This blog is part of a lab activity designed by Dilip Barad to enhance our understanding of Amitav Ghosh’s Gun Island. The activity encourages us to identify concepts that are difficult to understand and explore ways to address and clarify them through guided learning resources.
Part III - Historification of Myth and Mythification of History | Gun Island | Amitav Ghosh
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Presentation
Research Activity
1. Create a table showing each source with its publication date, author credentials, and whether it's primary source, secondary analysis or opinion piece.
2. Which of these sources are most frequently cited or referenced by other sources in this notebook?
Based on the sources provided, the most frequently cited or referenced works include primary literary texts, foundational theoretical studies on climate change, and seminal historical accounts of the Venetian Ghetto. Amitav Ghosh’s 2019 novel Gun Island and his non-fiction work The Great Derangement serve as the primary subject matter for the majority of the literary and ecological analyses.
1. Amitav Ghosh and Gun Island
Gun Island is the most central reference point in this notebook, serving as the primary text for multiple book reviews, academic chapters, and investigative reports. It is referenced by almost every contributor in the sources dealing with South Asian literature and "cli-fi" (climate fiction).
• Key References: The novel is cited for its depiction of climate migration, its use of the "environmental uncanny", and its etymological exploration of the word banduk.
• Supporting Work: Ghosh’s theoretical text, The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable (2016), is frequently cited as the conceptual foundation for his and others' work on the failure of the realist novel to address the climate crisis.
2. Benjamin Ravid
Professor Benjamin Ravid is the most frequently cited historical authority regarding the legal and social history of the Venetian Ghetto. His scholarship is used to define the specific characteristics of a "technical" ghetto versus a general Jewish quarter.
• Key References: Ravid is cited across multiple encyclopedia entries, academic book chapters, and institutional reports from the Library of Congress.
3. Daniel B. Schwartz and Ghetto: The History of a Word
Daniel B. Schwartz’s 2019 book is a major secondary source used to track the etymological journey of the word "ghetto" from its Venetian origins to its modern American and Holocaust contexts.
• Key References: Schwartz is cited in the introductory chapters of Writing Disaster in South Asian Literature and Culture, by Wikipedia contributors, and in the "Linguistic Archaeology" report.
4. Israel Zangwill
Israel Zangwill, the author of Children of the Ghetto (1892) and Dreamers of the Ghetto (1898), is frequently referenced as the literary figure who popularised the term "ghetto" in the English language and applied it to voluntary immigrant enclaves.
• Key References: His works are analysed in detail by Daniel B. Schwartz, Saskia Elizabeth Ziolkowski, and referenced in the cultural history of Venice.
5. Annu Jalais
Annu Jalais is a primary scholarly reference for the historical and sociological analysis of the Marichjhapi massacre and the Sundarbans forest reserve.
• Key References: Her work, particularly regarding how refugees were treated as "tiger food" while tigers became "citizens," is cited extensively by Madhumita Biswas to explain the politics of selective empathy in West Bengal.
3. Summarize the primary perspective of the top five most substantial sources
The five most substantial sources in this collection examine the intersection of language, historical trauma, and the global environmental crisis.
1. Writing Disaster in South Asian Literature and Culture (Ali & Das)
The primary perspective of this volume is that regimes of power co-opt radical disasters—such as the COVID-19 pandemic or ecological massacres—to reinstate bio-political control and maintain the socio-political status quo. The editors argue that a conditioned "empathy machine" in South Asian Anglophone literature often fails to move beyond the imperatives of Western global cosmopolitanism, effectively pre-empting transformative collective breakthroughs. This "disaster imagination" creates ideological bubbles (metaphorically termed "quarantine") that prevent readers from engaging with the radical alterity of the actual event.
2. Ghetto: The History of a Word (Daniel B. Schwartz)
Schwartz presents a genealogical history of the word "ghetto," tracing its journey from a specific 1516 Venetian foundry to its role as a global keyword for segregation. The source argues that the term has been fashioned into a metaphor for premodern Judaism and has transitioned over the last seventy years to be more commonly associated with the African American experience than with its Jewish roots. Ultimately, the ghetto is defined not just as a physical place of confinement, but as a contested space of memory that has been fundamental to the very definition of Jewish modernity.
3. Bengal and Italy: Transcultural Encounters (Chakravarti & Prayer)
This collection highlights an "elective affinity" between Bengal and Italy, viewing them as non-contiguous regions that sought mutual enrichment through a free, non-hegemonic dialogue in literature, art, and politics. The primary perspective is that these "transcultural encounters" allow for a creative establishing of new identities that go beyond the fixed boundaries of the nation-state. The authors emphasize that history is not merely the result of contexts intersecting, but is driven by individual negotiators who interpret and adapt their cultural worlds through a process of "bringing beyond" or translation.
4. Gun Island (Amitav Ghosh and Related Critical Reviews)
Ghosh’s work and its analyses argue that the realist novel has failed to address climate change because of its complicity in a homogenous, gradualist understanding of time and space. The novel’s perspective uses myth and folktales (the legend of Manasa Devi and the Gun Merchant) as "connective tissue" to link 17th-century trade with the 21st-century global refugee crisis. By foregrounding the "environmental uncanny," the text forces a recognition of non-human agency—such as the movement of shipworms, spiders, and dolphins—as active participants in a world where borders are increasingly fragile.
5. Linguistic Archaeology (Investigative Report)
This analytical report posits that words are "archaeological sites" containing sedimented layers of human migration, commerce, and environmental crisis. Its primary perspective is that etymological shifts in terms like Banduk (from "Venice" to "Gun") and Ghetto (from "Foundry" to "Segregation") provide rigorous tools for mapping ancient trade routes and modern displacements. The methodology reveals a planetary environmental history where the Little Ice Age of the 17th century and the modern Anthropocene are seen as parallel cycles of catastrophe preserved in the fluid, roving nature of language.
4. Identify 'Research Gap' for further research in this area.
The sources identify several significant research gaps across the intersections of South Asian literature, transcultural history, and ecological studies. Further research is required to move beyond Western-centric frameworks and explore the specificities of local and modern displacements.
1. The Affective Realm of South Asian Disaster Studies
A discernible lacuna exists in South Asian disaster studies regarding the affective cultural and hermeneutic realm that accompanies representations of catastrophe. While many works socio-historically locate disasters, current scholarship often fails to scrutinise the ideological blind spots in how these events are presented. Specifically, there is a need to investigate how the "empathy machine" in postcolonial literature often fails to gesture beyond the imperatives dictated by global capitalist modernity and Western liberal Enlightenment traditions.
2. Post-Independence Indo-Italian Transcultural Exchange
While the scholarship on Bengal-Italy encounters in the 19th and early 20th centuries is substantial, the period following Indian Independence (1947) and the birth of Bangladesh (1971) remains marginally researched. Further study is needed in the following specific areas:
• Literary Intercourse: The dialogue between Italian and Bengali literature after 1947 is largely unexplored.
• Migrant Communities: There is a lack of comparative cultural and historical studies regarding Bengali migrant communities currently residing in Italy.
• Cultural Propagation: The spread of Rabindrasangit in contemporary Italy and the impact of Italian opera companies in 19th-century Calcutta require deeper enquiry.
• Political Dialogue: The appreciation of Bengal’s communism within the internal debates of the Italian Communist Party is a significant gap.
3. Ethical and Legal Dimensions of "Ghetto" Fiction
In literary history, the Italian Ghetto is generally absent as a critical category from debates, unlike German or Anglophone literary ghettos. There is a need for a transnational literary history that brings together works by authors of diverse backgrounds (such as Igiaba Scego and Caryl Phillips) to expose the continuities of prejudice that are often obscured by the nation as an organising principle. Research could also expand on the "archaeological" nature of words to see how etymological shifts in terms like Ghetto and Banduk map shifting trade and migration routes.
4. Non-Human Agency and the Limits of Realism
Following Amitav Ghosh’s critique in The Great Derangement, a major research gap exists in how the realist novel can successfully incorporate the "environmental uncanny" and non-human agency. Further research should explore how to represent the planetary scale of the Anthropocene without reverting to gradualist or anthropocentric Western modernist timeframes. This involves looking at multispecies climate justice where borders lose meaning in the face of planetary threats.
5. Longitudinal Trends in Digital Hybridity
In the realm of digital culture, research into Indo-Saxon hybrid identities on social media has been constrained by a reliance on public data. Future research should aim to explore private communities and restricted platforms to gain deeper insights into virtual rituals. Additionally, there is a need for longitudinal studies to determine if these digital narratives of cultural hybridity represent lasting shifts or merely transient trends.
This literature review synthesises the provided sources to examine the intersections of disaster imagination, transcultural history, and the etymological evolution of segregation, specifically within the Indo-Italian context.
The "Empathy Machine" and the Disaster Imagination
Current scholarship, particularly in South Asian literature, suggests that radical disasters—ranging from the COVID-19 pandemic to ecological massacres—are often co-opted by state regimes to reinstate biopolitical control. The sources argue that a conditioned "empathy machine" within Anglophone literature often fails to move beyond the imperatives of Western global cosmopolitanism. This "disaster imagination" creates ideological bubbles, metaphorically termed "quarantine," which familiarises the "real of the event" into patterns of affective coping that protect existing power structures and pre-empt transformative agential breakthroughs.
The Ghetto as a Traveling Memory Space
The term "ghetto" represents a significant genealogical journey from its 1516 origin in a Venetian copper foundry (geto) to a global keyword for segregation and marginalisation. While technical ghettos in Italy were abolished in the 19th century, the word was fashioned into a general metaphor for premodern Judaism and subsequently a descriptor for African American urban poverty. Scholars note that the "ghetto" now functions as a "memory space that travels," marking specific histories while simultaneously serving as a global symbol of exile and institutionalised pathology. This evolution illustrates a "blackening" of the ghetto, where the term is now more commonly associated with Black identity than its Jewish roots, reflecting a shift from de jure legal restriction to de facto socioeconomic isolation.
Indo-Italian Transcultural Encounters
Historical research identifies a unique "elective affinity" between Bengal and Italy, characterised by a non-hegemonic dialogue in literature, art, and politics from the mid-19th to the early 20th century. This transcultural encounter allowed for the creation of bilateral identities "beyond" the pre-existing ones, with figures like Rabindranath Tagore and Michael Madhusudan Dutt acting as negotiators between the two regions. However, the sources explicitly identify a research gap concerning the period following Indian Independence (1947) and the birth of Bangladesh (1971), noting that the literary and political dialogue of this era remains marginally researched.
Linguistic Archaeology and the Environmental Uncanny
Modern "cli-fi" (climate fiction), epitomised by Amitav Ghosh’s Gun Island, utilises "linguistic archaeology" to map trade and migration routes. By excavating words like banduk (tracing its path from "Venice" to "gun") and ghetto (from "foundry" to "climate refugee"), the narrative reveals an interconnected planetary history. This approach challenges the limits of the realist novel, which Ghosh argues is complicit in a gradualist, anthropocentric understanding of time that fails to represent the "environmental uncanny". The intrusion of non-human agency—such as the movement of shipworms, spiders, and dolphins—forces a transition toward a non-anthropocentric worldview where language preserves ecological truths ignored by the rational mind.
Hypotheses
The shift in South Asian literary terminology from the 20th-century "political refugee" (Bastuhara) to the 21st-century "climate refugee" (Immigrati) reflects a fundamental transformation in state biopolitics. Under this new paradigm, radical disasters are no longer treated as unique historical traumas but are co-opted into "ideological bubbles" or a metaphorical "quarantine". This process utilizes a conditioned "empathy machine" to maintain the global capitalist status quo, effectively rebranding systemic "disaster apartheid" as an unavoidable consequence of the Anthropocene, thereby pre-empting any radical collective or cognitive agential breakthroughs.
Research Questions
How does the deployment of the "environmental uncanny"—specifically the agency of non-human beings like shipworms, venomous spiders, and Irrawaddy dolphins—act as a "linguistic archaeology" that disrupts the "empathy machine" of the liberal state? Furthermore, to what extent can these non-human narratives force a transition toward a "multispecies climate justice" that exposes the fragility of modern nation-state borders in the face of planetary-scale catastrophes?
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