ABSTRACT

Helon Habila’s Oil on Water (2010) addresses the literal and metaphorical invisibility of oil in mainstream discourse, and depicts the ways it influences social order, material infrastructure, and territorial sovereignty. Existing scholarship on the novel focuses on the end-effect of petro-development (ecological destruction) but does not comprehensively address the neo-liberal logic that perpetuates such destruction through its limited modes of seeing and understanding water. The present article studies the novel’s depiction of the way the petro-infrastructure exploits the Niger Delta for resource extraction and causes the disintegration of bodies of water into inert spaces. It goes on to analyse the novel’s structure to emphasize how elemental disintegration is countered through depiction of the agential qualities of water such as biodiversity, morphology, and immersion. In this way, Oil on Water highlights the role of water as a life-source and posits it as a space resistant to the logic of ecological domination.

摘要

海伦哈比拉的水上油(2010) 解决了主流话语中石油的字面和隐喻隐性问题，并描述了它影响社会秩序、物质基础设施和领土主权的方式。现有的小说研究侧重于石油开发的最终效果（生态破坏），但没有全面解决新自由主义逻辑，该逻辑通过其有限的观察和理解水的方式使这种破坏永久化。本文研究小说对石油基础设施利用尼日尔三角洲进行资源开采以及导致水体分解为惰性空间的方式的描述。它继续分析小说的结构，强调如何通过描述水的特性，如生物多样性、形态和浸泡来对抗元素解体。《水上之油》强调了水作为生命源的作用，并将其定位为抵抗生态统治逻辑的空间。