The Sea is Alive: Navigating Waterscapes in South Asian Speculative Fiction

• Athira Unni ^[1]
  1. [1] Leeds Beckett University

     Leeds Beckett University

     Reino Unido

     
• Localización: Hélice, ISSN-e 1887-2905, Vol. 9, Nº. 1, 2023, págs. 54-68
• Idioma: inglés
• Enlaces
  • Texto Completo Ejemplar
• Resumen

  • The Anthropocene has cracked open the possibility of a liminal exchange between water and land. My article proposes that South Asian speculative fiction, with the background of the Vedic figure of Varuna — the Hindu god of water, sky, and the ocean — furthers the possibility of agency and life being attributed to waterscapes. This posthuman reading of an elemental force as ‘alive’ is seen in the short stories of Vandana Singh, Asif Aslam Farrukhi, and Mimi Mondal. While speculative fiction has probed and exposed the bareness of landscapes, few narratives have tackled the much pregnant excess within seascapes. These stories explore the themes of appearance/ disappearance and of belonging/Otherness in varied forms of water. They combine climate anxiety with posthuman ontology to explore a unique path of ascribing agency to the hydrosphere itself, not solely through humanwaterscape interactions, but also by enlivening the inhabitants of the waterscape. I situate these stories as constructing the trope of oceanic posthumanism while speculating about the future of landscapes in the South Asian context.

    By foregrounding waterscapes, these stories underline the relationship we still have with the hydrosphere, question our destructive actions towards water bodies, and finally, break down familiar land-water and human-animal borders.

    These works subsequently depict a South Asian futurism that can clearly see the sea creeping onto land.