Faculty Publications
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Publications by NITK Faculty
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Item Development vis-à-vis Degrowth: Stories of Resistance, Struggle, and Survival from the Postcolonial Western Ghats(Karadeniz Technical University, 2023) Joseph, S.R.; Koudur, S.One of the eight “hottest hotspots” of biodiversity according to UNESCO, the Western Ghats have much to be credited for the historical prosperity of western peninsular India. The colonial era marked the beginning of the ecological diversity of the forests of the Ghats, spawning new rules and policies in the state. The consequent land allocations posed a challenge to the community identity of the indigenous tribes of the region. Even after India’s independence, the native successors in governance and land ownership inherited the capitalist and imperialist policies claiming to reduce poverty through development. The rampant growth strategies and the unpredictable climatic variations with a cycle of drought and torrential rain further threatened the ecological stability and also pushed the native tribes into destitution and displacement. This paper attempts to analyze literary works chronicling the tribal lives of the Western Ghats alongside social narratives on the recent harsh adverse effects of unsustainable growth in southwest India. The acclaimed novel Kocharethi the Araya Woman brings to the fore powerful statements of race and land rights of the Arayar community against the backdrop of the Western Ghats. The woes of the Badaga population of the Nilgiris amidst development interventions are core to the novel When the Kurinji Blooms. The paper attempts to read how the poignant narratives from the Western Ghats are a clarion call to redefine development through a broader cultural process of decolonizing the growth paradigms. © 2023 Karadeniz Technical University. All rights reserved.Item Decolonial Myths and Demi-gods of the Tropics: The More-than-Human Worlds of Manasa and Olokun(James Cook University, 2023) Joseph, S.R.; Koudur, S.In response to the current age of the Anthropocene, Posthumanist studies explore multispecies' entanglements and encounters in order to move away from the colonial binaries that separate humans from the environment. Adding to these studies, this paper explores the role of mythology in decolonising the Westerncentric strategies of narration. Amitav Ghosh’s Gun Island and Rita Indiana’s Tentacle, envision the relationship of the human with other species against the deepening climate crisis, bringing to the fore the often-discounted discourses of cultural myths. In Gun Island, Manasa, the quintessential nagini is a folk deity of fear-based Nature worship from the Bay of Bengal, and an outsider to the established pantheon of Hindu gods. The Yoruba deity, Olokun, and his/her incarnations, move across the three time periods in Tentacle emerging as the saviour of the Caribbean islands. The novels reinterpret and re-evaluate the tropical Indigenous myths to implement alternate approaches of knowing and being in the world. This article seeks to explore how posthumanist and decolonial perspectives in these mythologies create new alliances that stretch across space, time, and species, symbolising the relationality of all life. The paper delves into the power of the mythical deities to highlight the existence of an interconnected network of human and more-than-human realms. © 2023, eTropic. All Rights Reserved.Item Reimagining the Lagosian Landscape in Lagoon: Extraterrestrials, Geoengineering, and a More-than-Human Ecology(Routledge, 2025) Joseph, S.R.; Koudur, S.Navigating an oil-ravaged ecosystem, the novel Lagoon by Nnedi Okorafor elevates the landscape of Lagos to a fantastical and otherworldly space of posthuman constellations adapted for the critical exigencies of the Anthropocene crisis. By achieving new vistas, the narrative backdrop of the place conjoins actors and perspectives from a radical otherworld and the earthly realm, knitting together all planetary elements—terrestrial, aquatic, and extraterrestrial. In this article, Lagos is imagined as a site subjected to cutting-edge geoengineering technology, prefigured as a saviour landscaping technique in the Anthropocene, through the intent and interference of the extraterrestrials. With the aliens as the agents of this environmental alchemy, the landscape of Lagos has to be thought of anew, both as an agent of salvation and of rejuvenation, decentring the anthropocentric ideals that uphold the values of neocolonialism. The aliens, who call themselves the “change,” emerge as a significant placeholder, as their bodies can alter shapes and they possess the power to manipulate the physicality of other creatures. They herald “change” in their sheer presence, wherein human consciousness relents and cognition falters. The study explores a re-negotiation of human–nonhuman worlds and the events whose narrativisation destabilises human control over the landscape. Typified initially as a locale of anthropogenic activities, Lagos, later on, is cast as a ground of posthuman activity, resisting exploitation and challenging preconceived notions about the passivity of physical environments. The geoengineered Lagosian landscape effectively spans the divide between Earth’s abstract planetary space and the real, embodied environment where humans are experiencing the repercussions of the Anthropocene. © 2025 Unisa Press.