Postcolonial Ecocriticism and Animist Realism in Ben Okri’s Abiku Trilogy

Abstract

For long, Eurocentric scholars of literature have often carelessly categorised Ben Okri’s Abiku Trilogy: The Famished Road, Songs of Enchantment, and Infinite Riches, as belonging to the genre of magical realism. This article is a turn-away from that Western branding. The argument instead is that Okri’s narrative architecture is grounded in what Harry Garuba terms “animist realism”. Focusing on an indigenous Yoruba worldview where the spiritual and material are closely intertwined, Okri constructs a powerful site of resistance against environmental degradation. This paper uses the framework of postcolonial ecocriticism to examine how the trilogy exposes the major intersections of neo-colonialism and petro-politics in post-independence Nigeria. This article demonstrates how the insatiable metaphor of the “road” and the destruction of the sacred forest depict the historical trauma of resource extraction and corporate-state collusion. This article contends that through the use of animist realism, Okri does not just depict ecological ruin through the trilogy, he decolonises the African literary and political landscape, thus positioning eco-spirituality as an essential instrument for environmental reclamation and political liberation.