Ecocriticism and the Nonhuman in African Arts: The Agency of the Extracted

This innovative book examines the ways in which African photography, film, and literature are resisting environmental extractivism, using themes of interrelationality. Reminding us that we are all part of an interdependent collective, the book challenges us to act to reverse the extractivist plunder poised to render extinct most of what is presently known as the world. In their work, African photographers, filmmakers and writers are increasingly resisting global capitalism’s extractivist ransacking of the African continent. In a continent responsible for only 3-4% of global carbon emissions yet destined to face some of the harshest effects of the climate crisis, artists are taking as their starting point a sense of kinship with the nonhuman. Drawing on these African ecocritical works, this book invites another way of seeing our interconnectedness with the African cosmological perception of the living, dead, unborn, human and nonhuman. Each chapter considers what is missing, to give voice to that which has been extracted by the global capitalist pursuit of raw materials. Considering in turn extracted memory, stone, oil, fish, and world, the book straddles a diverse range of works, from Nollywood to multi-channel video; from documentary photography to self-portraiture, and from Arabic prose poetry to the postcolonial novel. The final chapter, the extracted world, uses the concept of recycling to challenge us to return the missing world to itself to secure its survival. This powerful and evocative book ranges across the continent, connecting stories of resistance from across countries and artforms. It will be of interest to readers from across disciplines such as African Studies, Black Studies, Philosophy, Photography, Film Studies, and the environmental humanities.