Keynote Address by Amitav Ghosh: The Great Derangement

Keynote Address for the Annual Conference of the Center for Global Asia: Asia and Intra-Asian Connections

The continent of Asia is conceptually critical to every aspect of the Anthropocene: its causes, its philosophical and historical implications, and to the possibility of a global response to it. It takes only a moment's thought for this to be obvious. Yet, strangely, the implications are rarely reckoned with -- and this may be because the discourse around the Anthropocene and climate matters, remains largely Eurocentric. In his lecture, Amitav Ghosh will examine the role of Asia, and of European imperialism, in precipitating the current climate crisis.

Amitav Ghosh was born in Calcutta and grew up in India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. He studied in Delhi, Oxford and Alexandria and is the author of The Circle of Reason, The Shadow Lines, In An Antique Land, Dancing in Cambodia, The Calcutta Chromosome, The Glass Palace, The Hungry Tide, and the Ibis Trilogy (Sea of Poppies, River of Smoke, and Flood of Fire). His most recent book is entitled The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable. His books have won prizes in India, Europe and Myanmar and he has received honorary degrees from the Sorbonne, Paris, and Queens College, New York. He divides his time between Brooklyn, Goa and Calcutta.