المستخلص: |
Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart has often been interpreted by many critics and readership as well either as a postcolonial literary work featuring colonialist Europe’s subordination of Africa and Africans, or as a book dealing with the subjugation of black women by the phallocentric Igbo society that takes the supremacy of men over women, if not over all other creatures on earth, for granted. To a large extent, these readings are true. Nevertheless, one way or another they do not take into consideration the ecological considerations permeated in the novel, which are inseparable part of the African culture and identity. Espousing the rights of both nature and women against the oppression of phallocentric communities, which often foster their hierarchical structures by establishing such value dualisms as culture/nature, male/female and human/animal, is one of the principal tenets of the philosophy embraced by all ecofeminist theorists and activists as well. In being non dualistic and non hierarchical, ecofeminism affirms multiplicity, along with the right of all to live equally. The aim of the present paper is to examine Things Fall Apart from the perspective of cultural ecofeminist literary criticism: it critically explores the close interconnectedness between women and nature along with the interplay between the degradation of physical environment and the oppression of women in a male-dominated society. Likewise, it seeks to highlight that the Igbos’ abuse of women goes hand in hand with the exploitation of land and all non-human inhabitants living on it by the Igbos themselves as well as the white colonizer.
|