Decolonizing the Anthropocene:

Amitav Ghosh’s The Living Mountain

Abstract

In an era of unprecedented environmental catastrophes that have become increasingly difficult to ignore, we often hear the term “Anthropocene”, denoting the profound human-induced planetary changes that have shaped the climate crisis we face today. However, dominant climate change discourses tend to rely on hegemonic Western techno-scientific paradigms of knowledge that deliberately obscure the enduring influence of colonial agendas in the making of ecological violence over centuries. Consequently, this paper emphasizes the urgent need for a critical reframing of the Anthropocene, calling for a transdisciplinary framework to illustrate how unequal power dynamics and cultural factors are deeply embedded in our present planetary predicament. Amitav Ghosh’s The Living Mountain offers a valuable critique, recontextualizing the Anthropocene within a historical framework of colonialism to address the complex interplay between ecological and cultural challenges. Drawing on Indigenous studies and postcolonial theory, this paper delves into how Ghosh’s narrative underscores the ongoing influence of colonial legacies—marked by systematic extraction and exploitation—in shaping today’s unfolding planetary crises. Simultaneously, Ghosh highlights the epistemic violence inherent in colonial worldviews that fundamentally sever human and more-than-human relations, proposing instead the centrality of Indigenous epistemologies for a decolonial understanding of the Anthropocene. Through a close reading of Ghosh’s fable, this paper contends that literature, through a transdisciplinary lens, provides alternative conceptions of the climate crisis beyond Western epistemes that sustain violent legacies of colonialism.