Arguing for Decolonial Repair: Petrostate, Environmental Injustice, and Decompositional Politics in Helon Habila’s Oil on Water

Goutam Karmakar

doi:10.59045/nalans.2025.78

Authors

Goutam Karmakar University of Hyderabad, India Author https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9119-9486

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.59045/nalans.2025.78

Keywords:

Petrostate, epitemology, oil extraction, waste, Niger Delta, decolonial repair

Abstract

Helon Habila’s Oil On Water (2011) is often considered a crucial literary depiction of the environmental and political violence resulting from the discovery and continual extraction of oil in the Niger Delta. The novel illustrates the journey and experiences of journalists Zaq and Rufus, who venture into the interior villages to investigate the kidnapping of Isabel Floode, the spouse of an oil company engineer. The novel showcases how the landscape of the Niger Delta is marked by toxic emissions resulting from relentless extraction, along with increased structural violence, which has led to militancy, abductions, and disruptive behaviour on the part of certain individuals. In this context, the article re-examines this novel not merely as a striking illustration of petrostate crises but also as a literary piece that underscores the imperative of ‘decompositional politics’ and the cultivation of epistemic solidarity to transcend the complexities of petrostate violence and comprehend the ingrained forms of epistemic inequalities that have driven the victims of environmental injustice towards insurgent trajectories. The article analyses this work as a reflection of a decolonial perspective that repudiates the top-down model of knowledge formation and underscores the potentiality of ‘decolonial repair’ by addressing the violence and repression of colonial capitalist histories.

Author Biography

Goutam Karmakar, University of Hyderabad, India

Goutam Karmakar

Department of English, University of Hyderabad, India

MESH, University of Cologne, Germany

Faculty of Arts and Design, Durban University of Technology, South Africa

goutamkrmkr@gmail.com

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9119-9486

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