Ecological Trauma
Resource Extraction and Settler-Colonialism in African Literature
Format:Hardback
Publisher:Taylor & Francis Ltd
Publishing:11th Aug '26
£171.99
This title is due to be published on 11th August, and will be despatched as soon as possible.
Intervening in debates across literary trauma theory and ecocriticism, this book argues that in an age increasingly defined by the impacts of anthropogenic climate change on society and ecology, it is necessary to graft the ethical concerns of trauma studies onto the lessons of ecocriticism, especially in the context of African literatures.
Drawing upon a corpus of African literary texts ranging temporally from 1950 to 2021 and geographically from Nigeria and Cameroon to South Africa, Botswana, Zambia, and Zimbabwe, this book examines how ecological trauma is bound up in human systems of exchange, extraction, and domination. Each text portrays ecological trauma from a different geographical and historical perspective, but they all underscore the wide-ranging ecological and human costs of resource extraction and settler-colonialism across the African continent. Ultimately, this book explores the connections between human and nonhuman communities victimized by anthropogenic climate change and dissects the difficult relationships between land, ecology, and human influence.
This book will be of interest to scholars and graduate students working in the fields of African literatures, the environmental humanities, trauma studies, and postcolonial studies, as well as all those interested in narrative in the Anthropocene.
'This book is a bold and compelling intervention at the intersection of trauma theory, ecocriticism, and African literary studies. Its concept of ecological trauma opens new ways of understanding the entangled effects of resource extraction, settler colonialism, and environmental degradation in African contexts, while also reimagining trauma as an experience that exceeds the human. Traversing canonical and contemporary texts—from Tutuola and Okri to Mbue, Mda, and Serpell—this lucid and richly contextualized study not only traces how fiction bears witness to ecological harm, but also develops a capacious green trauma theory that is both ethically attuned and methodologically innovative. An important contribution to the environmental humanities, it will be of great interest to scholars of African literature, trauma studies, and planetary crisis.'
- Stef Craps, Professor of English Literature, Ghent University
'From the folkloric fever dreams of Amos Tutuola to the worldbuilding imagination of Namwali Serpell, Chris Hebert offers green trauma theory as a framework for engaging African literary production. His readings of texts from West and Southern Africa illuminate the toxic impact of capitalism and settler colonialism on African environments, but also how African writers have envisioned aesthetic, philosophical, and cosmological responses to this ecological moment.'
- J. Roger Kurtz, Professor of English Literature, Drexel University
ISBN: 9781041131816
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: 520g
182 pages