African Ecomedia: Network Forms, Planetary Politics

Author:   Cajetan Iheka
Publisher:   Duke University Press
ISBN:  

9781478013815


Pages:   336
Publication Date:   10 December 2021
Format:   Hardback
Availability:   In Print   Availability explained
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African Ecomedia: Network Forms, Planetary Politics


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Overview

In African Ecomedia, Cajetan Iheka examines the ecological footprint of media in Africa alongside the representation of environmental issues in visual culture. Iheka shows how, through visual media such as film, photography, and sculpture, African artists deliver a unique perspective on the socioecological costs of media production, from mineral and oil extraction to the politics of animal conservation. Among other works, he examines Pieter Hugo's photography of electronic waste recycling in Ghana and Idrissou Mora-Kpai's documentary on the deleterious consequences of uranium mining in Niger. These works highlight not only the exploitation of African workers and the vast scope of environmental degradation but also the resourcefulness and creativity of African media makers. They point to the unsustainability of current practices while acknowledging our planet's finite natural resources. In foregrounding Africa's centrality to the production and disposal of media technology, Iheka shows the important place visual media has in raising awareness of and documenting ecological disaster even as it remains complicit in it.

Full Product Details

Author:   Cajetan Iheka
Publisher:   Duke University Press
Imprint:   Duke University Press
Weight:   0.771kg
ISBN:  

9781478013815


ISBN 10:   1478013818
Pages:   336
Publication Date:   10 December 2021
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   In Print   Availability explained
This item will be ordered in for you from one of our suppliers. Upon receipt, we will promptly dispatch it out to you. For in store availability, please contact us.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations  ix Acknowledgments  xi Introduction  1 1. Waste Reconsidered: Afrofuturism, Technologies of the Past, and the History of the Future  25 2. Spatial Networks, Toxic Ecoscapes, and (In)visible Labor  64 3. Ecologies of Oil and Uranium: Extractive Energy and the Trauma of the Future  108 4. Human Meets Animal, Africa Meets Diaspora: The Conjunctions of Cecil the Lion and Black Lives Matter  152 5. African Urban Ecologies: Transcriptions of Precarity, Creativity, and Futurity  186 Epilogue. Toward Imperfect Media  221 Notes  231 Bibliography  273 Index  305

Reviews

Cajetan Iheka writes of the most pressing and complicated issues with clear-sightedness. This major contribution will undoubtedly reach beyond the academy to become a stirring call to anyone interested in the interconnectedness engendered by globalization and the attendant toxicity and suffering that have been unleashed on various populations across Africa and elsewhere. This is truly a joy to read. -- Ato Quayson, author of * Tragedy and Postcolonial Literature * This outstanding book powerfully reorients ecocritical studies. Cajetan Iheka has taken on three of the most pressing issues of our times: the aftermath of colonialism and globalization; the social intensification of communications media; and the environmental impact of human societies. His scholarship is impressive in its scope and depth, his thinking original and significant. African Ecomedia will reverberate with students and researchers in media and communications, environmental humanities, ecocritical studies, anthropology, and social sciences. -- Sean Cubitt, author of * Finite Media: Environmental Implications of Digital Technologies * A provocative account of how contemporary works of African visual culture embody the 'infinite resourcefulness' needed to survive an anthropogenic planet defined by the 'limitedness of resources.' -- Michael Dango * ASAP/Journal *


Cajetan Iheka writes of the most pressing and complicated issues with clear-sightedness. This major contribution will undoubtedly reach beyond the academy to become a stirring call to anyone interested in the interconnectedness engendered by globalization and the attendant toxicity and suffering that have been unleashed on various populations across Africa and elsewhere. This is truly a joy to read. -- Ato Quayson, author of * Tragedy and Postcolonial Literature * This outstanding book powerfully reorients ecocritical studies. Cajetan Iheka has taken on three of the most pressing issues of our times: the aftermath of colonialism and globalization; the social intensification of communications media; and the environmental impact of human societies. His scholarship is impressive in its scope and depth, his thinking original and significant. African Ecomedia will reverberate with students and researchers in media and communications, environmental humanities, ecocritical studies, anthropology, and social sciences. -- Sean Cubitt, author of * Finite Media: Environmental Implications of Digital Technology *


Cajetan Iheka writes of the most pressing and complicated issues with clear-sightedness. This major contribution will undoubtedly reach beyond the academy to become a stirring call to anyone interested in the interconnectedness engendered by globalization and the attendant toxicity and suffering that have been unleashed on various populations across Africa and elsewhere. This is truly a joy to read. -- Ato Quayson, author of * Tragedy and Postcolonial Literature * This outstanding book powerfully reorients ecocritical studies. Cajetan Iheka has taken on three of the most pressing issues of our times: the aftermath of colonialism and globalization; the social intensification of communications media; and the environmental impact of human societies. His scholarship is impressive in its scope and depth, his thinking original and significant. African Ecomedia will reverberate with students and researchers in media and communications, environmental humanities, ecocritical studies, anthropology, and social sciences. -- Sean Cubitt, author of * Finite Media: Environmental Implications of Digital Technologies * A provocative account of how contemporary works of African visual culture embody the 'infinite resourcefulness' needed to survive an anthropogenic planet defined by the 'limitedness of resources.' -- Michael Dango * ASAP/Journal * Iheka provides piercing analyses of the ecological footprints of media technologies in Africa and the representation in media of ecological issues affecting Africa. [He] challenges all media forms to remind humanity of the environmental crisis and climate change, African lessons on sustainable ways of consuming energy, and the opportunities to improve quality of life. Recommended. All readers. -- Z. N. Nchinda * Choice * [Iheka] makes a resounding case for the centrality of African ecomedia in confronting the most critical issues of our time, which makes this book equally as indispensable. -- Dustin Crowley * ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment * Iheka's work demonstrates the centrality of pollution to media infrastructure, foregrounding the toxicity that is produced both at the point of extraction of resources and at the end point of disposal, following the planned obsolescence of media devices. . . . African Ecomedia's analysis of diverse African contexts carries out vital work to counteract the dynamics of invisibility that they depend upon. -- Rebecca Macklin * Year's Work in Ecocriticism * The arguments in Cajetan Iheka's [African Ecomedia] are clever and exciting, and the book as artefact is a thing of great beauty. -- Carli Coetzee * Journal of the African Literature Association *


Author Information

Cajetan Iheka is Associate Professor of English at Yale University, author of Naturalizing Africa: Ecological Violence, Agency, and Postcolonial Resistance in African Literature, editor of Teaching Postcolonial Environmental Literature and Media, and coeditor of African Migration Narratives: Politics, Race, and Space.

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