Title:Lecture series highlights Voices on the Environment

Earlier this year, award-winning writer Amitav Ghosh spoke in Gaston Hall as part of the ongoing Voices on the Environment series.

Organized by The Earth Commons, the Georgetown Humanities Initiative, the Laboratory for Global Performance & Politics, and others, the annual series brings together a slate of lectures, screenings, and events that probe the “intersection of science, the humanities, and the arts that link environmental journalism, literary writing, activist performance, and critical approaches to climate change, the environment, and language.”

Ghosh, known for his groundbreaking novels and nonfiction works, blends styles and genres to explore the complex interplay between the climate crisis and the lasting legacy of colonialism. His most recent book, The Nutmeg’s Curse: Parables for a Planet in Crisis, traces 400 years of the production of nutmeg and mace in the Banda Islands, from the promise of prosperity, to the mass murder and plunder of colonialism, to the impacts of the climate crisis.

“The story of the Bandalese no longer seems so distant from our present predicament,” intoned Ghosh. “The continuities between the two are so pressing and so powerful that it could even be said that the fate of the Banda islands might be read as a template for the present.”

For Ghosh, the Banda Islands, a remote cluster of land in the Banda Sea, elucidate much of what is threatening the world. Rich soil, fertilized by volcanic ash, led to lush forests that provided the fertile breeding ground for the evolution of nutmeg and mace. The resulting centuries of bloodshed, strife, and extraction are lessons that cannot be forgotten.

“Humanity is today even more dependent on botanical matter than it was,” said Ghosh. “The idea that modern man has freed himself from the planet is not just absurd—it’s a dangerous delusion.”