Rethinking African Ecocriticism Beyond Regional Boundaries: Corporate Capitalism, Global Periphery and Subalternity in Nigerian Novels

ABSTRACT

This article interrogates the epistemological grounding of African ecocriticism and the semantic knowledge of the label in global and Africa-centred eco-critical discourse. Drawing on important insights associated with postcolonial (eco-critical) theory, it contends that the label triggers local-global dichotomy and crises of taxonomy, identity and belonging, since it arguably constructs the image of otherness for environmental criticism in Africa. We argue that the physical world is a composite of ecosystems, hence the label is seemingly misleading, constricting, and indicts African agency in the inferiorisation of its knowledge production. The eco-poetics of two Nigerian writers is equally analysed, focalising the subtexts of corporate capitalism and how life-forms in Africa interconnect with the rest of the world. We submit that the activities of corporate powers reinforce their primordial conception of postcolonial society as the global periphery propitious for primitive accumulation at the expense of the environment and Indigenous rights.

KEYWORDS:

• African ecocriticism
• African literature
• Niger Delta crisis
• Helon Habila
• Shell Nigeria

Disclosure statement

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

Notes

1. See the Collaborative on Health and the Environment’s article ‘Global Environment’ https://www.healthandenvironment.org/environmental-health/environmental-risks/global-environment

2. This term was coined by David Harvey.

3. See theguardian https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/jan/20/leonardi-dicaprio-savages-corporate-greed–big-oil-enough-is-enough

4. Ibid.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Emmanuel Adeniyi

Emmanuel Adeniyi is of the Department of English and Literary Studies, Federal University Oye-Ekiti, Ekiti State, Nigeria. He is a fellow of the African Studies Center Leiden (ASCL), Forum Transregionale Studien, Berlin, Germany, and World Journalism Institute (WJI), New York, USA. His research interest covers Diaspora/Migration Studies, Postcolonial Literature, Transcultural Studies, Literary Stylistics, Film and Media Studies, Subaltern Studies, among others. He has published in reputable journals, including African Studies, Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction, Journal of Literary Studies, and many others in Europe, Asia, Africa, and the USA.

Patience Ngozika

Patience Ngozika recently graduated from the Department of English and Literary Studies, Federal University Oye-Ekiti, Ekiti State, Nigeria.