Industrial Versus Environmental Culture: A Critique of Anthropocentrism in Nadine Gordimer's Get A Life

Abstract

This research work attempts to show how Nadine Gordimer's Get A Life advocates for environmental culture rejecting the logic of industrial culture. The research focuses on how different projects launched in the name of progress and development of African indigenous landscape turn out to be self destructive. The anthropocentric culture gives prominence to the technologies that result in the environmental destruction. In the name of development like construction of toll roads, nuclear reactors, dams and industrial states, the natural world is destroyed. The displacement of Amadiba village because of the toll highway and the destruction of the Okavango delta's natural creation which can be seen from the outer space in the novel are examples of environmental destruction by industrial culture. Through the eco-conscious characters like Paul, Derek and Thapelo and their constant opposition of the noxious projects proposed in South African land, the novel rejects industrialization thereby advocating the bio-centric worldview. The existence of human beings as well as the planet is ensured only when the nature is preserved.