Delinking the Capitalist Episteme: Empathy and the Decolonial Turn in Amitav Ghosh’s Jungle Nama

Abstract

Amitav Ghosh’s Jungle Nama: A Story of the Sundarban (2021), a graphic verse, is a symbolic depiction of the repercussions of the capitalist episteme that sanctions resource extraction, ecological commodification, and anthropogenic activities. Set in the Sundarbans, the largest mangrove delta, Jungle Nama illustrates a confrontation between Dhona, an avaricious merchant who wants to extract and plunder the forest resources, and Bon Bibi, the goddess who presides as the benevolent protector of the region. Through his critique of Dhona’s greed, the article studies how the narrative deliberates on the necessity to go beyond the capitalistic notions of accumulation, profit, and objectification of ecology and the non-human world. Emphasising Ghosh’s stance as one of the notable public intellectuals of contemporary times, this article analyses how his work calls for an epistemic revival by recuperating the indigenous knowledge system that believes in the intricate connection between humans and the environment. The poetic rendering attests to the urgent necessity of discarding the binary perceptions enunciated by Western modernity and systemically fostered by capitalist missions and developing intellectual comprehension and cultural empathy as elementary for collective wellbeing. In doing so, the article contends that Ghosh’s work advocates for a decolonial turn that attests to epistemic transcendence as well as epistemic disobedience. This, in turn, can emerge as necessary steps in countering the hegemonic exploitative drives and encouraging alternative decolonial epistemologies in guaranteeing planetary sustainability.

Keywords:

• Ghosh
• Jungle Nama
• Sundarbans
• decolonial
• capitalism

Acknowledgement

The authors received financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article from the National Research Foundation of South Africa and from the University of the Western Cape’s UCDG programme.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Goutam Karmakar

Goutam Karmakar is an NRF Postdoctoral Fellow in the Faculty of Education at the University of the Western Cape, South Africa.

Rajendra Chetty

Rajendra Chetty is Professor in the Faculty of Education at the University of the Western Cape, South Africa.