Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-xm8r8 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-06-29T15:00:22.006Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Chapter 5 - Decolonizing Ecology: Chinua Achebe’s New Forms of Unease

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 January 2020

Andrew Kalaidjian
Affiliation:
California State University, Dominguez Hills
Get access

Summary

“Decolonizing Ecology,” addresses environmental recovery efforts after WWII leading up to the explosion of environmental movements in the 1960s. With a pivot to rhetoric of “recovery” and “regeneration,” nature protection gained national validation with the establishment of the Nature Conservancy. Coinciding with this inward turn, however, the formation of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature ensured the United Kingdom’s continued involvement in foreign lands. I look to Chinua Achebe’s 1960 novel No Longer at Ease to complicate the unevenness of environmental recovery in relation to decolonization. Through a juxtaposition of main character Obiajulu, whose name means “the mind at last is at rest,” and Mr. Green, a 1950s counterpoint to Joseph Conrad’s Colonel Kurtz, I explore modernism’s environmental legacy in regard to the end of colonialism and a newly emerging “green imperialism” that seeks to manage natural spaces on a global scale.

Type
Chapter
Information
Exhausted Ecologies
Modernism and Environmental Recovery
, pp. 163 - 186
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2020

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×