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Naturalizing Africa : ecological violence, agency, and postcolonial resistance in African literature / Cajetan Iheka

Author
Iheka, Cajetan Nwabueze
Published
Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2018.
Physical Description
1 online resource (xii, 211 pages) : digital, PDF file(s).
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Contents
Introduction : naturalizing Africa -- African literature and the aesthetics of proximity -- Beyond human agency : Nuruddin Farah and Somalia's ecologies of war -- Rethinking postcolonial resistance : the Niger Delta example -- Resistance from the ground : agriculture, gender, and manual labor -- Epilogue : rehabilitating the human.
Summary
The problem of environmental degradation on the African continent is a severe one. In this book, Cajetan Iheka analyses how African literary texts have engaged with pressing ecological problems in Africa, including the Niger Delta oil pollution in Nigeria, ecologies of war in Somalia, and animal abuses. Analysing narratives by important African writers such as Amos Tutuola, Wangari Maathai, J. M. Coetzee, Bessie Head, and Ben Okri, Iheka challenges the tendency to focus primarily on humans in the conceptualization of environmental problems, and instead focuses on how African literature demonstrates the interconnection and 'proximity' of human and nonhuman beings. Through this, Iheka ultimately proposes a revision of the idea of agency based on human intentionality in African literary studies and postcolonialism: that texts yoke the exploitation of Africans to the despoliation of the environment, and they recommend responsibility toward human and nonhuman beings as crucial for ecological sustainability and addressing climate change.
Subject(s)
ISBN
9781108183123 (ebook)
9781107199170 (hardback)
9781316648643 (paperback)
Note
Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 27 Nov 2017).
View MARC record | catkey: 34850692