The Weeping Earth: Entangled Humanism, Precarity, and Imaginaries in African Eco-Poetry
Publikation: Beiträge in Zeitschriften › Zeitschriftenaufsätze › Forschung › begutachtet
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in: Scrutiny2, 2024.
Publikation: Beiträge in Zeitschriften › Zeitschriftenaufsätze › Forschung › begutachtet
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TY - JOUR
T1 - The Weeping Earth
T2 - Entangled Humanism, Precarity, and Imaginaries in African Eco-Poetry
AU - Adeniyi, Emmanuel
N1 - Publisher Copyright: © 2024 Unisa Press.
PY - 2024
Y1 - 2024
N2 - The ecological visions of two African poets and their portrayal of the precarious condition of the environment in Africa are discussed in this article. Their nostalgic reflections on the idyllic image of the continent before anthropogenic activities degraded its fertile greenery also received major attention. Zakari Musa’s Elegy for the Earth (2020) and John Ngong’s The Tears of the Earth (2019) are critically analysed to expound the poets’ temporal triangulation of ecological discourse in Africa. I adopt Nigeria and Cameroon as models of African ecological space to interrogate the poetic contemplation of eco-precarity, temporality, and a vision of a new Africa built on human-nature interdependency and the green economy imaginary. Drawing on insights from ecofeminism and other relevant conceptual perspectives in environmental humanities, I examine sundry ecological topoi, including the politics of gendering and anthropomorphising the environment, the effects of the politics on nature, and the possibility of educating the African mind through the focalisation of precarity in African ecological poetry. I argue that the poets’ romanticisation of nature offers them an opportunity to intensify their education project by emphasising nature's contributions to life sustenance, while warning that human beings are self-destructing because of their insensitivity to climate change.
AB - The ecological visions of two African poets and their portrayal of the precarious condition of the environment in Africa are discussed in this article. Their nostalgic reflections on the idyllic image of the continent before anthropogenic activities degraded its fertile greenery also received major attention. Zakari Musa’s Elegy for the Earth (2020) and John Ngong’s The Tears of the Earth (2019) are critically analysed to expound the poets’ temporal triangulation of ecological discourse in Africa. I adopt Nigeria and Cameroon as models of African ecological space to interrogate the poetic contemplation of eco-precarity, temporality, and a vision of a new Africa built on human-nature interdependency and the green economy imaginary. Drawing on insights from ecofeminism and other relevant conceptual perspectives in environmental humanities, I examine sundry ecological topoi, including the politics of gendering and anthropomorphising the environment, the effects of the politics on nature, and the possibility of educating the African mind through the focalisation of precarity in African ecological poetry. I argue that the poets’ romanticisation of nature offers them an opportunity to intensify their education project by emphasising nature's contributions to life sustenance, while warning that human beings are self-destructing because of their insensitivity to climate change.
KW - African poetry
KW - eco-spirituality
KW - ecofeminism
KW - Lake Nyos limnic eruption
KW - Niger Delta crisis
KW - Cultural studies
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85205543202&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1080/18125441.2024.2358308
DO - 10.1080/18125441.2024.2358308
M3 - Journal articles
AN - SCOPUS:85205543202
JO - Scrutiny2
JF - Scrutiny2
SN - 1812-5441
ER -