Oceanic space and marine ecosystems as ecological agents in Yvonne Owuor’s The Dragonfly Sea

Abstract

Traditionally, studies in ecocriticism carried out within the African literature field have focused mainly on the terrestrial landscapes as well as the petrochemical environment. This has resulted in the oceanic ecosystems of the East African Coast being ignored and understudied. This paper analyzes the representation of the oceanic space and the marine ecosystem in the novel The Dragonfly Sea by Yvonne Owuor (2019) as ecological entities. Developed based on the theoretical framework of the Blue Ecocriticism, the study has a qualitative and interpretivist analytical study design, with a focus on close readings and thematic content analysis. The findings show that Owuor upends the conventional literary depiction of the ocean as a passive natural setting, portraying the Western Indian Ocean instead as an interrogative and challenging ecological force. The ocean's agency is evidenced by its temporal nature through monsoon cycles, ontological insights derived from storms, and independent migratory processes of the sea's marine and avian inhabitants. Moreover, littoral ecosystems are framed as living infrastructure and the ocean's floor as an active archive of sunken historical memories. This study concludes that The Dragonfly Sea expands the geographical and cultural range of Blue Ecocriticism by emphasizing Swahili oceanic ecology, thus placing East African literature into the larger global context of blue ecocritical discourses.