Environmental Justice, Eco-cosmopolitanism and Neoliberalism as Reviewed in Select Indigenous Women Authors

Abstract

Neoliberalism, in terms of the unrestricted financial flow and freedom of the market, gives complete autonomy to the individual and is the key to the origin and sustenance of the Anthropocene. The neoliberal state apparatus facilitates capital accumulation, unrestricted individual enterprises and the privatisation of public enterprises. In its varied manifestations, it compromises the collective justice of communities, primarily environmental justice and ecological justice. Such denial of justice engenders an anthropogenic world. This paper, in this context, taking its cue from the texts of specific indigenous women authors, tries to understand how the Anthropocene problematises the possibility of an all-encompassing existence. This all-encompassing existence - eco-cosmopolitanism - envisages a world environmental citizenship that can ensure environmental justice. The specific instances are drawn from Leslie Marmon Silko’s Garden in the Dunes and Alexis Wright’s The Swan Book to illuminate how the neoliberal sensibility of the times undermines the idea of a sustainable environment and adds to the anthropogenic condition of the world.