Language, Literature and the Environment: Eco-Criticism from the African Perspectives

Introduction

The oversubscription to anthropocentric cosmology which places humanity at the centre of the biosphere and relegates nature to the periphery of human-environment interactions has been pilloried in many postcolonial eco-critical texts. Some of these texts, including Sule Egya’s Nature, Environment, and Activism in Nigerian Literature (Egya 2020); Jennifer Wenzel’s The Disposition of Nature: Environmental Crisis and World Literature (Wenzel 2019); Cajetan Iheka’s Naturalising Africa: Ecological Violence, Agency, and Postcolonial Resistance in African Literature (Iheka 2018) disapprove human domination of nature in postcolonial ecocritical discourse and advocate a mutualistic relationship between humans and nature. Apart from being a worthy ecocritical agenda, the position of these authors largely resonates with the major thrust of this special issue, which among other things, seeks to deepen the consciousness of human-nature mutualism in Africa. Beyond condemning the politics underlying human-nature oppositional binaries, this issue also advocates the necessity of ending humanity’s undue dominance over the environment. Existing studies have drawn attention to ecological imperialism and continued degradation of erstwhile colonised spaces by foreign and local capitalist elites through their institutional and global economic corporations. Furthermore, the injustice, imbalance, and power dialectics shaping human-nature relations similarly agitate the collective consciousness of eco-critical scholars, environmentalists, and Rights of Nature (RoN) activists globally (Strayer 2019). As demonstrated in the works of Sule Egya (2020), Jennifer Wenzel (2019), Cajetan Iheka (2018), Ogaga Okuyade (2013), Graham and Tiffin (2010), Bonnie Roos and Hunt (2010), and Upamanyu Mukherjee (2010), the environment is affected by man’s acquisitive instinct, thus turning it to a victim of human activities. Consequently, eco-critics stress the need for interdependence, interrelatedness and connectedness between man and nature, and challenge ecological injustice. They believe that the reckless spoliation of the biosphere through unfettered industrial activities stems from the warped belief that nature is inferior to humans. In other words, critiquing the objectivisation of nature and subjectivisation of humans constitute dominant tropes in eco-critical literature, while the central message is that the mindless destruction of the environment portends a great danger for humans, since their existence relies on environmental health and wellness. However, beyond the well-trod line of Western ecocritical interventions in the binarism of human-nature complementarity (Manes 1996, 24), we attempt a rupturing of narratives by providing nuanced engagement of postcolonial ecocritical discourse. Bringing these marginalised narratives into the mainstream enables an exploration of how African conceptualisation of the environment can provide alternative, albeit compatible, perspectives to the contemporary raging discourses on capitalism, ecology and the human environment.

Ecocriticism, in broad terms, is concerned with the exploration of diverse ways in which human societies and cultures have lived with nature. This includes the beneficial as well as the ecocidal. Much like the rest of the world, Africa is not immune to the swirling vortex of environmental degradation threatening both human and non-human existence. This tension may have triggered the interest of critics on the continent to study the deleterious effects of human activities on the global biosphere. Egya (2020), for instance, affirms the rising interest in eco-critical writings from Africa, and foregrounds the existence of primordial consciousness in the preservation and sustenance of nature in African religio-cultural epistemologies. Senayon (2012) also interrogates the complicity of both local and global forces in the destruction of environment in Africa and the role of African Literature in the critical examination of environmental despoliation orchestrated by human activities. Implicit in these works and several others is the suggestion that the current global trends in ecological degradation are outcrops of Euro-American modernity, leaving behind a trail of environmental problems in the global south. This can further be situated within the argument that the politics underlying huge capital flows from the global periphery to the centre and the consequential destruction of the ecosystem by corporate powers in the south bears the imprints of Euro-American connivance. Though the foregoing is contentious, what cannot be denied are the ecological effects of human abuse of the environment and the complicity of Euro-American interests in the abuse.

To state the obvious, the African continent is currently battling various forms of ecological crisis, ranging from air, water, and soil pollution, deforestation to desertification, erosion and other life-threatening, human-induced environmental degradation. In Nigeria’s Niger-Delta, for instance, indiscriminate oil exploration and gas flaring have engendered spoliation of flora and fauna, causing loss of lives and jobs and displacing Indigenous populations from their ancestral home while enriching the extractors and their cronies. This situation is identifiable across the African continent where extractive activities undertaken by foreign actors are the order of the day. These realities underline the barbaric insensitivity to the ecosystem and equally bring up issues of environmental and reproductive justice as well as climate change in Africa. They also deepen the narrative which seeks to absolve Africans of complicity in the dialogue on climate change since the bulk of the activities which jeopardise the environment and its liveability are orchestrated by and from the Global North. The emergent narratives also centre the uneven distribution of harm, poignantly locating the interconnectivity between human economic activities and environmental spoliation, and further remarking how biospheric politics force climate crisis responsibility on a demography deemed less complicit in the tragedy of environmental degradation. What is however less contentious is that aspects of these ecological challenges on the African continent can be adduced to leadership and economic crises which empower the ruthless activities of capitalists, culminating in the myriad of issues that birth ecological tensions, including soil and crop contamination by heavy metals, poor food production, oil spills and the attendant disruption of fishing activities, resulting in the unemployment of local population and engendering endemic poverty in the region. Other concerns include underdevelopment, lack of political will and insincerity on the part of government to implement growth-driven policies, connivance of government with external forces to depredate its people, ecological imperialism, citizen’s rights, insecurity of lives and property, and, above all, the volatility of the degraded region, and the direct effects of such degradation on the economies of many African States. These concern foreground the need for introspection in order to deal with these outcomes, using home-grown Afrocentric interventions.

Drawing on the foregoing, the current volume of Green Letters: Studies in Ecocriticism interrogates human-environment commensalism and perspectivises this from an African viewpoint. The volume affirms human vs. nature mutuality with reliance on Afrocentric interventions which advocate interdependence of the binaries as a way to save the ecosystem from destruction and revamp it to provide companionship, hope, solace, and refuge for man (Kouta and Saleh 2013, 216). The volume contains eight essays, each of which examines with keen interest eco-critical issues in Africa and offers intellectual conversations on the representation of nature and environmental crisis in order to stimulate refreshing perspectives on the current state of ecological-related interventions on the continent. The essays elucidate the diverse perspectives and contextual realities of ecological challenges from humanistic viewpoints and problematise the place of language and literature in environmentally conscious discourses. While the volume gives voice to the ongoing debate on ecocriticism, climate change, and Africa’s place in the discourse, it further contributes to knowledge by exploring how African creative imagination construct, respond to, and recreate the operations of anthropocentric practices, corporate capitalism, Euro-American capitalism, socio-economic tensions, and ecological consciousness in Africa. More specifically, the volume raises critical and theoretical issues on the crucial role of language and literature in expanding the frontiers of eco-criticism beyond Euro-American provenance.

The first three articles in the volume are concerned with Nigerian Niger-Delta writings. Paul Onanuga’s ‘The Transcendence of Love in Deepening Ecocritical Discourse: An Analysis of Selected G’Ebinyo Ogbowei’s Poems’ interrogates the trope of love and its power in the stimulation of environmental awareness through the poetic activism of a third-generation Nigerian poet, G’Ebinyo Ogbowei. Onanuga studies Ogbowei’s re-enactment of nature poetry reminiscent of Coleridge, Shelley, Tennyson, Whitman, Wordsworth, Emerson, Thoreau, and many other Romantics to expound the poet’s love for the Niger-Delta environment prior to its spoliation by local and global powers conducting oil operations there. He believes that the poet’s reliance on nature imagery and his use of explicit erotic themes is an appeal to readers to treat nature with kindness, the way a consummate lover treats their loved ones with protective jealousy. The poet’s appeal, according to Onanuga, resonates with the popular opinion calling for the resurgence of nature love, nature preservation and environmental justice as a way to halt the destructive anthropocentric activities against it. Abba Abba’s ‘Petroculture: Ecological Precarity and Eco-Activism in Niger Delta Poetry’ probes into the question of activism in ecological studies, claiming that eco-activism in Nigeria’s Niger-Delta region could be blamed on the vulnerability of its environment as well as the susceptibility of its human and non-human inhabitants to the harmful effects of oil exploration. Abba opines that eco-writers use poetry as a critical mode of engagement to raise awareness against destructive extractive activities on environment and people of the region and to demonstrate local opposition to environmental damage of Niger-Delta. Daisy Pullman’s ‘A Rich Inheritance: An Ecocritical Reading of Ken Saro-Wiwa’s Short Stories and Poetry’ is a study of the poetics of a Nigerian human rights activist, Ken Saro-Wiwa. The study enunciates Saro-Wiwa’s vision for the political and ecological emancipation of his (Ogoni) people and Niger-Delta in general.

Ayobami Onanuga’s ‘The Environment and Agency: An Ecocritical Reading of Richard Maduku’s Kokoro Compound’ weaves migration trope into eco-critical discourse. Her contribution offers the discourse an exciting interdisciplinary approach, helping her to interrogate ecological problems from the point of view of migrant-characters whose agency is affected by the condition of their environments. Ayobami’s concern is centred on environmental racism and destruction of environment by multinational oil companies whose activities forced many inhabitants to relocate from their original homes to other places where they suffer penury, hunger, and persecution. Emmanuel Adeniyi and Patience Ngozika’s ‘Rethinking African Ecocriticism beyond Regional Boundaries: Corporate Capitalism, Global Periphery and Subalternity in Nigerian Novels’ provides an interesting twist to the conception and understanding of ecocriticism in the global south. The writers query the logic behind the multiplicity of eco-criticism as well as the geopolitics of their labels and call for the breaking of boundaries of provincialism used for individualising ecological discourse in Africa. In their criticism of the term ‘African ecocriticism’, they argue that the category is misleading, constricting, and that it triggers local–global dichotomy or crises of taxonomy, identity and belonging, since it constructs image of otherness for environmental criticism in Africa, and equally indicts African agency in the inferiorisation of its knowledge production. While their essay is suffused with postmodern spirit, it brings to the fore the sui generis of semantics of eco-critical politics in environmental humanities and the possibility of de-regionalising ecosystems in eco-critical discourse. Their arguments, though political, help to address the linguistic question in the discourse, just as they situate eco-critical study in Africa within its extra-linguistic context and question the semantic content of the geopolitical label worn on it. Olabisi Bukola Ogunmodede, Dennis Kolawole Olaniyan, Omolara Kikelomo Owoeye & Samuel Ayodele Dada’s ‘Nature Depleted: An Ecocritical Reading of Yerima’s Ipomu and Mbajiorbu’s Wake Up Everyone’ examines the representation of human exploitation of environment and its negative implications on human beings in drama texts. The authors contend that nature would always fight back in the form of natural catastrophe to protest its mistreatment by man.

Nature preservation and Indigenous spirituality are major interests in the last two articles. Solanke Agboola and Stephen Kekeghe undertake an ethnographic research on Sogidi Lake in Awe, Oyo State, Nigeria. The study investigates the role of Indigenous oral arts in preserving nature and protecting environment from wanton human destruction. Discovered in the mid-eighteenth century and regarded as a sacred site, Sogidi Lake is studied as an alternative ecological text serving as a model for harmonious co-existence of nature and man. The article submits that harmony is sustained by Indigenous (Yoruba) oral lore, myths, cultural practices and taboos that reinforce age-long belief forbidding trees felling and fishing in the lake. The ecofeminist reading of the site is refreshingly captivating, as it relates the pristine ambience, cleanliness, and extraordinariness of the lake to its goddess who protects her aquatic children jealously and frowns on any untoward human activities in and around the lake. Ayokunmi Ojebode’s ‘Seven Falls from Olumirin’s Pot: African Eco-Spirituality and Myths of Erin-Ijesha Waterfalls in Nigeria’ also leverages African eco-spirituality to establish interconnectedness between the people of Erin-Ijesa in Osun State, Aba-Oke in Ekiti State and nature, arguing that this human-nature mutualism is underpinned by Indigenous cultural practices and epistemologies which are needed for ecological conservation. The intertextual dialogism between Ojebode’s and Agboola and Kekeghe’s essays provides insightful perspectives on nature conservation and the use of Indigenous spirituality and cultural practices in achieving the purpose. With their identification of Indigenous cultural resources as a tool for environmental preservation, the writers have helped to theorise about knowledge production in Africa and its suitability to solving some of the ecological problems raised in eco-critical discourse.

All the eight articles provide interesting perspectives on ecological problems in Africa (with a particular emphasis on Nigeria’s Delta-Delta) and suggest possible ways of addressing the global challenge using African epistemologies, Indigenous arts, and cultural practices as a tool to checkmate man’s senseless destruction of environment and create ecological awareness about the necessity of human-nature harmony. The volume, therefore, contributes to the ongoing debate on the need to fashion out effective means of halting global ecocide and improve Africa’s response to climate change.

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

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 recipient of Joel Belz Media Fellowship. He is also a fellow of the African Studies Center, Leiden, and Forum Transregionale Studien, Berlin, Germany. His research interest covers Postcolonial Literature, Diaspora/Migration Studies, Eco-criticism, Oral Literature, Literary Stylistics, Film and Media Studies, intersection between music and literature, Memory Studies, Sacred Texts, Social Media Studies, among others.

Paul Ayodele Onanuga

Paul Ayodele Onanuga is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of English and Literary Studies, Federal University Oye-Ekiti, Nigeria and a fellow of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, Germany, the African Humanities Programme/American Council of Learned Societies, and the Iso Lomso fellowship of the Stellenbosch University Institute of Advanced Studies (STIAS), South Africa. His research interests revolve around linguistic practices in New Media Studies, queer sexualities on digital media, Nigerian Hip-Hop Studies, and Computer Mediated Communication/Discourse Analysis. He has been guest-editor with Contemporary Music Review and is a member of the Editorial Board of Discourse, Context and the Media. He is a member of Learned Societies and Associations.