Ecobordering

Abstract

Considering the literary response to the environmental crisis in the Niger Delta, it is observable that most critics of the literary arts on the Niger Delta homogenise the effects of the environmental problem, rather than focusing on particular groups of ecological subjects. These critics universalise environmental discourse, thereby overlooking more silenced and marginalised ecological subjects and subverting environmental justice. Using Helon Habila’s Oil on Water and Kaine Agary’s Yellow Yellow, this study responds to the need to individualise the effect of environmental degradation by focusing on Niger Delta women who are both culturally and environmentally constrained. It combines border theories and ecofeminism to pay detailed attention to the literary representation of women’s precarious positionality, a situation of both spatial and symbolic vulnerability. It also explores women’s reception of and interaction with the polluted environment, given that the locations of degradation (the farms and freshwater), according to African culture, are gender-sensitive spaces and that African rural women mostly depend on farming and water for household work. Lastly, this paper examines women’s response to the violence of environmental pollution, thereby underscoring agency and visibility for women in connection with environment.