Entanglements:
Journal of Posthumanities
E-ISSN: 3107-488X

(Article) ‐ Volume 2, Issue 1 (Open Issue)
Connecting the Human and Arboreal: A Reading of Janice Pariat's Everything the Light Touches as a Posthuman Ecobildungsroman
Authored By — Numana Ibrahim Bhat

Abstract

The degradation of the ecological values and environment need to take up as much space within our discourses as they are in our lives. The necessity of opening up literary spaces to the externality of the environment provides a novel opportunity to reimagine literature and literary techniques. One such instance is the nascent innovation of the ecobildungsroman, which is the story of the protagonist's development and evolution as a character in tandem with the rising ecological awareness. In this respect, Janice Pariat's Everything the Light Touches, is a unique narrative which presents the developmental arcs in the four central characters. All four of the characters are on journeys towards self realisation which becomes possible, only when they also take their more-than-human world into consideration. The paper, therefore, aims at analysing the connection between the human and the arboreal worlds in Pariat's novel in the light of Posthumanist approaches and also draws upon the Goethean Methodology to imagine an alternate conceptualisation of interconnectedness of life, particularly human and arboreal. It also attempts to present a reading of the novel as an ecobildungsroman through the ecological entanglement between varied living species.

Keywords

Ecobildungsroman, Human, Arboreal, Iinterconnectedness, Corporeality, Posthuman.

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