Central Asian Eco-Queer Imagination: On Drought and Water

• In Event: Eco-Mnemonics as Colonial Critique in Literature and the Arts

Abstract

This paper examines queer ecocriticism in Central Asian visual and literary narratives surrounding post-Soviet water politics and increasing droughts in the region. In these narratives, detrimental and often irreversible changes in indigenous ecosystems, caused by the Russian/Soviet imperial rule's utilitarian hand, are mediated through gendered transformations. By revisiting the histories of the drying of the Aral and Balkhash water bodies, Uzbekistani and Kazakhstani writers and artists reimagine human-nature relationships beyond anthropocentrism and Soviet modernity.

Author

• Azhar Dyussekenova, U of Michigan