ABSTRACT
Environmental engineer Malcom Ferdinand (2019) creates a more definite conception than has previously existed of what we mean when we talk about decolonial ecology. Colonialism, to him, should be at the centre of environmentalism, because a root cause of both human suffering and the massive environmental degradation we see today is colonial ecology, and the ripple effects of coloniality in all their forms must thus be confronted: “It is from the cosmopolitical foundation of a world between humans, and with non-humans, that the Earth can become not only what we share but what we have “in common without owning it.”” (14, 16, emphasis original).
In this paper I show that thinking with the concept of decolonial ecology can be useful in developing a clearer picture of 21st century “African environmentalism” as Kevin Behrens (2014) has called for. I argue that there is evidence of contemporary African decolonial ecosophies, that challenge progress-thinking and pervasive development paradigms. However, these ecosophies do not necessarily take the expected forms or appear on expected platforms. For instance, I find evidence of these ecosophies in contemporary speculative fiction, a new and booming sub-genre emerging from the continent. Here I examine specifically the short-film Mother Nature by Congolese Maisha Maene (2020) and the short-story We Broke Nairobi by Kenyan Noel Cheruto (2021, Strange Horizons).
The ecosophies that shine through in these texts concern themselves first and foremost in undoing and resisting coloniality in general, as well as colonial ecology. They challenge progress narratives and universalism, and place the spotlight on climate justice, as well skewed global wealth and power relations. Second, they are trained on searching for new pathways of relating to the non-human world, often inspired by pre-colonial knowledge systems that centre relationality. They include a “utopian impulse”(Armillas-Tiseyra 2021) of open-ended futures infused with possibilities, also of recovering what has been lost. Thus, these manifestations of African decolonial ecosophies challenge both the colonial fracture and the environmental fracture which makes colonial ecology possible (Ferdinand 2019).
Finally, I discuss how because these ecosophies often emerge in unanticipated spaces and forms, they are sometimes overlooked. There is a danger of erroneously concluding that there is little interest for or engagement with ecology and environmentalism on the African continent, or that thinking-with the more-than-human is something new and “introduced” by external actors.
BIO
Marta Mboka Tveit is a research-fellow with the CoFUTURES / ScienceFictionality projects at the Institute for Cultural Studies and Oriental Languages, University of Oslo. She examines imagined climate-futures in contemporary Norwegian and African speculative fiction.
CITATIONS
Armillas-Tiseyra, Magalí. 2021. "The Contemporary Novel and the Global South: Relation, Recognition, and the Utopian Impulse." Studies in the Novel 53 (2):165-185.
Behrens, Kevin Gary. 2014. "An African Relational Environmentalism and Moral Considerability." Environmental ethics 36 (1):63-82. doi: 10.5840/enviroethics20143615.
Ferdinand, Malcom. 2019. A Decolonial ecology: Thinking from the Caribbean World. USA: Polity.'
Tveit, Marta. 2024. "“Safe in each other’s scaly arms”: Solace, Oddkinship, and the Third Position in African Speculative Texts." In Animals in Science Fiction, edited by Nora Castle and Giulia Champion.