Dust in Motion: Agential Realism, Decolonial Ecologies, and Multispecies Ethics in Nnedi Okorafor’s “The Winds of Harmattan”

Tasnim Alam Mukim; Akhand Mohammad Adil

doi:10.36948/ijfmr.2025.v07i05.56023

Dust in Motion: Agential Realism, Decolonial Ecologies, and Multispecies Ethics in Nnedi Okorafor’s “The Winds of Harmattan”

Author(s)	Tasnim Alam Mukim, Akhand Mohammad Adil
Country	India
Abstract	This paper argues that “The Winds of Harmattan” treats wind as an active infrastructure that binds climate, memory, and justice. Using a diffractive method grounded in agential realism, decolonial ecocriticism, and Ubuntu-inflected multispecies ethics, the analysis shows how seasonal rhythm and social order rise and fall together. The narrative marks ecological crisis with a broken cycle of winds and ties that failure to the policing of a woman’s atmospheric kinship through rumor, domestic coercion, and ritual ordeal. Read as a material–discursive apparatus, the Harmattan organizes perception, movement, and decision; its absence registers ethical injury, and its reluctant return signals only partial repair. The paper’s contribution is threefold: first, it demonstrates that wind in the story is not scenic but operative, shaping plot and risk; second, it identifies “ecological memory” as the hinge that connects temporality to ethics, linking seasonal timing to communal responsibility; third, it reads rumor and trial-by-ordeal as social technologies that overwrite wind-based care with patriarchal control, a process the tale’s closing revision of Asuquo’s story makes explicit. By keeping theory accountable to textual detail, this research offers a clear, transferable approach to African speculative narratives in which atmospheric processes and social life are co-produced.
Keywords	Agential realism; Decolonial ecocriticism; Multispecies ethics; African speculative fiction; Diversified Intra-active Posthuman Narratives (DIPN).
Field	Sociology > Linguistic / Literature
Published In	Volume 7, Issue 5, September-October 2025
Published On	2025-09-19
DOI	https://doi.org/10.36948/ijfmr.2025.v07i05.56023

View / Download PDF File

E-ISSN 2582-2160

doi

CrossRef DOI is assigned to each research paper published in our journal.

IJFMR DOI prefix is
10.36948/ijfmr

Downloads

Research Paper Format Copyright Permission Form and Undertaking Form Cover Page Vol 8 Isu 2 Cover Page Vol 8 Isu 1 Cover Page Vol 7 Isu 6

All research papers published on this website are licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License, and all rights belong to their respective authors/researchers.

CC-BY-SA

About IJFMR Fees & Payment Current Issue Publication Archive	Submit Research Paper Track Submission Status Publication Guidelines Publication Ethics Peer Review & Plagiarism	Join as a Reviewer Editors & Reviewers Reviewer Referral Program Get Reviewer Membership Certi.	Website/Journal Policies Usage Policy Content Policies Privacy Policy

Contact Us		+91-9687-828-838	editor@ijfmr.com

International Journal For Multidisciplinary Research

A Widely Indexed Open Access Peer Reviewed Multidisciplinary Bi-monthly Scholarly International Journal

Dust in Motion: Agential Realism, Decolonial Ecologies, and Multispecies Ethics in Nnedi Okorafor’s “The Winds of Harmattan”

Share this