Mediascapes of Ruined Geographies in the Global South

This book undertakes an interdisciplinary and cross-cultural interrogation of the Global South  through  the  prisms  of  media  and  cultural  studies.  It  closely  explores  the  quotidian (re)territorialization, and brazen ruination of the material geographies of this vast expanse of the world by forces and proxies of (neo)colonialism and global capitalism of resource extraction. We cite the  ongoing  expulsion  of  Palestinians  from  their  homelands  by  occupational  forces,  the emerging detritus dump across Mexico City and Lagos, the infrastructural precariousness of the favelas of Brazil, the unending resource-war in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), and the flagrant operation of the oil industry in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria as examples of this geographic cataclysm. The centripetal forces of neo-colonialism and resource extraction at full-flight  in  the  Global  South,  aided  by  toxic  hegemonic  forces,  have  overtly  tossed  some  of  the population  to  the  peripheries  of  existence  and  the  society  at  large.  As  such,  this  book, additionally,  explores  the  resistance  of  the  subalterns  from  the  margins  to  this  socio-political malaise, and further unmasks the knowledge production from these margins of the Global South.

This project is divided into five (5) parts of three essays each. The first part examines the territorial contestation in the Middle East framed and expressed through films and literary lenses. The second part examines the environmental burden of modern consumerism  and urbanization on  metropolis  across  Mexico,  Brazil,  and  Nigeria,  while  the  third  part  explores  the attritional violence of resource extraction in the DRC, Brazil, and Nigeria via filmic and journalistic lenses. The fourth part offers a swift response from the margins through ethnographic and journalistic interrogation of the subjectivity of the subalterns of Brazilian favelas, and street artists. The fifth part offers an engaging critique of the political climates of South Africa and Brazil that reinforce the environmental catastrophe of the regions of the world.

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Diego Amaral is Postdoc researcher at the Universidade Federal de Sergipe.

Dumebi Obute is Adjunct Lecturer at the University of Tubingen, Germany.