Niblett, Michael (2013) The “impossible quest for wholeness” : sugar, cassava, and the ecological aesthetic in The Guyana Quartet. Journal of Postcolonial Writing, Volume 49 (Number 2). pp. 148-160. doi:10.1080/17449855.2013.776374 ISSN 1744-9855.

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Abstract

This article explores how Wilson Harris’s aesthetic of the environment mediates both the specificity of Guyana’s topography and the dynamics of the capitalist world-ecology. Emphasizing Harris’s engagement with Amerindian cosmology, I suggest that his work seeks to drive beyond the specific form of the nature–society dialectic instantiated under capitalism. Arguing that literary forms are the abstract of specific socio-ecological relationships, the article considers how the novels of The Guyana Quartet register a tension between conflicting ecological complexes, one associated with the cultivation of the cash crop sugar, the other with the staple crop cassava. These conflicting ecologies become the structuring principles for opposing aesthetic modes: the aesthetics of sugar, mediating the impact of plantation capitalism on Guyana; and the aesthetics of cassava, as an aesthetic of the socio-ecological totality.

Item Type:	Journal Article
Divisions:	Faculty of Arts > English and Comparative Literary Studies > Yesu Persaud Centre for Caribbean Studies
Journal or Publication Title:	Journal of Postcolonial Writing
Publisher:	Routledge
ISSN:	1744-9855
Official Date:	2013
Dates:	Date Event 2013 Published
Volume:	Volume 49
Number:	Number 2
Page Range:	pp. 148-160
DOI:	10.1080/17449855.2013.776374
Status:	Peer Reviewed
Publication Status:	Published
Access rights to Published version:	Restricted or Subscription Access

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