Ecological crisis and extractive capitalism in Sangihe: A Garrardian reading of Perempuan yang Menunggu di Lorong Menuju Laut

Windi Ani Novela; Sesilia Seli; Ahmad Rabiul Muzammil

doi:10.12928/notion.v8i2.16103

Authors

Windi Ani Novela Universitas Tanjungpura, Pontianak, Indonesia
Sesilia Seli Universitas Tanjungpura, Pontianak, Indonesia https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4590-9037
Ahmad Rabiul Muzammil Universitas Tanjungpura, Pontianak, Indonesia https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2311-5164

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.12928/notion.v8i2.16103

Keywords:

Ecocriticism, Extractive capitalism, Indonesian literature, Environmental humanities, Dian Purnomo

Abstract

Ecological crisis has become a prominent theme in contemporary Indonesian literature, particularly in narratives portraying the environmental consequences of extractive industries. This study examines how ecological crisis is represented in Dian Purnomo’s Perempuan yang Menunggu di Lorong Menuju Laut (2nd ed.), set in the mining-affected Sangihe Islands. Using qualitative textual analysis, 89 purposively selected textual units from p. 3–271 were coded according to Greg Garrard’s tropes of pollution and earth and interpreted ecocritically, with extractive capitalism serving as the interpretive horizon rather than a second analytical lens. Pollution appears as mercury-contaminated wells, discolored rivers, polluted seas, damaged burial grounds, and the gendered burden of water insecurity, all normalized as conditions of mining. The earth is constructed as a living, maternal, ancestral, and ethically agentive entity whose wounding registers the disruption of ecological dwelling. Pairing the two tropes reveals what single-trope or socio-political readings cannot: that material contamination and relational loss are mutually constitutive, and that extractive capitalism is critiqued as a system dissolving the reciprocal conditions of inhabitation. The study extends Garrard’s framework to contemporary Indonesian fiction and suggests the analytical value of pairing materialist and relational tropes.

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