CRIP ECOLOGIES OF EXTRACTION: DISABILITY, ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE, AND EMBODIED RESISTANCE IN POSTCOLONIAL LITERATURES OF THE GLOBAL SOUTH

Abstract

Disability is a product of environmental extraction in the Global South that has been largely ignored in postcolonial ecocriticism and disability studies. This research project, Crip Ecologies of Extraction, involves studying of postcolonial narratives in which disability is a product of extraction, and the disabled characters who return resistance to extractive violence. The study is based on an interpretivist paradigm, and a theoretical framework that combines crip theory (McRuer, 2006; Kafer, 2013), eco-crip theory (Ray & Sibara, 2017), and postcolonial ecocriticism (Nixon, 2011). Primary and secondary sources (from academic databases) were used to gather data through close reading. The population consisted of eight postcolonial Global South novels about extraction and disability, out of which four were purposively sampled: Animal's People, Oil on Water, The Hungry Tide, and The Adivasi Will Not Dance. Qualitative thematic analysis was used to analyze the data which were coded into two clusters based on the research questions. The findings show that the character of disability is consistently the material result of extraction, while the characters gain disability and at the same time gain agency when they refuse to be cured, testify, assert their situated knowledge, and assert their culture, moving away from medicalised cure narratives towards relational, community-based agency.