Bones of corals made: ecology and war in Gunesekara'sReef (original) (raw)

Textual Practice, 2013

Abstract

This essay explores the environmental aesthetic of Romesh Gunesekara's Reef and analyses its unique commentary on the conflation of political and ecological violence in Sri Lanka. The essay examines the ways in which aesthetic works circumscribe the temporal dislocation and conceptual difficulties attributed to slowly evolving environmental degradation. Reef is a novel about the ‘process’ of environmental damage rather than a direct engagement with the causality of such irreversible transformation. Its reticence about a scopic elaboration of environmental destruction mirrors the political and geographical ‘invisibility’ of the despoilation of Sri Lanka's coral reefs.

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