To Dwell and To Reinhabit: Kiana Davenports’s House of Many Gods as Bioregional Literature
Abstract
Environmental degradation has become a pivotal issue in Hawaiâi nowadays. The policies of United Statesâgovernment and military has shaped the Hawaiâian ecology. Through the process of ecological imperialism,started from the beginning of American colonialism, both the Hawaiâianâs landscape and their connection withthe environment is disrupted. Modern Hawaiâian ecology nowadays is a postcolonial ecology, which was, andstill is molded by the American imperial power. As a product of colonialism, Hawaiâiansâ have becomealienated with their ancestral traditions, especially regarding interrelation between human and non-human.Taking cues from Lawrence Buellâs assertion that environmental crisis is a crisis of the imagination, modernHawaiâian literature tries to reorient humanânon human relationship from indigenous Hawaiâianepistemology. As seen in Kiana Davenportâs the House of Many Gods, traditional Hawaiâian perspective isreimagined to reterritorialize Hawaiâians in their previous environmental outlook, before the arrival of theAmericans. This study argues that by several bioregional concepts such as dwelling, and reinhabit, KianaDavenportâs the House of Many Gods can be stated as a bioregional literature.
Downloads
References
Aberley, D. (1993). Boundaries of Home: Mapping for Local Empowerment. Gabriola Island, B.C.: New Catalyst.
Berg, P & Dasmann, R. (1977). “Reinhabiting California.” The Ecologist 7.10: 399–401.
Buell, L. (1995). The Environmental Imagination: Thoreau, Nature Writing and the Formation of American Culture. Cambridge: MA Harvard University Press.
Crosby, A. W. (1986). Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of Europe, 900-1900. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Davenport, K. (2006). House of Many Gods. New York: Random House Inc.
De Loughrey, E & Handley, G.B. (2011). Postcolonial Ecologies : Literature of the Environment Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Heise, U. K. (2008). “Ecocriticism and the Transnational Turn in American Studies.” American Literary History. Vol. 20 (1-2), pp. 381-404.
Huggan, G &Tiffin, H. (2010). Postcolonial Ecocriticism: Literature, Animals, Environments. New York: Routledge.
Lych, T & Glotfelty, C. (2012). The Bioregional Imagination : Literature, Ecology and Place. Athens: University of Georgia Press.
Nixon, R. (2011). Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor. Harvard: Harvard University Press.
Sale, K. (1985). Dwellers in the Land: The Bioregional Vision. Athens: University of Georgia Press.
Said, E. (1993). Culture and Imperialism. New York: Vintage Books.
Worster, D. (1985). Nature’s Economy: A History of Ecological Ideas, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Copyright (c) 2018 Owned by the Author(s), published by Berumpun: International Journal of Social, Politics and Humanities
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
