jean-Jacques Rousseau: the flight that will transport us to the island is merely an ember in that fire (10).

In this instance, Ghosh attributes the carbon emissions accompanying this flight to paradise directly to the work of novelist Daniel Defoe, whose Treasure Island features adventurous depictions of tropical islands. Ghosh uses the example of Defoe to argue that because artists can engender desires that ultimately contribute to the climate crisis, they must also take responsibility for engendering change.

Not only does culture influence climate, but Ghosh also argues that climate can influence cultural production. He notes that the English epic poet John Milton began to compose Paradise Lost during a winter of extreme cold, and “unpredictable and unforgiving changes in the climate are central to his story” (26). In addition, Ghosh shows that the circumstances that led English author Mary Shelley to write her classic Frankenstein were also closely tied to climate. In 1816, a volcanic explosion on Mount Tambora released 1.7 million tons of dust, “obscuring the sun and causing temperatures to plunge by three to six degrees” (66). That summer, Shelley was with her husband, Percy, and the poets Lord Byron and John Polidori in Lake Geneva when, “trapped indoors by incessant rain, Byron suggested they all write ghost stories” (67). The story that Mary Shelley began on that rainy day eventually became Frankenstein; Ghosh uses the anecdote as evidence that extreme climate events have had an important impact on the production of culture, especially literature.

“Modernity” as an Unsustainable, Exploitative Concept

In The Great Derangement, Ghosh argues that the concept of “modernity” is unsustainable and relies on the exploitation of people, landscapes, and resources beyond the West. Throughout the book, Ghosh follows philosopher Bruno Latour in defining modernity as “an irreversible arrow, as capitalization, as progress” (79). Ghosh criticizes modernity’s fixations on ceaseless growth, technological progress, and profit. These fixations, he argues, are directly responsible for the climate crisis, require the exploitation of disadvantaged groups, and are not sustainable.

The progress that accompanies modernity also includes “the acceleration in carbon emissions and the turn away from the collective” in political action (79), both of which have had a severe impact on the climate crisis. Ghosh’s strongest criticism of the concept of modernity is his belief that one of the “originary impulses of modernity is the project of ‘partitioning’ or deepening the imaginary gulf between Nature and Culture” (68). As a result of the partition between nature and culture, in the modern world, “the former comes to be relegated exclusively to the sciences and is regarded as being off-limits to the latter” (68). Ghosh argues that, ultimately, these patterns of thinking make it difficult for artists to respond to the climate crisis. He suggests that without the modernist impulse separating nature and culture, the climate crisis might not be as severe as it is.

Ghosh also argues that the patterns of consumption that characterize the modern world are not sustainable. He uses the example of Asia—which dramatically increased carbon output as it modernized in the 20th century—to demonstrate that “the patterns of life that modernity engenders can only be practiced by a small minority of the world’s population” (92) The Indian activist Mahatma Gandhi, who chose an ascetic life as an act of protest against modernity, offers another example. Gandhi believed that “the universalist premise of industrial civilization was a hoax; that a consumerist mode of existence, if adopted by a sufficient number of people, would quickly become unsustainable and would lead, literally, to the devouring of the planet” (111).

Finally, Ghosh argues that the luxuries of the modern world rely on exploitation of others. His historical analysis of industrialization shows that “the emerging fossil-fuel economies of the West required that people elsewhere be prevented from developing coal-based energy systems of their own, by compulsion if necessary” (107). In other words, the burgeoning fossil-fuel economies of Burma, India, and China were deliberately repressed so that the Western countries exercising imperial power in these regions could grow their own economies. Ghosh argues that

the poor nations of the world are not poor because they were indolent or unwilling: their poverty is itself an effect of the inequities created by the carbon economy; it is the result of systems that were set up by brute force to ensure that poor nations remained always at a disadvantage in terms of both wealth and power (110).

These arguments are essential to his criticism of modernity as an unsustainable, exploitative concept.