The Poetics of Entanglement in Zina Saro-Wiwa’s Food Interventions
2018; Routledge; Volume: 32; Issue: 2-3 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/09528822.2018.1476226
ISSN1475-5297
Autores Tópico(s)Postcolonial and Cultural Literary Studies
ResumoThrough an analysis of Zina Saro-Wiwa’s food interventions, this essay re-visits the idea of entanglement (Hofmeyr 2004; Kiewiet 1957; Mbembe 2001; Wenzel 2009; Nuttall 2009). This concept, I argue, is embedded in Saro-Wiwa’s work, reflecting neo-colonial circuits of trade, resource extraction and labour exploitation. Its poetic and political potency engages with food and people and their intricate relations to land, particularly in the Niger Delta. Zina Saro-Wiwa’s art resonates with the poetry of her father, the writer and activist Ken Saro-Wiwa. Her work points to her father’s significant role in the continued struggles of the Ogoni against the historical devastation caused by oil industries. Drawing from discourses about food and capitalist predation in the African continent, I argue that entanglement in Zina Saro-Wiwa’s work presents a paradox between an intended emancipatory aesthetic and neo-colonial entrapments in the art-oil economy. Food, in this work, is symbolic of interlaced systems of production, reproduction and artistic creation, which are offered by the artist as possibilities of redeeming sometimes inconsonant new ‘senses of being’.
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