In his book The Nutmeg’s Curse, scholar Amitav Ghosh writes, “the planet will never come alive for you unless your songs and stories give life to all the beings seen and unseen that inhabit a living Earth,”—seeding a shift in consciousness begins with the stories we tell. In this wide-ranging interview from our archives, Amitav explores the themes of his recent work, including the insidious philosophy that the Earth is inert and how this belief paved the way for the implementation of violent projects around the globe, such as the genocide of Indigenous people and the monolith of capitalism. Unpacking the rise and legacy of an ideology of mastery, Amitav asks, if such conquests were made possible by the narrative of an inanimate Earth, what stories can now be imagined to help us recognize the world as sacred and alive? 

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Photo by Sumit Dayal.

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