The Unyielding Earth: Ecological Subjugation and Resistance in Amitav Ghosh’s <i>The Glass Palace</i>

Abstract

This paper examines the ecological dynamics in Amitav Ghosh’s The Glass Palace (2000), focusing on the subjugation of nature under imperial control and the subsequent resistance by nature. Michael Foucault’s concepts of “conduct” and “counter-conduct,” and Giorgio Agamben’s concept of “bare life” has been used to explore how colonial powers systematically transformed natural landscapes, such as forests and rivers, into industrialised zones and monoculture plantations. This led to subjugation of the environment to serve the imperial economic interests. It also unveils the ways in which nature, though colonised and conducted, strikes back using ecological disruption, disease, decay, and environmental instability, which led to undermining the governing systems that attempted to subjugate and dominate it.