Solomon Plaatje’s environmentalism: ecocritical perspectives on Native Life in South Africa (1916)

Abstract

ABSTRACTSolomon Plaatje’s Native Life in South Africa (1916) has recently been reinterpreted as a foundational text for black South African history, politics and literature. But what importance might it have for scholars interested in literature and the environment in Africa? This essay re-reads Native Life through Rob Nixon’s work on environmental writer-activism and environmental justice and Jennifer Wenzel’s concept of “contrapuntal environmentalisms” in pursuit of three interrelated goals: to excavate the ecological subtext of Native Life in South Africa; to re-insert Plaatje and Native Life into the broader history of writing about land and landscape in the region; and to consider Plaatje’s importance to some of the debates about environmental justice and environmental aesthetics that preoccupy the environmental humanities today.