Ecological Displacement and the Loss of Home: Solastalgia and Ecological Grief in Linda Hogan’s Solar Storms
Keywords:
Solar Storms, ecocriticism, solastalgia, ecological grief, ecological displacement, environmental lossAbstract
The objective of this study is to explore whether or not Linda Hogan’s Solar Storms (1995) represents environmental destruction not only as physical damage to land and water but as a profound disruption of the lived experience of place for Indigenous communities on an emotional, cultural, and spiritual basis. Ecocriticism is used as a theoretical framework for this paper, whereas solastalgia and ecological grief provide its basic conceptual frameworks. The research method used in this study is textual analysis, with the help of which it is investigated how environmental transformation, particularly the construction of a hydroelectric dam, produces distress over the alteration of the homeland and grief over the destruction of the familiar, homely landscape. The study explores how solastalgia and ecological grief identify different dimensions of environmental loss and distress within an altered landscape and the resultant mourning for ecological loss, and how their intersection in Solar Storms produces a sense of ecological displacement. The term ecological displacement here is not used as an additional theoretical framework; rather, it helps synthesise an analytical concept for understanding how environmental destruction disrupts place, belonging, memory, cultural continuity, spirituality, and human–more-than-human relationships simultaneously. The analysis shows how the destruction of land and water is connected with the destruction of animals and plants and how it impacts community practices and Indigenous ways of knowing and living. Hogan portrayal of grief is not just as passive suffering but as an active source of recognition, solidarity, reclamation, and resistance. The paper concludes with the argument that Solar Storms transforms environmental loss into a complex narrative of ecological displacement in which resistance and mourning are intermingled reactions to the disruption of home and place.
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