Paper short abstract:

We will conduct a comparative study of Oil Cemetery by Nwoye and Saara by M. O Beyrouk. This analysis will allow me to compare anglophone and francophone ecocriticism and their approach to extractivist practices. 

Paper long abstract:

We propose to conduct a comparative study of the novels Oil Cemetery May Ifeoma Nwoye and Saara by Mbarek Ould Beyrouk (2022). Through these texts, we will think together anglophone and francophone ecocriticism. Whileay Ifeoma Nwoye, a Nigerian author, awakens the reader to the extreme environmental degradation of the Niger River, prompting to engage in activism, Beyrouk, a Mauritanian author, denounces in his poetry social injustices and calls for the respect of nature. Both evidence extractive practices, to the "slow violence" suffered by cultural and social minorities. We will thus study their texts as environmental literature, that is to say their literary imagination or political discourse, and its means of expression, whether poetic, critical, fictional or real. In this way, We will bring anglophone ecocriticism into dialogue with francophone ecological thought, questioning their forms: one being more incisive, theoretical and political and the other poetic, almost philosophical. We will also comment on the position of the two authors: whether they are also activists, victims of environmental transformations, thinkers of the Africa of the future, etc. In fine, this comparison of two recent African texts will allow me to question the potentialities of literature in the face of the environmental crisis and to ask, as Dana Phillips did in 1999, whether the truth of ecology lie in literature. Can ecocriticism reconcile the environmental sciences, the political and ethical principles of an ecological approach with literary and aesthetic elements?