Sensual engagement as synthesis with the natural world in Arundhati Roy and Ali Smith

Abstract

Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things and Ali Smith’s Autumn are ecologically engaged works of fiction which can be said to endorse a synthesised mode of existence with the natural world. By drawing contrasts between engaged sensory perception and hidebound human conceptualisations of the world, Roy and Smith highlight how the latter are often informed by fear of the unknown. In the Spell of The Sensuous, David Abram awakens us to the ecological importance of synthesis with the natural world through sensory experience, which has largely been abandoned as a mode of perception in favour of modern, human-centric modes of living. Roy and Smith create moral distinctions among characters according to their relationship with the natural world, and drawing on Abram’s illuminating acknowledgement of sensory perception, this article explores how such distinctions establish an aspiration towards a new ecological and political ethic which is grounded in empathy and respect for all matter that humans encounter.