Unbought and Unbossed: Reading Sexuality and Gender into an Ecological Other in May Ifeoma Nwoye’s Oil Cemetery

Abstract

Some of the critical attentions given to ecocritical essays before May Ifeoma Nwoye‘s debut are premised on the international oil corporations (IOCs) and their tribal agents in Africa who harmfully exploit the ―environments‖. This eco-interest on ecodisasters boldly calls for ecological communion. The culture of wrongful oil explorationin Nigeria as elsewhere as exploited by Nwoye moves the study of ecocritical studies in a new direction: from one of confrontation to negotiation;a path of optimism. Additionally, the present essay contributes to Nwoye‘s proposition by asking: how might we advance research in ecocritrical studies beyond confrontational standards it has developed and sedimented since the years of its establishment? How can we, therefore, step up Nwoye‘s call by offering a feminist theoretical interpretation of Oil Cemetery that is not confrontational since Nwoye talks about negotiation particularity—including notions of inability to be acquired and bullied into submission by selfish henchmen of oil exploration? To answer these questions, this essay is structured into 1) Environmental Exclusion 2) Transgressive Environmentalism, Sexuality and Re-presentation 3) A New Environmentalist Society through Nego-feminism, and 4) Scaling Up.