In The West and the Rest of Us: White Predators, Black Slavers and the African Elites, Chinweizu (1975) contends that “Christianity of both the Popish and Protestant varieties, and motivated by the lure of enriching plunder, white hordes, have sallied forth from their Western European homelands to explore, assault, loot, occupy, rule and exploit the rest of the world” (3). Chiweinzu’s statement clearly exposes actors in, and dimensions of politics of extraction in the global space. The rest of the world articulated in his submission, is the global south, home to more than half a millennium extraction enterprise where people, and resources of these places-Africa, Latin America and Asia were controlled by the Western dominant power-Britain, France, Portugal, Netherland, Spain, and recently, the United States of America. The global south is the region of the earth that have suffered from the centuries long invasion by the West. These invasions no doubt wrecked huge havoc on the people and environmental landscape of these places.
The Extraction engagement transcends the deracination of human resources from Africa into the New World for slavery, it encompasses the forceful carting away of artifacts owned by the colonized, by the colonizers (such as the looting of artifacts from the Bini Kingdom into Europe). It also include the removal of natural resources such as Gold, Copper, Crude Oil, Tin, and Diamond from the colonized’s lithosphere and biosphere, and the forceful dispossession of lands of aboriginal people and natives in the global south, for the settlement of the Europeans. The latter is fully captured in the Dutch’s (Boers) displacement of indigenous Bantus, Hottentots and Bushmen of their homelands (Chiweinzu 1975). In support of extraction and enslavement, the British mining magnate and imperialist, Cecil John Rhodes once posited that imperialists “must find new lands from which we can easily obtain raw materials and at the same time exploit the cheap slave labour that is available from the natives of the colonies. The colonies would also provide a dumping ground for the surplus goods produced in our factories” (Chowdhry, 2019, 291).
Extraction and enslavement of people and places in the global south still abound today. In Nigeria, oil exploration by transnational and local companies has culminated into the destruction of the ecosystem, especially in the oil producing Niger Delta region (Bassey 2012). In the Brazil axis the narrative seems worse with, the deforestation of the Amazon forest, which poses a major threat to the human and non-human inhabitants of the region. As Kenneth Maxwell (2003) notes, “the coastal forest, the Amazon rain forest which before the arrival of the Europeans sustained a large population” (202), and still provide food for millions of human and non-human aborigines is gradually being erased by massive deforestation, the engine of capitalism.
The performing arts (drama, music, dance and other indigenous art forms) have become sites of critical inquiry on these spaces of extraction and enslavement, and the representation of “the Western Assault” (Chinweizu 1975) on countries of the global south. Ola Rotimi’s Ovonranwen Nogbaisi (1974), Ahmed Yerima’s Ameh Oboni the Great (2006) and Ahmed Yerima’s The Trials of Oba Ovonranwen (1998) clearly articulate spaces of extraction and enslavement, created by the British Colonial masters in Bini and Igala lands (in present day Nigeria), in the 19th through the 20th centuries. These plays are also succinct narrations of forced extraction of people, natural resources and artifacts by the West, as enslavement. Some questions that emanate at this point are: In what ways do performances articulate the intersection of extractive practices and enslavement? to what extent can performance(s) challenge spaces and politics of extraction and enslavement in the global south? how do performance(s) amplify the call for justice against extraction and enslavement in the global south? And how do performance(s) project extraction in the global south as enslavement? This special issue therefore examines how performances (theatre, films, dances and the music arts) have projected the capitalist and industrial extraction in the global south as acts of enslavement, and reflects on ways in which the extraction of human and non-human resources is represented in performances.
Articles that focus on the above critical questions and the topics suggested below and others are welcome:
- Performing spaces of extraction in the Global South,
- Performance as Resistance to extraction and enslavement in the Global South
- Performing New Dimensions/Directions of extraction and enslavement in the Global South
- Performances of extraction and/as enslavement in the Global South
- The dramaturgy of extraction and enslavement in the Global South
- Music of/on extraction and enslavement in the Global South
Submission Guidelines:
- Abstract: 200-250 words
- Full Article: 8000-10000 Words
- A 100-word author's bio-note
- All submission should follow The Chicago Manual of Style (16th Edition).
- All manuscript submissions should be submitted, as Microsoft Word files, to the special issue editor at: okpadahstephen@gmail.com or Stephen.Okpadah@warwick.ac.uk
Submission Deadline: 30th September, 2024