Whose land is it, really? And whose story? Hosting human and non-human refugees in Amitav Ghosh’s Gun Island

Abstract

The word hospitality includes the sense of hostility and a reciprocal exchange among equals. The accelerating human and non-human migrations caused by climate change call for a reclaiming of that complexity. Historically, the stranger, the barbarian, was the one deprived of the logos, the one not operating the language of the political centre. If, however, following Merleau-Ponty, the logos becomes the property of the living world, then it is not the human who can offer hospitality to other human and nonhuman strangers, but they all become guests in the living world with varying degrees of agency. Amitav Ghosh’s Gun Island explores the complexity of the notion of the host and the barbarian, questioning the Western belief in the primacy of human logos. It is shown both in the plot line and in the form of the novel which re-enacts the interplay between two modes: logos and mythos.