The Anthropocene Catastrophe: The Mystery of the Disappearance of Matacao in Through the Arc of the Rain Forest

Juan LONG, Qian ZHANG

Abstract


The Japanese-American writer Karen Tei Yamashita’s first novel Through the Arc of the Rain Forest discloses the tremendous impact of technological activities on the natural environment in the Anthropocene. Centering on the mystery of the disappearance of Matacao in this novel, the present paper expounds that its disappearance is an environmental catastrophe of the Anthropocene resulting from the retaliation of nature for the replacement of it by human technological activities under the domination of the scientific and technological rationality. Yamashita’s presentation of the disappearance of Matacao serves as a warning to the world, aiming to advocate that the technological activities should not be controlled only by the scientific and technological rationality, but should recognize and respect the irreplaceability of nature, otherwise these activities will be retaliated by nature, triggering environmental disasters in the Anthropocene, bringing destruction to the Earth and the technological civilization.

 


Keywords


Anthropocene; Karen Tei Yamashita; Through the Arc of the Rain Forest; Scientific and technological rationality

Full Text:

PDF

References


Adams, B. (2018). Environmental, justice, aesthetics: Through the arc of the rain forest and my year of meats. In A. R. Lee (Ed.), Karen tei yamashita: Fictions of magic and memory (pp.73-89). Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.

Gamber, J. B. (2018). “Dancing with goblins in plastic jungles”: History, nikkei transnationalism, and romantic environmentalism in through the arc of the rain forest. In A. R. Lee (Ed.), Karen tei yamashita: Fictions of magic and memory (pp.39-58). Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.

Koontz, A. (2018). Spectres of the past: The complexities of nature and culture in through the arc of the rain forest. Occams Razor, (8), 17-25.

Larson, M. (2021). Accumulating and realizing the radical potential of catastrophe in karen tei yamashita’s through the arc of the rain forest. Utopian Studies, 32(3), 494-512.

Lee, A. R. (2018). Speaking craft: An interview with karen tei yamashita. In A. R. Lee (Ed.), Karen tei yamashita: Fictions of magic and memory (pp.177-188). Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.

Pan, H. L. (2007). Scientific and technological rationality and value rationality. Beijing: Central Compilation & Translation Press.

Simal, B. (2010). The junkyard in the jungle: Transnational, transnatural nature in karen tei yamashita’s through the arc of the rain forest. Journal of Transnational American Studies, 2(1), 1-25.

Yamashita, K. T. (1990). Through the arc of the rain forest. Minneapolis: Coffee House Press.

Yang, Y. Y. (2011). Who changed our food: Food writing and environmental warning in contemporary American ecological literature. Contemporary Literary Criticism, (2), 113-116.

Yu, Z. N. (2021). On the three relationships implied in the harmony between human and nature. Social Sciences in Yunnan, (1), 24-30.




DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3968/12900

Refbacks

  • There are currently no refbacks.


Copyright (c) 2023 Author(s)

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Reminder

  • How to do online submission to another Journal?
  • If you have already registered in Journal A, then how can you submit another article to Journal B? It takes two steps to make it happen:

1. Register yourself in Journal B as an Author

  • Find the journal you want to submit to in CATEGORIES, click on “VIEW JOURNAL”, “Online Submissions”, “GO TO LOGIN” and “Edit My Profile”. Check “Author” on the “Edit Profile” page, then “Save”.

2. Submission

Online Submission: http://cscanada.org/index.php/css/submission/wizard

  • Go to “User Home”, and click on “Author” under the name of Journal B. You may start a New Submission by clicking on “CLICK HERE”.
  • We only use four mailboxes as follows to deal with issues about paper acceptance, payment and submission of electronic versions of our journals to databases: caooc@hotmail.com; office@cscanada.net; ccc@cscanada.net; ccc@cscanada.org

 Articles published in Canadian Social Science are licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC-BY).

 

Canadian Social Science Editorial Office

Address: 1020 Bouvier Street, Suite 400, Quebec City, Quebec, G2K 0K9, Canada.
Telephone: 1-514-558 6138 
Website: Http://www.cscanada.net; Http://www.cscanada.org 
E-mail:caooc@hotmail.com; office@cscanada.net

Copyright © Canadian Academy of Oriental and Occidental Culture