Postcolonial Ecofeminism in Kamala Markandaya's Nectar in a Sieve
Abstract
The concept of Postcolonial Ecofeminism is still at a budding stage. This perspective recognizes that the exploitation of nature and the oppression of women are intimately bound up with notions of class, caste, race, colonialism and neo-colonialism. It focuses on the intersection of postcolonial and environmental issues. The related fields of Postcolonial Ecocriticism and Ecofeminism do not address the issue of Postcolonial Ecofeminism adequately, where both fields need to recognize “the “double-bind” of being female and being colonized” (Campbell).
Postcolonial Ecofeminism can be outlined best in Indian fiction that explicitly foregrounds women. This paper is an attempt to trace Postcolonial Ecofeminism in Kamala Markandaya’s Nectar in a Sieve (1954). Women’s relationship to the environment is ambivalent. This is particularly highlighted by women writing Indian fiction in English. Women, nature, development and globalization are not linear categories that either complement or contradict each other in totality. Globalization is best seen as a contradictory development where it integrates women into the countless spheres of global capitalism, and simultaneously loosens the grip of traditional patriarchy on the women. Therefore, a total rejection of globalization or modernity as called for by some ecofeminists is not a very compatible framework.
References
Adams, Carol J., and Josephine Donovan, eds. Animals and Women: Feminist Theoretical Explorations. Durham: Duke UP, 1995. Print.
Campbell, Andrea (Ed.). New Directions in Ecofeminist Literary Criticism. Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2008. Print.
Buell, Lawrence. The Environmental Imagination: Thoreau, Nature Writing, and the Formation of American Culture. Cambridge, MA. Belknap P of Harvard UP, 1995. Print.
Huggan, Graham and Tiffin, Helen. Postcolonial Ecocriticism: Literature, Animals, Environment,. London; New York: Routledge, 2010. Print.
Markandaya, Kamala. Nectar in a Sieve. 1954. New York: Signet Classic, 1982. Print.
Rao, Susheela N. “Nature in Kamala Markandaya’s Nectar in a Sieve and The Coffer Dams.” The Literary Half-Yearly 1995: 41-50. Print.
