Ziggy Stardust and the Irrawaddy Dolphin: Prospects for a Transboundary Ecocriticism in Southeast Asia

Abstract

The introduction to this book began with the story of the furtive jungle cat (Felis chaus) rediscovered, after a nearly forty-year absence, in Chiang Mai Province, northern Thailand, through the use of camera trap technology (chapter 1). To be certain, instances of environmental hope - such as the return of an animal once regarded as extinct to an area - continue to surface in Southeast Asia despite the ongoing degradation of the biological systems and other-than-human communities of the region. Given the well-proportioned zoological (for instance, chapters 2, 5, and 6) and botanical (chapters 8, 9, and 10) emphases of the twelve contributions to Southeast Asian Ecocriticism, it is fitting, then, to open this epilogue with an example of the resilience, diversity, and fragility of the plant domain. To this effect, in Nan, Thailand, about four hundred kilometers east of Omkoi where the swamp cats were photographed in early 2017, botanists have identified a new species of banana (Musa nanensis) at a site near the Lao border. With leaves distinctly thicker than its cosmopolitan counterparts, kluai si Nan - or "banana pride of Nan" - is also unique within the Musaceae plant family for its three inner and three outer tepals fused into a tube. Initially collected in 2002 and now with an estimated fifty plants existing in the wild, the extremely localized banana is critically endangered due to widespread deforestation and, accordingly, requires immediate conservation attention.