Tongues: On Longing and Belonging through Language ed. by Eufemia Fantetti, Leonarda Carranza, and Ayelet Tsabari (review)

Abstract

163 movements. Ghosh opens the chapter with a cursory mention of Gandhi but does not explain how he situates Gandhi’s politics in the tradition of vitalism (235). Similarly, in his discussions about recent court victories such as the verdict by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights that the government of Ecuador violated the Sarayaku people’s rights by “permitting an energy company to prospect for oil on their land without prior consultation” (237) and the granting of legal personhood to the Whanganui River (238), Ghosh does not analyze the relationship between vitalism and the courts, which he claims “are among the most redoubtable citadels of official modernity” (238). Is the extension of the legal rights of personhood a triumph of a vitalist politics, or is it proof that modernity is not monolithic but rather a complex structure comprising both mechanistic and vitalist worldviews? Such problematization might destabilize the dichotomy of modernity and vitalism that is the very foundation of the book. These are, however, minor issues that can be set aside for what is a timely intervention in contemporary discourses on climate change and its accelerating and widely growing socioeconomic effects. The book puts forward a new understanding of vitalism, which is well worth examining more closely. Ghosh writes in a jargon-free language that should be accessible to both academic scholars and curious readers interested in the subject. The book is written in Ghosh’s characteristically lively prose with narrative twists and turns that make it read more like a suspense thriller than elusive high theory. As a text that transgresses multiple genres, The Nutmeg’s Curse is both a stark warning against climate change denialism and a welcome addition to the ever-growing body of non-fiction about the present planetary crisis.