the great derangement (amitav ghosh)

Ghosh does something  breathtaking in this work of non-fiction. He turns one of the colonialists’ most sacred tools, the modern realist novel, back on itself, to question the seemingly inexorable drift of Western society towards the annihilation of the planet. In so doing both vindicating the importance of the novel (he himself is, after all, a novelist) and also suggesting that its modern realist incarnation has become a symbol or symptomatic of the decadence that is leading the world towards catastrophe. Incorporated into his argument is a slyly savage assault on that prince of the modern inconsequential, if moral, writers, John Updike. Whilst the western novel has chosen to blackball the unlikely, the catastrophic, the in-credible, the natural world is sedately going about the business of making these tropes the norm. Rather than paying heed to the existential battles which humanity is confronted with, the modern novel hides under its shell of privilege, making cute novels about (bourgeois) moral dilemmas. So, Ghosh postulates, in a hundred years time, when the sea levels have risen and the deserts are marching on, people will look back and say: where were the Cassandras? Those who might at least have raised a flag of warning, seeking to include the great peril of our time on the cultural agenda. They are sidelined on grounds of taste, (here, tangentially, Ghosh’s book reminds me of Natalie Olah’s), their narratives not being deemed relevant or even saleable. 

As a result, The great derangement, as Ghosh puts it in biblical terms, is allowed to proceed unchecked. The derangement being that we blithely ignore the suicidal contradictions at the heart of “progress”. Contradictions whose full extent will be unleashed when those countries in Asia seeking, understandably, to catch up with this progressive agenda, contribute even more to humanity’s lemming like tendencies. 

As one more inclined towards the novel than the science, I would have to say how remarkable it is to to see the shibboleths of good taste and the well constructed novel being so rightfully savaged. Ghosh’s argument is that we are trapped in the bubble of our our own perception, which refuses to allow us to see that the trappings of our comfort contain the seeds of our destruction. Because that message is a turn-off, it’s a downer, it doesn’t sell. Instead we construct genteel narratives of personal crisis, ignoring the existential crisis that threatens to engulf each and every one of our descendants.