Futurizing Geo-tropicality: Blue (Infra)structuralism and the Indian Ocean in Romesh Gunesekera’s Reef

This article attempts to futurize the notion of “geo-tropicality” by means of negotiating the nuanced correspondences between blue (infra)structuralism and coastal development in the context of the Indian Ocean and Sri Lanka’s coast. Whereas Eurocentric colonial discourses view tropicality in terms of the straightjacket of exoticism, geo-tropicality is onto-politically resubjected to the processes of decoloniality and futurization—a combined grammatology that entails a sort of epistemic unfolding of tropicality in alignment with the smooth politics on the plane of exteriority so as to herald the terrible enunciations of climate change and biodiversity loss. It is by working out geo-tropicality as an epistemic lens that this article puts the spotlight on what the futurity of tropicality holds in store for a New Earth, taking substantial recourse to Romesh Gunesekera’s novel Reef. Finally, it argues for systematic dismissal of structured and stratified understandings of the Tropics which stands premised on the micropolitics of alliance.