The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable

Across all three sections of The Great Derangement, Ghosh reveals a world shaped as much by the agency of nonhuman actors as by humans. Throughout the book, Ghosh argues that nonhuman entities including plants, animals, landscapes, weather systems, and even the planet itself demonstrate the same “elements of agency and consciousness” as humans (63). Ghosh argues that nonhuman entities shape human behavior and alter their own behavior in response to the climate crisis. The nonhuman world is always communicating with humans, Ghosh argues, and humans must learn to listen. He contrasts this worldview with that of Enlightenment-era philosophers like René Descartes, who argued that only humans have intelligence, agency, and consciousness.

In The Great Derangement, Ghosh argues that the challenges of “the Anthropocene [have] forced us to recognize that there are other, fully aware eyes looking over our shoulders” and monitoring our response to the crisis (65). These “fully aware eyes” invite us to address the climate crisis in collaboration with the nonhuman world around us. His description of the Sundarban forest, which is often the site of deadly encounters between humans and tigers, offers a clear view of this mutual awareness: “[T]o look into the tiger’s eyes is to recognize a presence of which you are already aware; and in that moment of contact you realize that this presence possesses a similar awareness of you, even though it is not human” (29).