When Ecocriticism and Rhetoric Meet: Environmental Persuasion inTerrorists of The Aberdare

SummaryThis article demonstrates the criticism of eco-activist literature through rhetoric theory by experimenting with such a method in an analysis of Nganga Mbugua’s Terrorists of the Aberdare (2009). In this work, I take eco-criticism to mean the ecologically informed criticism of literary works, and ecocriticism as an umbrella term generally concerned with humanities-based studies of environmental representation. I argue that since eco-criticism reads eco-activist literature as a tool of influencing audiences concerning human relations with the nonhuman, eco-criticism can incorporate rhetoric theory as a methodological support for textual analysis, and a step towards theorising literary eco-activism. I assert that a theory of persuasion, if employed in literary analysis, can enrich interpretation and eventually enable a set of eco-persuasive literary devices to emerge in line with the political purpose of ecocriticism. The first part of the article discusses eco-literary activism as a point of convergence between the two fields, ecocriticism and rhetoric, while the second part demonstrates how a rhetorical literary analysis may proceed, pointing out the possible benefits of such a method.