“How can a river be red?” Violent petroculture in Chigozie Obioma’s The Fishermen

Abstract

ABSTRACTChigozie Obioma’s 2015 novel The Fishermen does not directly address oil extraction in the Niger River Delta, or the activism of Ken Saro-Wiwa who would have been executed during the time-present of the text. However, its “spectral spaces”, especially the polluted Omi-Ala River, are sites where past and future environments coexist. This article offers a petrocultural reading of The Fishermen that draws upon Foucault’s concept of “heterochronies” as well as Harry Garuba’s work on animist materialism to expand the ecology of the novel to include geologic time as well as the not-yet-living and no-longer-living. This expansive conception of the novel’s environment makes visible the ways people are directly implicated in their own decomposition and reclamation by the land. Such a reading enables us to see the material, spiritual and psychic implications of colonialist Christianity and imperialist resource extraction as intimately linked and damaging to a singular but unequal ecology.