Abstract
Language use is central to Tanure Ojaide’s The Activist, negotiating a better living environment for the people of the Niger Delta region of Nigeria. Most literary essays on this text, however, overlook Ojaide’s deployment of language to achieve his subversive vision. The text has been interpreted as environmentalism colored by an ideology or artistic documentation of the despoiled ecosystem, its effects on humans, the flora and fauna of the Niger Delta, and the consequential eco-activism. Another read of the text, however, reveals a binary relationship of dominance and subversion in which language is significant to both sides of the intercourse. The existence of dominance and resistance, therefore, necessitates the analysis of the text drawing from the Subaltern theory, an aspect of the Postcolonial theory to which dominance and resistance are central. This essay examines the deployment of language as a hegemonic and subversive tool in the oil politics in the Niger Delta. The binary relationship is couched in bi-partite motifs captured in epithets and contrasting images. In the binary, the multinational oil companies operating in the Niger Delta yoked with the Nigerian military government, are juxtaposed with the people and the Niger Delta as oppressors and the oppressed. Through bipartite motifs that abound in the text, Ojaide concretizes the duality in the Nigerian society vis-a-vis the oil politics in the Niger Delta. In the duality, language is reinvented and mobilized significantly by both sides as a tool for demonizing and excluding each other to enable the subjugation or subversion of the other.
Highlights
Language use is central to Tanure Ojaide’s The Activist, negotiating a better living environment for the people of the Niger Delta region of Nigeria
The rhetorical implication of the language use, which is central to the environmental discourse and its twig, is, often overlooked as epitomized by Uzoechi Nwagbara (2008) and Enajite Ojaruega (2013) essays which respectively examine Ojaide’s text as environmentalism colored by an ideology; and artistic documentation of the despoiled ecosystem; its effects on humans as well as the flora and fauna of the Niger Delta; and the consequential eco-activism
Environment-conscious text is the deployment of language to subvert a hegemonic binary, the selection of linguistic items that are bipartite motifs that abound in the text
Summary
Ojaide advances his subversive intent in the text by creating pictures of the opposing standard of living of the perceived oppressor (multinational oil companies) and the oppressed (a host community). Bright floodlights shone from electric poles over the concrete wall to ensure that any intruder would be caught before ant serious attempt was made to infiltrate the complex [276] These images of dichotomised existence are deliberately captured in text to present the multinational oil companies as unfeeling to the pitiable state of their host community and validate the author’s negotiation changes in the environment and the living condition of the people of the Niger Delta region. The contrast between the past and the present as revealed by the women’s complaints presupposes the writer’s preference for the years before the discovery and exploration of oil in the Niger Delta This is succinctly concluded in the statement, “The older women narrated what life was Bell Oil Company arrived. They would start with persuasion but if that failed, they would have to confronting those ruining them and their environment with the power they possessed. (Activist 223, 224)
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