Literature and environments: an ecopoetic perspective (earth-poetry) on voltar ao poilão of Tony Tcheka

Abstract

The unconscious use of natural resources is pushing the world to the abyss, since: natural forests are destroyed; fossil fuel drops dramatically; contamination of the environment is a reality; climate change threatens species; environmental disasters plague the world – consequently, the destruction of the ecosystem and sustainable ways of man’s relationship with nature. Based on this observation, ecocriticism is constituted as an emerging world movement against an anthropocentric attitude towards nature, potentiated by the capitalist rise. This study aims to trace the debates around literature and the environment in African literatures, and how ecological awareness appears in the literary texts of its writers. Specifically, to understand how ecopoetics (Earth-poetry) constitutes a structuring element of the poetic self in the two poems entitled Voltar ao Poilão, in Desesperança no chão de medo e dor, of Tony Tcheka (2015) – in which experience and the intertwining between humans and non-humans are manifested, considering forest, fauna and flora – “natural world” – constitute themselves as a wide network of interrelationships intrinsic to human existence itself. The reflection starts from the interdisciplinary perspective through the approach of ecocriticism studies and post-colonial studies as a political and ethical position, based on economic, cultural and ecological relations, which problematize hegemonic practices and new forms of subordination and exploitation.