A Critical Study of Ecological Justice in Tokarczuk’s The World in Your Mind

Authors

  • Rida Akhtar Ghumman PhD Scholar, Department of English, International Islamic University, Islamabad, Pakistan.
  • Dr. Fauzia Janjua Associate Professor/Dean of Social Science and Humanities, International Islamic University, Islamabad, Pakistan.

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.55737/qjssh.vi-i.25298

Keywords:

Ecology, Eco-justice, Mother Earth, Sustainability

Abstract

There is a role that every individual must play for Mother Earth to sustain itself beyond the anthropocentric understanding of the world i.e. human beings and their needs are solely central to the world. As such belief systems have only harmed the planet and resultantly the very people inhabiting it. This research extrapolates the idea of ecological justice "justice to nature" (Wienhues 2017): creating a system that is nearer to a sustainable balance between humans and the ecology around them. Are there any individualized roles that any people could play for a just ecological system? The World in Your Mind (Tokarczuk & Croft, 2017) allows a reading of such an ecological justice at play where the protagonist traces a journey – outwards and inwards – through movement, she has understood a balanced subjectivity in contrast with the world around.

Author Biography

  • Rida Akhtar Ghumman, PhD Scholar, Department of English, International Islamic University, Islamabad, Pakistan.

    Corresponding Author: ridaakhtarghumman@yahoo.com

References

Cranston, M. (1984). Rousseau on equality. Social Philosophy and Policy, 2(1), 115-124. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0265052500000935

De Sena, A. (2024). Social Justice, Human Rights, and Environmental Crisis in Álvaro Colomer's Ahora llega el silencio (2019). Climate Literacy in Education, 2(1). https://doi.org/10.24926/cle.v2i1.6006

Gilbert, B. (2024). The problem of anthropocentrism and the humankind of personhood. Philosophy & Social Criticism, 50(9), 1373-1393. https://doi.org/10.1177/01914537221110900

Hebbar, P. V., & Mallya, A. G. (2024). Exploring Eco criticism: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Literature and the Environment. International Journal of Research and Analytical Reviews (IJRAR), 11(1), 69-73. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4686545

Jarzyńska, K. (2024). Tender Transgressions: Olga Tokarczuk’s Exercises in Postsecular Imagination. Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction, 65(3), 407-420. https://doi.org/10.1080/00111619.2023.2196390

Kortetmäki, T. (2017). Justice in and to nature: An application of the broad framework of environmental and ecological justice. Jyväskylä studies in education, psychology and social research, (587). http://urn.fi/URN:ISBN:978-951-39-7127-4

Lei, X. (2024). The nonhuman and coming community in the selected works of Olga Tokarczuk. Textual Practice, 1-19. https://doi.org/10.1080/0950236X.2024.2380267

Lodge, D., & Wood, N. (Eds.). (2008). Modern criticism and theory: A reader. Pearson Education.

Mignolo, W. D. (2011). The Darker Side of Western Modernity: Global Futures, Decolonial Options. Duke University Press, 2011. https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822394501

Muhsyanur, M., Murugesan, M., & Diwakar, S. (2024). Eco-Pedagogical Literature: Exploring Literature-Based Learning to Improve Environmental Literacy. HUMANIST: As’ adiyah International Journal of Humanities and Education, 1(1), 53-64. https://jurnallppm.iaiasadiyah.ac.id/index.php/humanist/article/view/100

Naess, A. (1993). Sustainability! The integral approach. Global Society: Journal of Interdisciplinary International Relations, 7(1), 66-72. https://doi.org/10.1080/13600829308443040

Ochwat, M., & Wójcik-Dudek, M. (2024). The Eco-Logic of Olga Tokarczuk’s Prose Worlds. Tenderness and Anger as the Pillars of a New Order. Er (r) go: Teoria, Literatura, Kultura, 1(48). https://doi.org/10.31261/errgo.14770

Panneels, I. (2013). ‘Map-i: On Walking’. Selected Essays from the - On-Walking Conference, Art Editions North, Art Editions North University of Sunderland, 2013, pp. 194–211, https://issuu.com/stereographic/docs/walkonconference

Rahim, A. R., Rahman, F., & Armin, M. A. (2024). Character's Attitudes toward the Environment in the Novel Bara by Febrialdi R.: Literary Ecological Study. Valley International Journal Digital Library, 1628-1643. https://doi.org/10.18535/ijsrm/v12i01.sh01

Sharma, S., & Pal, P. (2025). Ecology at the margins: epistemic and environmental injustices in Rohan Chakravarty’s comics. Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics, 16(1-2), 396-414. https://doi.org/10.1080/21504857.2024.2355942

Stibbe, A. (2015). Ecolinguistics: Language, ecology and the stories we live by. Routledge.

Tokarczuk, O. (2019). Nobel Lecture by Olga Tokarczuk–Nobel Laureate in Literature 2018. Svenska Akademien. Accessed, 28. https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/2018/tokarczuk/lecture/

Tokarczuk, O., & Jennifer, C. (2019). Flights. First Riverhead trade paperback edition, Riverhead Books,

Wienhues, A. (2017). Sharing the earth: A biocentric account of ecological justice. Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics, 30(3), 367-385. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10806-017-9672-9

Downloads

Published

2025-03-30

Issue

Section

Articles

How to Cite

Ghumman, R. A., & Janjua, F. (2025). A Critical Study of Ecological Justice in Tokarczuk’s The World in Your Mind. Qlantic Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities, 6(1), 298-304. https://doi.org/10.55737/qjssh.vi-i.25298