A COMPARATIVE ECO-QUEER ANALYSIS OF THE SELECTED POEMS OF ALLEN GINSBERG, THOM GUNN, AND AGHA SHAHID ALI
Keywords:
Ecocriticism, Queer Ecology, Nature, Sexuality, Body, Earth, Homosexuality, HeterosexualityAbstract
Ginsberg is the American poet of Beat school. Agha Shahid Ali is the Indian poet who settled in America just like the British poet Thom Gunn. These three poets are famous for their sexual concerns as are dealt in their poetical works. But apart from representing the queer-sexual desire they also deal with the environmental and natural issues. This intersection between two different concerns is remarkable so far as they provide support and strength to each other. Sexual diversity and biodiversity both are vulnerable due to the dominant discourses of the world like anthropocentrism and heteronormativity. Queer Ecology or Eco-Queer approach is the field which discusses the ecocritical and queer-sexual issues for their mutual interdependence. One the one hand it tries to protect the natural world of flora and fauna and on the other the sexual minorities. The marginal, negated, ignored, suppressed, oppressed, and exploited condition of both (natural world and sexual diversities) interconnects them to resist the dominant ideological discourses. Just like the usefulness of the non-human things is considered only in the terms of their being useful to human beings similarly the usefulness of sexual intercourse is seen important only if it is reproductive. Non-reproductive sexual acts are looked down upon and are rejected by the social structures. The literary works like the poetry of these three poets resist this power politics of natural world and sexual desire and try to liberate both of them from the constraints and boundaries imposed upon them.
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References
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