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This book explores postcolonial constructions of the environment in literatures from Africa, the Caribbean, South Asia, and the Pacific Islands. In considering literary representations of geography, it positions postcolonial ecology as a critical engagement with an “aesthetics of the earth.” It also examines the mutually constitutive material, discursive, and ontological relations with the land, with particular emphasis on engagement with alterity as a constitutive aspect of postcoloniality in relation to the environment as a nonhuman witness to the violent process of colonialism. In addition, the book discusses postcolonial literature’s focus on nature; the influence of the history of empire on Western discourses of nature and the environment; and intellectual genealogies of postcolonial ecocriticism within the context of the complex theory of an “aesthetics of the earth”.

This chapter examines the postcolonial ecology of the New World Baroque, a theory invoked by Alejo Carpentier in his novel The Lost Steps. More specifically, it considers primitivism—an artistic strategy of postcolonial resistance for Latin American writers—as a means to give voice to nature in Latin America. It discusses Carpentier’s theory of the New World Baroque, derived from his experiences in the Amazonian interior of Venezuela, and suggests that it undermines the anthropocentric assumptions of much cultural theory while also interrogating facile assumptions about biocentrism. It also explores Carpentier’s aesthetics in relation to how ecology might be used to deconstruct the colonial order.

This chapter offers a reading of Kiran Desai’s 2006 novel The Inheritance of Loss and examines its depiction of the Himalayan environment. It examines how colonial representations of the British “hill stations” of the Himalayas as Gardens of Eden are transformed by Desai in her novel to provide a “counterlandscaping” of colonial fantasies as well as the separatist demands of the Gorkha National Liberation Front (GNLF). It also describes the queering of the Himalayan landscape that gives rise to a postcolonial ecology in terms of a contingent model of community. Finally, the chapter discusses how The Inheritance of Loss displaces normalized notions of the land, gardens, and nature.

This chapter examines the notion of postcolonial ecopoetics by offering a reading of Derek Walcott’s poetry. More specifically, it looks at environmental or ecological consciousness that manifests in Walcott’s aesthetic decisions. The chapter first considers Walcott’s use of flora as a reflection of his imagination regarding postcolonial ecology, as well as his representation of the connection between poetry and plants. Focusing on “The Bounty,” it then explores creolized landscapes and Walcott’s inscription of the Caribbean relationship to plants. Finally, it cites the work of English poet John Clare to show how an environmental imagination informs Walcott’s thematic concerns as a poet and influences his aesthetic strategies.