The Human Catalyst and Extractivist Fiction: A Close Reading of Siddhartha Sarma’s Year of the Weeds and Pundalik N Naik’s The Upheaval

Authors

Elwin Susan John Dr, Sophia College for Women, MumbaiFollow

Author ORCID Identifier

https://orcid.org/0009-0000-4633-0011

Abstract

Literary narratives have been abetting the various global faces of climate crisis, ever since the disciplines of humanities and social sciences have become vocal about the Anthropocene. The discussions have been mostly centered around the discourses of capitalism, imperialism, rights and subalterity. By reading some of these foundational grips on ecological crisis, the present essay analyses literary narratives on mining and extraction in India from the standpoint of a human catalyst; which is defined as an entity that can cause a chain reaction, that may or may not result in the annihilation of the initial catalyst. The essay will begin with an interrogation of ‘what it means to be human’ and will further probe into the bio-genetic structures that are embedded in the discursive transactions on mining and extraction related narratives in India.

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.

Recommended Citation

John, Elwin S.. "The Human Catalyst and Extractivist Fiction: A Close Reading of Siddhartha Sarma’s Year of the Weeds and Pundalik N Naik’s The Upheaval." Critical Humanities 3, 2 (2025). DOI: https://doi.org/10.33470/2836-3140.1062