Urban Toxic Narrative

The novel Animal's People by the contemporary British writer Indra Sinha,was published in 2007 and was nominated for the “Man Booker” award in the same year.The novel is adapted from a real story,which narrates a toxic gas leak accident in Khaufpur,India.This accident has brought about unprecedented disasters to the effect that a great number of the Khaufpuris suffer from immense physical pains and overwhelming traumas.The protagonist “Animal”,as a representative of the city,becomes so deformed due to the toxic gas leaking.Another disastrous impact of the accident is on the local environment.Khaufpur has since then been enveloped in the danger of the haunting toxic gas.But the Kampani company manipulated by the U.S.government,as the culprit of the accident,has repeatedly evaded from responsibility for decades.The catastrophic toxic pollution and the long-term absence of fairness and justice thus have triggered the anti-toxic environmental movement in Khaufpur.The existing studies on Animal's People mainly cover three perspectives: ethics,the protection of urban ecology and postcolonial ecocriticism.Although some studies involve ecological issues,scholars rarely interpret the effect of toxic pollution on the urban ecology from the perspective of ecocriticism.Therefore,this thesis aims to analyze the urban toxic narrative in Animal's People by combining the theory of urban ecocriticism and material ecocriticism.In the view of material ecocriticism,toxicity as a matter is itself a text,which has narrative agency.On the one hand,its narrativity is reflected in the negative effect of toxicity on both human and non-human nature.On the other hand,the interaction between toxicity and human as well as non-human nature is also the process to generate meaning.From the perspective of urban ecocriticism,urban toxicity is the significant cause of urban pollution.So the writing of urban toxicity can help people realize the importance of protecting the urban nature and the study on it can help break the long silence on urban nature within the framework of ecocriticism.The analysis of urban toxic narrative in Indra Sinha's novel Animal's People is mainly divided into three parts: toxic body narrative,toxic place narrative and anti-toxic eco-cosmopolitanism.Firstly,the toxic body narrates the ecosickness in the city,illustrated in the physical morbidity and the mental trauma caused by the disaster.The poisonous gas not only brings to people in Khaufpur great physical suffering,but alsointolerable trauma.Secondly,the toxic place narrates the slow violence in the city.The toxicity destroys the whole city silently and constantly.The toxic places headed by the Kampani factory become the text to record the slow violence.The environmental injustice which the toxic place stands for in the global context is the more deadly slow violence.In order to resist the environmental injustice behind the toxic pollution,the novel reveals the importance of constructing the anti-toxic eco-cosmopolitanism.The local anti-toxic movement cannot fundamentally and completely solve the toxic troubles brought about by transnational capitalism which lasts for many years.Only the anti-toxic environmental justice movement in the global context under the guidance of eco-cosmopolitanism can truly bring environmental fairness and justice to the urban marginalized population.Such an analysis on the novel Animal's People will reveal the physical sufferings and mental trauma on the part of the local citizens as well as the serious deterioration of the urban environment caused by the toxic pollution.The study of urban toxic narrative thus demonstrates the importance of city-based eco-cosmopolitanism in asserting ecological justice and protecting urban nature.