Empire, Ecology, and Displacement: Neo-Imperial Violence in Amitav Ghosh's Gun Island

Abstract: Gun Island (2019) by Amitav Ghosh explores the issue of climate change as a historic crisis that exists in the form of an environmental disaster but is historically defined by imperialism, extraction, and inequality in the world. Instead of defining climate change as a politically neutral or universally experienced threat, the novel prefigures ecological displacement as an imbalanced and lived experience, which is most felt by those communities in the Global South. According to the arguments presented in this paper, climate-induced migration as it is conceptualized by Gun Island, climate change serves as the ecological afterlife of the empire. Ghosh uncovers how environmental degradation, compelled movement and securitization of borders remain able to recreate imperial hierarchies of power and responsibility through its transnational story that connects the Sundarbans, Mediterranean migration routes, and European metropolitan spaces. Based on the postcolonial ecocriticism, the theory of slow violence by Rob Nixon, and current arguments on climate imperialism, this paper will argue that the novel reacts the climate refugees not as victims of natural calamity but as historical agents, whose views are products of extended histories of colonial exploitation and abandonment. The strategic application of myth in the novel also upsets Enlightenment histories of progress by rekindling ecological memory and unveiling climate crisis as the repeat of unspoken imperial violence. Finally, it is argued that, in the end, Gun Island turns climate fiction into a sort of ethical witnessing which requires historical responsibility, transnational responsibility, and ecological justice. Keywords: Climate Refugees; Neo-Imperialism; Postcolonial Ecocriticism; Slow Violence; Amitav Ghosh; Climate Fiction