African Woman and Ecology: Unpacking the Complexities of Eurocentrism and Othering in Le Clezio’s Onitsha

Abstract

Abstract: European writers have historically employed narratives to position foreign regions by ‘geo-graphing’ the indigenous people, their environment, and cultures from the standpoint of narrators’ fears and aspirations. The practice entails Europeans posing imaginative geographies as a strategy of power that makes constant the writers’ cultural superiority to re-present the non-European as the inferior Other, a contrast to the European - the superior Self. Such European discursive power is a tradition at the bedrock of most metropolitan French narratives that objectify Africa, disparage her ecology, and deny her history and civilization to justify French superiority through slavery and imperialism. Notwithstanding the end of colonization, the performative of Africa continues to grow beyond imperial discourses of power. In her study of postcolonial European writings, Pratt draws heavily on French writers’ impulse to condemn and lament about African ethnography and ecology (2003: 213). However, studying the late 20th century metropolitan French Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clezio’s depictions of colonial Anglophone (Nigerian) African woman and ecology present the complexities of the Other, leading to a literary geo-political aberration that provokes critical inquiry. This article subjects Le Clezio’s Onitsha (1991) to a critical analysis that lays bare the uncommon traits of French representations of Africa. Among others, one question of interest stands out (i) what is the innuendo of Le Clezio’s seemingly humane depictions of African woman and ecology in Onitsha’s anglophone setting? Keywords: french, african woman, ecology, eurocentrism, other