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Oil and Literature in Oil on Water by Helon Habila and 419 by Will Ferguson

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Oil and Literature in Oil on Water by Helon Habila and 419 by Will Ferguson Master’s Degree In European, American and Postcolonial Language and Literature Final Thesis Petrofiction: Oil and Literature in Oil on Water by Helon Habila and 419 by Will Ferguson. Supervisor Prof. Shaul Bassi Assistant supervisor Prof. Christine Gerhardt Graduand Mara Fiorini 867662 Academic Year 2018 / 2019 Acknowledgments Colgo l’occasione per ringraziare il Professor Bassi che con pazienza e disponibilità mi ha aiutato durante il percorso di stesura della tesi. Un percorso di ricerca che non è rimasto legato solo ai testi scritti ma è diventato sempre più vivo e concreto grazie ai vari incontri e seminari organizzati all’interno dell’Environmental Humanities seminar and lecture series che sono stati per me grandi opportunità di confronto e stimolo critico soprattutto durante l’incontro con Habila e Noo Saro-Wiwa. Ringrazio poi la mia famiglia, mia sorella, gli amici di una vita e Mattia per il loro supporto, l’aiuto, l’amore, per essere li sempre la mia certezza. Ringrazio Venezia, una città che mi ha incantato non solo dal punto di vista architettonico ma anche da quello umano. Infine un ringraziamento speciale va alle mie compagne di corso e di disavventure in quel di Graz, persone splendide che meritano il meglio da questa vita. There is a fire in me burns all night and day flares at injustice leaps at oppression glows warmly in beauty. Ken Saro-Wiwa TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION ...........................................................................................................3 0.1. From oil invisibility to oil visibility: aim and method of the current work ........... 3 CHAPTER 1: THEORETICAL CONSIDERATIONS ...............................................7 1.1. Tracing the evolution of Ecocriticism.................................................................... 7 1.2. Postcolonial Ecocriticism and Cultural Ecology of literature .............................. 10 CHAPTER 2: OIL AND LITERATURE ....................................................................15 2.1. Energy Humanities............................................................................................... 15 2.2. Petrofiction ........................................................................................................... 17 CHAPTER 3: OIL AND NIGERIA .............................................................................21 3.1. Historical background: the origin of the oil industry in the Niger Delta ............. 21 3.2. Oil’s ramifications in the Niger Delta: current status of the problem.................. 23 3.3. Grassroots movements: Ken Saro-Wiwa and the Ogoni ..................................... 26 3.4. Introduction to Oil on Water by Helon Habila .................................................... 30 3.5. The importance of Oil on Water’s narrative structure ......................................... 32 3.6. Oil on Water: a novel with a journalistic element ............................................... 34 3.7. Water turns red: violence and precariousness ...................................................... 36 3.8. Water turns black: environmental degradation .................................................... 40 3.9. Irikefe island: resisting the narrative of violence and oil ..................................... 44 CHAPTER 4: OIL, CANADA, AND NIGERIA ........................................................49 4.1. Alberta oil sands and the illusion of ethical oil.................................................... 49 4.2. Introduction to 419 by Will Ferguson .................................................................. 51 4.3. Oil, space and place ............................................................................................. 54 4.4. “Welcome to the Republic of Shell” .................................................................... 60 4.5. Nigeria and Climate change ................................................................................. 66 1 4.6. Oil and justice ...................................................................................................... 72 CHAPTER 5: FINAL CONSIDERATIONS ..............................................................78 5.1. The challenges of petroculture ............................................................................. 78 5.2. Changing perspectives ......................................................................................... 81 5.3. The role of literature in changing perspectives .................................................... 83 BIBLIOGRAPHY..........................................................................................................89 2 INTRODUCTION 0.1. From oil invisibility to oil visibility: aim and method of the current work When reflecting upon the role occupied by oil in our world, we can see it holds a central position. However, this awareness does not come easily because most of the daily interactions between oil and society are taken for granted or are usually hidden by a system that continues to deny the negative impacts that the extraction and burning of fossil fuels have on the physical world as a whole. These impacts are particularly evident in some oil extraction sites that show how the global oil apparatus continues to rely on a system of injustice, which forms an integral part of neo-colonial discourses and is linked to issues surrounding climate change, human and non-human rights, and corporate responsibilities. With reference to these dynamics, this master’s thesis focuses primarily on the Niger Delta and investigates the environmental and social ramifications that the oil business is having on this particular environment. The investigation will be carried out through a literary analysis, which takes into account how this dramatic situation is covered within two novels, namely Oil on Water by the Nigerian author Helon Habila and 419 by the Canadian author Will Ferguson. Chapter one presents a general overview of the theoretical approaches that will be adopted in the analysis of the two novels. Firstly, it introduces the environmental investigations elaborated within Ecocriticism and observes how this approach to literature has been evolving and changing its premises, moving away from the early studies elaborated within the American Academia to more inclusive and interdisciplinary approaches, which are constantly evolving and have converged in the project of the Environmental Humanities. Within this evolution, this master’s thesis pays particular attention to the concepts elaborated within Postcolonial Ecocriticism, which focuses on the environmental dimension of postcolonial literary works and investigates how the colonial and neo-colonial projects do not include only the exploitation of native people but also of colonial environments. Given these premises, the thesis introduces also the idea of Cultural Ecology of Literature elaborated by Hubert Zapf, who considers literature as a system that employs language and 3 imagination to challenge certain cultural discourses and build more inclusive and ecological narratives (2010: 138). Chapter two investigates the troubled relationship between world society and fossil fuels and looks at the way in which this connection is analysed within the new interdisciplinary research field of Energy Humanities. Consequently, this thesis ponders upon the difficult task of the transition towards greener forms of energy, a transition that presents not only practical difficulties but also clashes with a cultural attitude and practices that stand at the basis of Western modernity and the idea of economic progress. This cultural side of the problem puts emphasis on the importance of the Humanities in imagining a world without oil. Hence, literature assumes a renewed importance, especially the literature that deals with the ramifications of oil, which can be grouped under the genre of Petrofiction. This term was coined by Amitav Ghosh and denotes the interplay between oil and literature, not only in terms of content but also in terms of the economic, social, and cultural systems to which this interaction refers. Chapter three starts with a historical excursus on pre-colonial and colonial Nigeria and how the discovery of oil impacted the very creation of Nigeria as a nation, which was forged by European nations whose influence is still present and has been transformed into forms of neo-colonial domination and exploitation of natural resources. These forms of exploitations are particularly evident in the Niger Delta, the Nigerian region that carries the signs of the ramifications of the oil business, which translate into environmental pollution derived by oil spillages and gas flares that indirectly cause harm to the inhabitants of the region torn by illnesses and lack of means of support. Consequently, different grassroots movements, the best-known MOSOP movement under the guidance of Ken Saro-Wiwa, tried to oppose to this situation but positive outcomes were a few and the circumstances got even worse with the following violence caused by the fight between the military and militant groups, who frustrated by lack of infrastructures, job opportunities, and pollution of the environment, started to kidnap foreign workers and tap oil from pipelines in order to sell it illegally. Starting from this overview, the thesis analyses Oil on Water by Helon Habila and the way the novel employs a confused narrative structure and a journalistic undertone to mirror the chaotic situation in the Niger Delta. Secondly, the work focuses on the two main aspects
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