Postcolonial Ecocriticism through the Canadian Lens: Select Writings of Margaret Atwood

Resumo

Abstract

Postcolonialism and ecocriticism appeared to be contradictory terms in the writing of Rob Nixon. However, in the context of postcolonial literature(s) that inspire the human imagination to move beyond boundaries of nations, the local and ethical positions that ecocriticism foregrounds remain, or ought to remain, important. In the case of Canada, the trajectory of colonial and postcolonial history has taken a different route from that of other countries usually discussed in this context. Margaret Atwood, as one of the foremost Canadian authors, has concentrated on different dimensions of the relationship between postcolonialism and ecocriticism, almost from the beginning of her career as a writer, though she did not always formally mention these two terms. In her fictional and nonfictional works, ecological concerns surfaced along with her readings of the Canadian condition of colonial as well as neocolonial times. Survival and Strange Things form the nonfictional base and a number of prominent works of social, historical as well as speculative fiction demonstrate Atwood’s deep engagement with the nature of colonial and postcolonial history as related to the maladies besetting the ecology of the geographical space concerned.