Environmental Exploitation and Colonial Ideology in ‘The Grass Is Singing’

Abstract

The Grass is Singing (1950) is an ecocritical and postcolonial framework to explore how the colonialism affects humanity, as well as nature, in Southern Rhodesia. The novel is not only about the present, but also the geography is shaped by economic exploitation, racial hierarchy and colonial power systems. It stresses not only that the environment is not a thing on its own, but also that it is a result of historical and ideological processes. One of the key themes of the novel is the effect of colonial farming on the environment. Industrial agriculture, deforestation and cash crops cause an irreversible degradation of the environment in the long term. These practices are colonial, and result from an ideology of the use of land for extraction, rather than caring and balancing the care of land. This means that the natural world becomes more unstable and damaged as a result of settler control.