Amitav Ghosh on the Urgency of De-centering Humans and Re-centering Land

Emergence Magazine is an online publication with annual print edition exploring the threads connecting ecology, culture, and spirituality. As we experience the desecration of our lands and waters, the extinguishing of species, and a loss of sacred connection to the Earth, we look to emerging stories. Our podcast features exclusive interviews, narrated essays, stories and more.

Amitav Ghosh is an Indian-born scholar, novelist, and nonfiction writer. His many books include The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable, in which he explores our imaginative failure in an age of ecological crisis. In this interview, Amitav speaks about his newest book, The Nutmeg’s Curse: Parables for a Planet in Crisis, and how the widespread silencing of nonhuman voices is deeply entangled in capitalism and the geopolitical structures that sustain it. Storytellers, he says, must lead us in the necessary work of collective reimagining: de-centering human narratives and re-centering stories of the land.

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Photo by Sumit Dayal

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