An Ecotopian Lexicon curated by Matthew Schneider-Mayerson, Yale University
Sociologists Allison Ford and Kari Marie Norgaard write, "Ghurba is an Arabic word that has no English equivalent. It translates loosely as 'a longing for one’s homeland.' It evokes the deep connection that people have to their place of origin and the longing for place as something familiar and safe... In the age of anthropogenic climate change, we propose applying ghurba to name a longing for home that transcends place... Although tinged with the melancholy of nostalgia, ghurba substantiates the valuation of home as a conceptual space that can protect against both symbolic and physical violence. Such a longing makes slow violence more evident by calling attention to what we are losing, even as it slips away... We decided to borrow the word ghurba before the 2016 election, without knowing how extreme anti-Muslim and anti-Arab sentiment would get in Trump’s America. In the current political climate, we consider it especially important to acknowledge our gratitude, and to honor the beauty and richness of Arab cultures that are so often overlooked."
"Solastalgia" by Kate Shaw
Kimberly Sky Richards writes, “The term solastalgia was developed by Glenn Albrecht, a conservationist and environmental philosopher who was inspired by the people of the Upper Hunter region of New South Wales, Australia, a site of open-cut coal mining, pollution, and drought. Albrecht observed that residents of the Upper Hunter region seemed to be suffering from the sick landscape, and coined the term solastalgia to describe the sense of powerlessness and grief experienced by people when their homeland is under duress. Solastalgia draws on the Latin word solacium (comfort) and the Greek root algia (pain, suffering, sickness) to convey the anxiety caused by the inability to derive solace from one’s home in the face of distressing events. It is part and parcel of a new abnormal of the Anthropocene, characterized by uncertainty, unpredictability, chaos, relentless change, and deep distress caused by a changing climate, erratic weather, and species extinction.”
In her artist statement, Kate Shaw writes, “My work imagines solastalgia as a memory—perhaps embedded in human DNA—and depicts a cave in which ‘we’ see through the eyes of an ancestor peering from their shelter onto a landscape we have an uncanny longing for, like a primal homesickness.”
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