Exploitation and Pharisaical Proclivity: An Eco-Marxist Study of Abdulrazak Gurnah’s Desertion

Abstract

Eco-Marxism is a political ideology that fuses the Marxist doctrine of anti-capitalism with ecology. Some of the basic principles of the ideology of Marxism, according to Marx and Engels, comprise the relationship between man and nature. The term 'Eco-Marxism' has evolved in an attempt to ecologise Marxism. Eco- Marxists and neo-Marxists believe that the fast signs of the environmental crisis emerged when the capitalist mode of production began. They also analyzed how capitalism accumulated all the natural resources, gave a stronghold over society's 'base' and 'superstructure', thus, creating a rift between man and nature in their effort to make more profit. This gradually destroyed the ecosystem and led to the social catastrophe. Abdulrazak Gurnah is a Zanzibar born British diasporic writer who, in his novels, shows straightforwardly how first the Omani Sultanate and later European capitalist imperialism exploited the nature and people of the land of East African coast. This article deals with his novel Desertion where exploitation and subsequent desertion of the people and natural resources of colonial Kenya occurs on various levels by European capital is imperialism and even in newly independent countries. It also shows how commodities infatuated the superstructure of European capitalism and polluted the social environment and ecosystem thereby causing a social catastrophe.