ECOCRITICISM AND MAGICAL REALISM IN KAREN TEI YAMASHITA’S THROUGH THE ARC OF THE RAINFOREST
Articles > Article · 2018
Authors: Nesrin YAVAŞ
\n Volume: 3, Issue: 1\n 1-12\n \n, International, 2018
Summary
In hernovel Through the Arc of the Rainforest (1990)Karen Tei Yamashita deploys magical realist narrative technique to offer aglobally-embracing ecocritical criticism that unfolds global connectivity ofpeoples, places, and their destinies. As such, she uses a deterritorializedenvironmental approach, which favors eco-cosmopolitanism over bioregionalism,drawing our attention to the shortcomings of locally-based ecocritical studiesthat overlook the inextricable political, social, and cultural connectionsbetween the local and the global in an age of unprecedented mobility and globalmodernity. Another environmental issue Yamashati sheds light upon is the factof slow violence, a violence, as Rob Nixon argues, appears out of sight, andover time. To render this invisible violence visible, she employs magicalrealism. The intersection between magical realism and ecocriticism in Through the Arc fuels a representational void bygiving shape not only to the insidious workings of global capitalismmasquerading as “scientific development,” and/or “progress” but also to theslow, invisible environmental violence whose long-term effects bring abouthuman and environmental cost.