INSURGENT ECOLOGY AND THE LIMITS OF HUMAN MASTERY IN WALE OKEDIRAN'S AFTER THE FLOOD

Abstract

This study reads Wale Okediran’s After the Flood through ecocriticism and material
ecocriticism, arguing that existing scholarship treats the Ogunpa flood either as human failure
or as nature’s revenge without asking what happens once human interventions enter a material
system whose effects exceed intention. Drawing on Cheryll Glotfelty’s definition of ecocriticism,
Lynn White Jr.’s critique of anthropocentrism, Serenella Iovino and Serpil Oppermann’s concept
of storied matter, Jane Bennett’s vibrant matter, and Rob Nixon’s slow violence, the study
develops the analytical concept of insurgent ecology: the material capacity of ecological systems,
once altered by human activity, to unsettle the structures built on top of them without requiring
conscious intention on nature’s part. Unlike Uche Ken Chukwu and Chris Onyema’s reading of
the flood as eco-revenge, insurgent ecology refuses to grant the environment an agency it does
not have. The analysis moves through three stages: ecological alienation, in which characters fail
to recognise environmental limits; ecological exploitation, in which the Ogunpa is treated as a
dumping ground with material consequences that exceed intention; and insurgent ecology
proper, in which the flood exposes the fragility of technological, spatial, religious, economic, and
institutional structures. The study concludes that Okediran’s novel does not absolve human
beings of responsibility but makes that responsibility more urgent, since human interventions
enter ecological systems, whose consequences cannot be fully predicted or controlled.
Keywords: Ecocriticism, Insurgent Ecology, Anthropocentrism, Material Agency,
Ecological Alienation, After the Flood