Slow Violence and the Womb: A Comparative Ecofeminist Analysis of Reproductive Justice in Linda Hogan's Solar Storms and Indra Sinha's Animal's People
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.24113/d3fwqm45Keywords:
Slow Violence; Ecofeminism; Reproductive Justice; Environmental Racism; Literary, ActivismAbstract
This paper undertakes a comparative ecofeminist analysis of Linda Hogan’s Solar Storms (1995) and Indra Sinha’s Animal’s People (2007), employing close reading and Rob Nixon’s concept of “slow violence” to examine how each novel situates the reproductive body as a primary site of industrial and colonial violence. The findings reveal that both texts depict reproductive harm – infertility, congenital anomalies, and intergenerational trauma – not as isolated medical conditions but as structural outcomes of environmental racism and neocolonial exploitation. Solar Storms foregrounds scars on Indigenous bodies and landscapes while emphasizing women’s intergenerational ecological knowledge as resistance. Animal’s People presents toxic embodiment and reproductive disorders as lasting legacies of the Bhopal disaster, with contaminated bodies functioning as testimony against corporate impunity. The paper concludes that both novels exemplify literary activism by rendering invisible toxicities visible and asserting that ecological justice and bodily autonomy are inseparably linked.
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