Resurgence of (inter)connectivity : an ecocritical approach to nature, animal and body in Hong Kong literature

Thesis (M.Phil.)--Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, 2009

In recent years, ecological consciousness has gradually grown owing to the permeating anxiety of the environmental crises and catastrophes which have happened or are happening all over the world. People are urged to rethink their relationship with nature and engage with it in a more environmentally friendly manner. This is also true in Hong Kong. For example some movies portray ecological disasters to alert audiences and many television programmes promote alternative life styles in order to encourage conservation of the rural areas and marine ecosystem.Actually, since the 1970s, Western philosophy has started “greening” and the school of ecocriticism on literature and culture emerged. Ecocriticism reproaches the classical mechanical worldview of modern science and considers it one of the causes of current environmental crises. The school calls for a paradigm shift from the mechanical worldview to a holistic one which treats nature as a huge network and renames it as ecosystem, and highlights the connectivity between nature, animals and humans.Overwhelmed by the concerns about cultural identity during the period before and after the handover of Hong Kong from the British government to the People’s Republic of China, discussions of Hong Kong literature were inevitably slanted towards identity issues, and other critical perspectives were undermined. However, the recent pervading discussion of environmental issues such as the global warming and climate change opens up the possibility to investigate Hong Kong literature from an ecocritical approach. In this thesis, I take the holistic worldview of ecology as a point of departure to create my own ecocritical framework for analyzing Hong Kong literature and bring a brand new perspective on the almost unexplored areas, namely nature, animal and human body. My thesis stresses (1) the connectivity between humans and nature, (2) the interconnectedness and interdependency between humans and animals, and (3) the (re-)connection of the alleged disembodied soul to the human body, which in turn connects to the bigger body, i.e. the earth. This cyclic connection between nature, animals and the human body elucidates the meaning of the “inter” in interconnectivity – the key for the realization of ecosystem as a huge network.