Deconstructive Ecocriticism in Jesmyn Ward`s Sing, Unburied, Sing (2017)

Abstract

This thesis explores environmental racism and dehumanization of African Americans through a critical analysis of Jesmyn Ward`s Sing, Unburied, Sing (2017) using Timothy Clark's theorization of deconstructive ecocriticism and Jacques Derrida's concept of binary oppositions as its theoretical framework. American society continues to be plagued by structural racism that reappears in different forms in the contemporary US with its roots in the country‘s past. This thesis focuses on the construction of the natural world by white supremacists based on a series of dichotomizations that link African Americans to the nonhuman world. The thesis focuses on the white American attitudes toward the nonhuman world and the negative association of African Americans with the former as represented in Jesmyn Ward‘s Sing, Unburied, Sing. Through a critical engagement with the text via a conceptual framework drawn from Timothy Clark`s deconstructive ecocriticism and Jacques Derrida`s concept of binary oppositions, this thesis argues that African Americans‘ marginalization and dehumanization through an association with animals and the degraded environment, demonstrates a matrix of environmental injustice, social inequality, and persistent trauma. Keywords: deconstructive ecocriticism, environmental racism, nonhuman world, degraded environment, environmental injustice, trauma