Chagakrabarty And Nixon's Impact On The Environment

A natural science informed historical approach is a method some may utilize to gain an understanding the long and complicated history the relationships between Earth, the environment, and humans. However, to develop a grasp of the current debates over climate change, environmental racism, and other ecological issues, a Marxist analysis points out the overwhelming role capitalism plays in affecting the environment. These two forms of analyses can be done separately, Dipesh Chakrabarty and Rob Nixon illustrated that in “The Climate of History: Four Theses” (2009) and Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor (2011). While Chakrabaty focuses on the discourse shift that takes place in the field of history when more developments are made

An adverse relationship between the environment and humans has not always existed. Instead, in his third thesis, Chakrabarty claims that humans have stumbled into this issue (217). What caused this stumble; however, is debated. Attributing climate change of fossil fuel, industrialization of animal stock, clearing of tropical land and forests is, according to Chakrabarty, a critique leftists make of Western capitalism (216). Electing to discussion the acquisition of capital as opposed to capitalism, Chakrabarty does credit industrial civilization as the cause of human’s stumble (217). Nixon, on the other hand, does not shy away from making a critique of capitalism. As stated earlier, Nixon focuses on events that occur between the 1980s and 1990s because it is, as he calls it, “neoliberalism’s near present” (43). Nixon believes that humanity is in an age of

In the introduction of his essay Chakrabarty clearly states that he is “a practicing historian with a strong interest in the nature of history” (198). Likewise, Nixon is an English professor. However, each man’s respective field influences how they reconcile the humanities with the environment. Chakrabarty notes that during the Enlightenment that there is “in no discussion of freedom…ever any awareness of the geological agency that human beings were acquiring” whilst the achieved freedom (208). However, this is not a practice that can continue in the modern times. Environmental issues, specifically climate change, is a crisis that “calls on academic to rise above their disciplinary prejudices, for it is a crisis of many dimensions” (Chakrabarty 215). Nixon furthers this idea in his work with the idea of writer-activism. According to Nixon, writing enables the unapparent to appear, challenges perceptual habits that downplay slow violence, and bring apprehensions into imaginative focus (15). Moreover, literature’s “testimonial and imaginative capacities” can also play a role in nonliterary social change (Nixon 32). Thus, Chakrabarty and Nixon utilize the works to bring discussions of climate change and other environmental issues into their own disciplines and others. They both demonstrate that climate change and is a result of history and that outlets such as literature have the power to shift the discourse on the