Plantationocene systems and communal disruptions in N.K. Jemisin’s broken earth trilogy : an ecogothic perspective
N.K. Jemisin’s critically acclaimed Broken Earth trilogy examines life in a post-apocalyptic alternate universe after a planet is cracked, bleeding and about to die. The trilogy does not seek to redeem the earth or a fractured environment. Rather, the novels demonstrate the ways in which charact...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Penerbit Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia
2022
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| Online Access: | http://journalarticle.ukm.my/20693/1/56510-194053-2-PB.pdf http://journalarticle.ukm.my/20693/ https://ejournal.ukm.my/3l/issue/view/1543 |
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| Summary: | N.K. Jemisin’s critically acclaimed Broken Earth trilogy examines life in a post-apocalyptic alternate universe after
a planet is cracked, bleeding and about to die. The trilogy does not seek to redeem the earth or a fractured
environment. Rather, the novels demonstrate the ways in which characters develop, dissolve and mutually destroy or
support each other. Jemisin’s conception of nature is unique and almost antithetical to human survival, but the roots
of this destruction go deep. The fractured economies and governments within this post-apocalyptic universe paint a
haunting picture of a world whose geopolitics are affected by the nature it has despoiled and disintegrated. The trilogy
is a fitting fable for a planet in which climate change has affected endangered species, ecosystems and world
economics. I apply a postcolonial ecoGothic lens to the analysis of the Broken Earth trilogy. This postcolonial
ecoGothic approach will be married to a consideration of Jason C Moore’s unveiling of the Capitolocene through the
lens of Donna Haraway’s and Anna Tsing’s positioning of a Plantationocene to look at patterns of power and
domination. This paper is particularly concerned with the ways in which these patterns are related to the condition of
societies living under siege and the ways in which these societies mimic patterns of colonial domination. The proposed
outcome of this analysis will be to strip the layers of the Broken Earth trilogy to unearth what the narrative reveals
about the environmental travails and geopolitical dissolutions that haunt our existences in what has been dubbed the
Anthropocene. |
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