Postcolonial Environments in Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s Works (original) (raw)

This paper explores how Gabriel Garcia Marquez's fiction engages with and reflects on environmental degradation and the global climate crisis which has been a growing concern in the latter half of the twentieth century. The exploitation of the environment, particularly in erstwhile colonies, is attributed by the author to the transnational asymmetrical political and economic structures which were established during the colonial period and sustained through neocolonial assaults after decolonization. Further, it is suggested that exploitative approaches to the physical environment, in particular, and human/non-human others, in general, are generated by modern epistemic structures-it is argued that modern discourse, practices and institutions have become dominant and normative and thus they bring about the constant reproduction of practices on/in the environment which lead to its destruction. People are unable to act on/in-and, indeed, read-1) 'Environment' indicates the network of interrelationships between the human and non-human elements.