Paper short abstract:

In this presentation, I will study how Helon Habila (Oil on Water) and Bessora (Petroleum) use magical realism and mutate the traditional conventions of the detective story to create “ecopolars” that investigate the environmental problems linked to oil extraction, respectively in Nigeria and Gabon.

Paper long abstract:

Based on a reading of two African “polars” (detective novels), Helon Habila's Oil on Water (2010, anglophone) and Bessora's Petroleum (2004, francophone), I propose to study the way in which magical realism proves particularly apt to convey a postcolonial critique of the exploitation of natural resources: oil extraction, respectively in Nigeria and Gabon, begun by European colonialists and continued to this day by international companies. In these two novels, spatial and temporal markers are constantly blurred by interventions of the "supernatural" - myths, indigenous beliefs, unforeseen and inexplicable events - which not only profoundly complicate the quest of journalists and detectives in search of missing characters (always in the context of oil extraction), but also reflect the way in which the effects of the ecological crisis often turn out to be unpredictable or for a long time imperceptible to the human experience. Habila and Bessora thus mutate the traditional conventions of the detective story, where the main objective is no longer to find the missing persons, but to discover the truth about the causes of environmental alterations. In this way, they create "ecopolars" (ecological detective novels), where the characters investigate a collective crime, whose origins are linked to a global system of exploitation, whose individual actors are difficult to identify – networks of multinationals –, and which are anchored in those African countries whose inhabitants suffer from the damage of environmental exploitation without having access to the benefits or profits.