Mediascapes of Ruined Geographies in the Global South

Book excerpt: 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. ​