Slow Healing: Environmental And Social Justice In Unbowed: A Memoir
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Date
2024
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Ankara Üniversitesi
Abstract
In her autobiography Unbowed: A Memoir (2006), Wangari Maathai, a political activist and
Nobel Peace Prize winner, depicts environmental and political struggle against the
legacies of colonialism. The personal narrative chronicles the ways in which the sociocultural and ecological exploitation is perpetuated due to (neo)colonialism, capitalism, the
centralization of power, and modernity under the myth of progress. In 1977, Maathai's
individual environmental efforts evolved into a collective struggle as The Green Belt
Movement, which has trained rural women in Kenya to plant trees, generate income, and
relentlessly ght against deforestation and soil erosion by planting millions of trees in
Africa. This study examines Maathai's personal narrative, which overtly highlights the
interconnectedness of environmental and social justice by suggesting that without
ecological justice, social justice is not possible. Drawing on the concept of “slow violence” to
examine the resignications of ecological damage in Africa and analyzing life writing as a
site of resistance, negotiation, and agency, this study discusses the politics of
decoloniality generated by indigenous knowledge systems to understand the
interrelatedness of human and nature, and reinstate basic human rights, the damaged
environment, and the perception of nature.
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Keywords
Slow Violence/Healing, Wangari Maathai, Postcolonial Ecocritical Theory, Life Writing