The media turn in African environmentalism: the Niger Delta and oil’s network forms

Abstract

African ecologies and the various media forms devoted to them remain marginal in the bourgeoning discourse of ecomedia studies despite the implication of the continent in mineral extraction, wildlife conservation, and the dumping of toxic wastes, just to mention a few examples. Turning to media focusing on Nigeria’s Niger-Delta region, the author argues that African cultural forms are crucial for extending the frontiers of ecomedia studies and for apprehending the perversities of oil culture. His analysis of a mural in Ireland’s Mayo County featuring the environmental activist Ken Saro-Wiwa (2005), the music video for Timaya’s ‘Dem Mama’ (2006), and Victor Ehikhamenor’s art installation, The Wealth of Nations (2015), shows that they deploy the visual in protesting the commodifying logic of oil extraction. This article adopts an infrastructural approach toward media as it underscores how oil consecrates the selected cultural objects as network forms. Focusing on African materials extends the geography and archive of ecomedia studies, but it has methodological implications too. The author orients scholarship in the environmental humanities toward working across media, encouraging the field to adopt ecological relationality as both the matter and the method.