4/30/2019 The great derangement: notes - Google Docs

P.11:  why  is  it  so  important  that  issues  about  climate  change  be  highlighted  in  art  and 
literature? 
P.23: gradualism vs catastrophism 
P.23: probability vs. improbability 
P.27: Improbable occurrences are astoundingly real, happening at this time on this earth 
P.31: environmental uncanny? 
P.32: our doing 
P.35-37:  Urban planning could be used to reduce damage from disasters, COLONIZATION IS 
THE CULPRIT 
P.46:  Always  compares  socioeconomic  status  of  people  who  are  affected/victims  of 
disasters 
P.47: What systems is he talking about? 
P. 48: dissemination of knowledge 
P.50: TIFR 
P.53: Personal touch 
P.56: literary imagination, tying back again 
P.59: setting of a novel 
P.65:  the  idea  that  humans  share  agency  and  consciousness  with  the  earth  etc.  i.e. 
non-human presence. 
P.67: fiction? Lit. imagination? 
P.69: partition between nature and culture 
P.72:  is  science  fiction  better  equipped  to  address  the  anthropocene  than  mainstream  lit. 
fiction?  Cli-fi  only  deals  with  disasters  in  the  future  but  what  about  the  past  and  the 
present? WONDER TALE UMBRELLA. 
P.73:  Fictions  must  be  set  in  a  time  that  is  recognizable  as  our  own,  communicate 
with  marvelous  vividness,  the  uncanniness  and  improbability,  the  magnitude  and 
interconnectedness of the transformations that are now under way. 
P.75: oil and its consequences...but its absence in literature. Embarrassing 2 history. 
P.78: the individual vs the collective psyche 
P.79: economic systems producing isolation. Why? 
P.80: collective predicament 
P.84: illustration and change in the act of reading 
 
P.87: Majority of the victims of climate change are in Asia but the conversation around 
climate change is mostly eurocentric. 
P.90,91: numbers  
P.93: technological diffusion caused the belated industrialization of asian countries 
P.95: rapid exchange of knowledge and parallel developments 
P.103: western modernity and the promotion of its supposed superiority 
P.108: cause of imperialism withering in india: imperialism. Suppressing variants of 
modernity. 
P.109: carbon emissions were correlated to power. Capitalist trade and industry cannot 
thrive without military and political power.  
P.109: decolonization = economic acceleration in asia 
P.110: retarded the onset of climate crisis. 
P.111: industrialization faced powerful indigenous resistances. Gandhi.  
P.115: climate change is the unintended consequence of the very existence of human 
beings?? 
 
120. Human consciousness, agency, and identity at the center of all aesthetic enterprise 
121. Artists and writers are able to look ahead, not just in aesthetic matters, but also 
in regard to public affairs.  
121. Graph of political engagement of writers and artists and the graph of greenhouse gas 
emissions? Converges during WW1. No evidence.  

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4/30/2019 The great derangement: notes - Google Docs

122. Writers at the forefront of every political movement, post WW2, graph converges 
again in the 1980s.  
125. Literary mainstream unaware of the crisis.( Even the new “intelligentsia”) 
126. Climate change has not been significant political issue in south asia. 
127. Collective survival 
128. Protestantism and morals 
128. To envision the world as it might be in fiction? But what is the point of it? 
128. Other forms of human existence imagined. - climate crisis. 
129. Individual moral adventure: negates possibility 
130. The public sphere’s ability to influence security and policy establishment has eroded 
drastically? 
130. OIL OVER COAL. 
130. Citizens no longer expect that politicians will really represent their interest and 
implement their demands. ` 
131. Politics = personal expressiveness 
132. Funding of climate change denial 
132. Genuinely participatory politics… nihilistic forms of extremism that employ methods of 
spectacular violence. 
133. Individual conscience.?? 
134. Climate ethicists 
135. Failure of the politics of sincerity.  
135. When future generations look back upon the Great Derangement they will certainly 
blame the leaders and politicians of this time for their failure to address the climate crisis. 
But they may well hold artists and writers to be equally culpable — for the imagining of 
possibilities is not, after all, the job of politicians and bureaucrats. 
135. Abandon: “Be the change you want to see.” 
136. Laissez-faire ideas in the Anglosphere.  
138. Denial and dispute of scientific finding- climate change politics 
139. Military establishment’s focus on climate change. 141. 
141. But why covert postures on climate change (by the militaries)? Is it conceivable? 
142. Power = consumption of fossil fuels. 
143. Reasons for the military establishments not acting overtly, according to Ghosh. 
143. Armed lifeboat. 
144. Futile reinforcements of man-made boundaries. 
145. Maintenance of status quo. 
146. Distribution of power is at the core of climate crisis. 
146. Capitalism and empire 
147. Poorer countries have the capacity to absorb shocks better than richer ones. 
150. Two examples of texts that have the potential to change the world… vindication of 
climate science. 
153. Comparing the Paris Agreement with the Laudato Si’. 
154. … The Paris Agreement fails to include the things that have gone wrong with our 
dominant paradigms 
155. And avoids disruptive terminology 
159. Limitlessness of human freedom is central to the arts of our time. 
160. Shifting the importance from political power to religious power. 
161. Can religious groups actually drastically reduce emissions without sacrificing 
considerations of equity? No evidence. 
162. Ghosh is hopeful. False hope? Fake? 
 
 
 
 
 
 

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