Precarity in the Capitalocene:

Gun Island and Climate Change

Abstract

This paper, mapping the trajectory of migrant workers’ lives in Amitav Ghosh’s novel Gun Island, locates precarity in the nexus of capitalism and climate change and identifies the latter as a new determinant of precarity. Heightened precariousness is generally perceived today as an effect of conflicts and wars. Contemporary South Asian novels mostly explore how caste, class, religion, gender, and sexuality condition the production of precariousness in today’s world. My paper looks into the production of a precarious subject seldom represented in contemporary South Asian Literature: climate refugees. Drawing upon Gun Island, I argue that climate refugees inform us about the necessity to expand our understanding of vulnerability so we are able to factor in those whose lives have been upended by the effects of anthropogenic climate change along with the dynamics of neoliberal capitalism.