L’impérialisme écologique ou la recolonisation par l’agriculture industrielle: Une lecture de La Banane de Franck Bieleu

Abstract

This article studies The Big Banana, a film by Cameroonian director Franck Bieleu, which shows how the intrusion of a cash crop such as bananas in a local environment brings about several ecological transformations with important sociocultural and ethical ramifications. Using concepts from ecocriticism to analyse the narrative structures of the film, the article explains how the Njombé Penja banana plantation (PHP), construed as a replica of the colonial model of production and spatial organization, leaves the local populations with a strong feeling of dispossession and alienation. It concludes that geographical and ecological forms of imperialism contributed, alongside sociopolitical issues, to the failure of the post-independence African utopia.