Postcolonial Literature and Ecotheology

Secular criticism, as Edward Said defined it, has been central to the study of postcolonial literature. It is also clear, however, that traditionally secularist readings of postcolonial literature have not given full account of the ways in which both religious and spiritual connections to the natural world (including monotheistic, polytheistic, and idiosyncratic conceptions of metaphysics and the supernatural) in various postcolonial contexts have been suppressed by colonial structures and remain sources of potent resistance to them. Given the significant advancements in ecotheology in recent years across world religions and the call of many religious and civic leaders for religion to join the cause of sustainability, the time is ripe for an investigation into the areas of potential collaboration and synergy between postcolonial literature and ecotheology. Though postcolonial literature and ecotheology are two distinct areas of critical inquiry, their mutual imbrication might offer a unique frame to explore profound ways about how literary, cultural, spiritual and ecological narratives converge. While postcolonial literature is primarily concerned with exposing how the history of colonial violence and erasures are embedded in the earth, ecotheology attempts to integrate ecological and theological perspective toward better care of the planet. This raises questions we hope to explore in this seminar: Can postcolonial literature be a source of ecotheological wisdom? Can ecotheology provide a unique lens to read postcolonial literature? What does it mean and what does it yield to bring postcolonial literature and ecotheology into dialogue? How does postcolonial literature imagine human collectivity and multigenerational agency differently than religion? What synergies and syntheses are possible between secularism and spirituality in postcolonial literature? How do we read the intertextuality with religion's sacred books in secular literature, especially in the Anthropocene? What are the various and even competing roles of secular science, religious mythology, and individual encounters with immanence and transcendence in the natural world in postcolonial texts? When and how does nature become seen as sacred space and when and how is the sacred a source of resistance to colonialism? How does postcolonial literature reflect on the power and fate of indigenous cosmologies and spiritualities in the Anthropocene? What kind of environmental hope can monotheistic traditions offer in postcolonial contexts? How has the Anthropocene changed the way we read postcolonial literature, particularly with regard to the story of religion? What are the ethical and moral underpinnings of environmental care in postcolonial literature? How is environmental justice imagined in postcolonial literature theologically?