Mimetic designs in Helon Habila’s Oil on Water

Abstract

The stark condition of the Niger Delta region is a factual reality, and Helon Habila’s Oil on Water has been read by several critics as a plausible reflection of this reality, glossing over the novel’s fictive nature and the aesthetic choices of its configuration. This paper argues that what is perceived as plausibility in the representation of reality in Oil on Water is instead a simulated appearance of reality suggested by Habila’s aesthetic choices. It demonstrates this with insights from the principle of mimesis and by accounting for three aesthetic choices in Oil on Water such as metafictionality, the animist worldview, and metaphors. These aesthetic choices not only attempt to imitate reality, but they also challenge conventional narrative, problematize the relation between fiction and fact in its simulation of reality, and imbue the novel with mimetic paradoxes.

Keywords:

• Mimesis
• fiction
• metafictionality
• animist worldview
• metaphors

Acknowledgements

I want to thank Professor Onyemaechi Udumukwu, my teacher whose intellectual guide has continued to shape my critical engagements, and my project supervisors Omeh Ngwoke (Reader) and Oyeh Otu (Reader) during my PhD programme, for their intellectual support. I also thank the editor and reviewers of JALA for their excellent feedback which has strengthened the argument in this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

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Okwudiri Anasiudu

Okwudiri Anasiudu graduated with a First Class and acquired his PhD from the Department of English Studies at the University of Port Harcourt, Nigeria. His interests are in the patterns of representations in Anglophone Literature, Pop Culture, Critical Theory, Afropolitanism, Stylistics of Literature and other Discourses with insights drawn from Functional and Critical Linguistics, and Cultural Studies. He seeks a transdisciplinary synergy in the reading and interpretation of literature and texts. He has been published in journals such as Topics in Linguistics, African Identities, Nordic Journal of African Studies, Journal of Gender and Power, Imbizo, Journal of Language Culture and Society, Journal on Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities, Journal of Language and Literature.