Volume-1, Issue-3, November 2025

Abstract

This paper examines the ways Olga Tokarczuk’s novel, Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead, synthesizes feminist and environmental thought to mount a coordinated critique of species hierarchies and patriarchal structures. Narrated through the singular perspective of Janina Duszejko—an elderly woman who advocates for animals and imagines their demand for justice—the novel compels a re-evaluation of moral responsibility beyond the human. Drawing on Donna Haraway’s concept of “companion species,” Cary Wolfe’s critique of speciesism, and ecofeminist insights from Vandana Shiva and Carolyn Merchant, this study argues that Tokarczuk constructs an ethical counter-narrative grounded in care, interdependence, and gender-aware epistemology. The novel’s persistent attention to hunting, animal suffering, and environmental degradation exposes how anthropocentric and androcentric worldviews mutually reinforce systems of domination. Janina’s position as an aging woman and social outsider becomes a site of epistemological resistance, where empathy and relationality contest detached, patriarchal rationality. Through an ecofeminist and multispecies critical lens, this article contends that Tokarczuk imagines a form of justice rooted in mutual respect rather than control. Ultimately, it situates Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead within the expanding fields of feminist ecocriticism and animal studies, demonstrating how narrative fiction can articulate the new ethical frameworks urgently needed in an age of ecological crisis.

Keywords: Olga Tokarczuk, Ecofeminism, Posthumanism, Animal Ethics, Speciesism, Anthropocentrism, Patriarchy, Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead.

References

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2. Anderson, E. (n.d.). Reviews of Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead. Lonesome Reader. Retrieved May 30, 2024, from https://www.lonesomereader.com/reviews/2019/2/12/drive-your-plow-over-the-bones-of-the-dead-by-olga-tokarczuk
3. Blake, W. (2008). The marriage of heaven and hell. Oxford University Press. (Original work published 1790)
4. Haraway, D. J. (2008). When species meet. University of Minnesota Press.
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8. Merchant, C. (1980). The death of nature: Women, ecology, and the scientific revolution. Harper & Row.
9. Mortensen, E. (2021). The fury’s revenge: An ecofeminist reading of Olga Tokarczuk’s Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead. Scando-Slavica, 67(2), 227–246. https://doi.org/10.1080/00806765.2021.1995463
10. Maurovich, G. (2023, December 5). Literature as an ethical act: Olga Tokarczuk’s Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead and ecocriticism. Lossi 36. https://lossi36.com/2023/12/05/literature-as-an-ethical-act-olga-tokarczuks-drive-your-plow-over-the-bones-of-the-dead-and-ecocriticism/
11. Petković, D., & Ljubinković, D. (2022). Localism, locavorism, and animal rights in Olga Tokarczuk’s novel Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead. Journal of Ecohumanism, 1(2), 81–94. https://doi.org/10.62754/joe.v1i2.832
12. Poks, M. (2023). ‘A relative, really; disturbingly similar’: Nonhuman animals in the works of Olga Tokarczuk. Świat i Słowo, 41(2), 363–379.
13. Regan, T. (1983). The case for animal rights. University of California Press.
14. Shiva, V., & Mies, M. (1993). Ecofeminism. Zed Books.
15. Singer, P. (1975). Animal liberation. New York Review Books.
16. Tokarczuk, O. (2018). Drive your plow over the bones of the dead (A. Lloyd-Jones, Trans.). Fitzcarraldo Editions. (Original work published 2009)
17. Weber, H. (2019). Drive your plow over the bones of the dead by Olga Tokarczuk. World Literature Today.

https://www.worldliteraturetoday.org/2019/winter/drive-your-plow-over-bones-dead-olga-tokarczuk-hannah-weber

1. Wolfe, C. (2009). Human, all too human: “Animal studies” and the humanities. PMLA, 124(2), 564–575. 

https://doi.org/10.1632/pmla.2009.124.2.564.

Keywords: Olga Tokarczuk, Ecofeminism, Posthumanism, Animal Ethics, Speciesism, Anthropocentrism, Patriarchy, Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead.

Abstract

Chinua Achebe’s seminal 1958 novel, Things Fall Apart, stands as a foundational corrective to colonial-era European literature, which routinely depicted African societies as primitive. This essay employs a dialogic narrative analysis, informed by Mikhail Bakhtin’s concepts of dialogism, polyphony, and heteroglossia, to argue that Achebe’s work deliberately counters colonial monologues by offering a nuanced, multi-voiced portrayal of pre-colonial Igbo society. Through a structured examination of the novel’s narrative architecture as a site of competing discourses, character function as embodied ideologies, and linguistic hybridity, this study demonstrates how Achebe reframes the colonial encounter. The analysis contends that the novel presents the interaction between the Igbo and the Europeans not as a simple binary but as a dialogic struggle between a polyphonic tradition and an authoritative colonial discourse. Ultimately, this study elucidates how Things Fall Apart uses the novel form itself to complicate the historical record, revealing the dual legacy of colonial influence and establishing the text as a crucial site for understanding cultural conflict from a postcolonial standpoint.

Keywords: Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart, African literature, postcolonialism, Bakhtin, dialogic analysis, narrative structure, heteroglossia.

References

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3. Achebe, C. (2000). Home and exile. Oxford University Press.
4. Ashcroft, B., Griffiths, G., & Tiffin, H. (1989). The empire writes back: Theory and practice in post-colonial literatures. Routledge.
5. Bakhtin, M. M. (1981). The dialogic imagination: Four essays (M. Holquist, Ed.; C. Emerson & M. Holquist, Trans.). University of Texas Press.
6. Berg, B. L. (2001). Qualitative research methods for the social sciences (4th ed.). Allyn & Bacon.
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8. Carroll, D. (1980). Chinua Achebe. St. Martin’s Press.
9. Egar, E. E. (2000). The rhetoric of Chinua Achebe. University Press of America.
10. Emenyonu, E. N. (1991). The rise of the Igbo novel. Oxford University Press.
11. Gikandi, S. (1991). Reading Chinua Achebe: Language and ideology in fiction. James Currey.
12. Gikandi, S. (2015). Slavery and the culture of taste. Princeton University Press.
13. Innes, C. L. (1990). Chinua Achebe. Cambridge University Press.
14. Irele, F. A. (2001). The African imagination: Literature in Africa and the Black diaspora. Oxford University Press.
15. JanMohamed, A. R. (1984). Sophisticated primitivism: The syncretism of oral and literate modes in Achebe’s Things FallApart. Ariel: A Review of International English Literature, 15(4), 19–39.
16. Jeyifo, B. (2004). Wole Soyinka: Politics, poetics, and postcolonialism. Cambridge University Press.
17. Krishnan, M. (2014). Contemporary African literature in English: Global locations, postcolonial identifications. Palgrave Macmillan.
18. Lockyer, S. (2008). Textual analysis. In L. M. Given (Ed.), The SAGE encyclopedia of qualitative research methods (pp. 865–867). SAGE.
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20. Miles, M. B., & Huberman, A. M. (1994). Qualitative data analysis: An expanded sourcebook (2nd ed.). SAGE.
21. Newell, S. (2019). Histories of dirt: Media and urban life in colonial and postcolonial Lagos. Duke University Press.
22. Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o. (1986). Decolonising the mind: The politics of language in African literature. James Currey.
23. Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o. (2012). Globalectics: Theory and the politics of knowing. Columbia University Press.
24. Nnoromele, P. C. (2000). The tragic hero in Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart. College Literature, 27(2), 146–154.
25. Oha, A. C. (1998). The rhetoric of Nigerian feminist writing: A critical analysis. ALA Bulletin, 24(2), 27–41.
26. Oseghale, F., & Oriahi, C. I. (2006). Perspectives on women's education in the 21st century. Journal of Academics, 1(1), 45-58.
27. Prabhu, A. (2007). Hybridity: Limits, transformations, prospects. State University of New York Press.
28. Quayson, A. (2014). Oxford Street, Accra: City life and the itineraries of transnationalism. Duke University Press.
29. Quayson, A. (2019). Oxford Street, Accra: City life and the itineraries of transnationalism. Duke University Press.
30. Riessman, C. K. (2008). Narrative methods for the human sciences. SAGE.
31. Said, E. W. (1993). Culture and imperialism. Knopf.
32. Sickels, A. (2011). The critical reception of Things Fall Apart, 1958-2008. In M. J. C. Echeruo (Ed.), The Cambridge companion to Chinua Achebe (pp. 120-135). Cambridge University Press. 

Keywords: Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart, African literature, postcolonialism, Bakhtin, dialogic analysis, narrative structure, heteroglossia.

Abstract

This article examines a central paradox in postcolonial Nigerian literary and linguistic history, with a specific focus on Igbo. It argues that while early Christian missionaries used translation into vernacular languages as a tool for evangelism—thereby actively developing the language’s lexical and conceptual capacity—the subsequent project of anti-colonial cultural assertion by Western-educated African writers and intellectuals has been conducted predominantly in English. This literary strategy, though successful in challenging imperial myths of cultural inferiority, has had the unintended consequence of further institutionalizing English as Nigeria’s “power language.” Meanwhile, vernaculars like Igbo have been relegated to a protected but stunted domain of “in-group” communication, denied the “rough and tumble of acculturation and translation” necessary for full modern development. Through analysis of language policy, translation history, and literary texts (by Achebe, Tutuola, Adichie, Soyinka, and others), the article demonstrates how the predominance of English in Nigerian writing has created a state of dependency for African languages, leaving them vulnerable to attrition and hybrid encroachment (e.g., “Engli-Igbo”), while secular translation work that could fuel their growth remains neglected.

Keywords: Colonial metropolis, Christian missionaries, cultural software, Igbo, official language, translation, vernacular, Nigerian literature, power language.

References

1. Abani, C. (2004). GraceLand. Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
2. Achebe, C. (1960). No longer at ease. Heinemann Educational Books.
3. Adichie, C. N. (2013). Americanah. Alfred A. Knopf.
4. AfricaSon. (2021, August 7). The dead end of African literature—by Obiajunwa Wali. Retrieved December 2, 2025, from https://www.africason.com/2021/08/the-dead-end-of-african-literature-by.html
5. Akwanya, A. N. (2015). Semantics and discourse: Theories of meaning and textual analysis. University of Nigeria Press.
6. Aristotle. (1995). Poetics (S. Halliwell, Trans.). Harvard University Press. (Original work published circa 335 BCE)
7. Balkin, J. M. (1998). Cultural software: A theory of ideology. Yale University Press.
8. Banfield, A. (1985). Ecriture, narration and the grammar of French. In J. Hawthorn (Ed.), Narrative: From Malory to motion pictures (pp. 1–22). Edward Arnold.
9. Bassnet, S., & Trivedi, H. (1999). Introduction: Of colonies, cannibals and vernaculars. In S. Bassnet & H. Trivedi (Eds.), Post-colonial translation: Theory and practice (pp. 1–18). Routledge.
10. Benveniste, E. (1971). Problems in general linguistics. University of Miami Press.
11. Chipere, N. (2003). Understanding complex sentences: Native speaker variation in syntactic competence. Palgrave Macmillan.
12. Culler, J. (1975). Structuralist poetics: Structuralism, linguistics and the study of literature. Routledge & Kegan Paul.
13. Egejuru, P. A. (1978). Black writers, white audience: A critical approach to African literature. Exposition Press.
14. Frye, N. (1970). Anatomy of criticism. Athlone Books.
15. Habila, H. (2010). Oil on water. W. W. Norton.
16. Halliwell, S. (2002). The aesthetics of mimesis: Ancient texts and modern problems. Princeton University Press.
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20. Kristeva, J. (1980). Desire in language: A semiotic approach to literature and art (L. S. Roudiez, Ed.). Columbia University Press.
21. Merleau-Ponty, M. (1962). Phenomenology of perception (C. Smith, Trans.). Routledge & Kegan Paul. (Original work published 1945)
22. Meylaerts, R. (2008). Translators and (their) norms: Towards a sociological construction of the individual. In A. Pym, M. Shlesinger, & D. Simeoni (Eds.), Beyond descriptive translation studies: Investigations in homage to Gideon Toury (pp. 91–102). John Benjamins Publishing.
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25. Nkosi, L. (1981). Tasks and masks: Themes and styles of African literature. Longman.
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Keywords: Colonial metropolis, Christian missionaries, cultural software, Igbo, official language, translation, vernacular, Nigerian literature, power language.

Abstract

This study investigates the function and significance of titles within the official documents of the Qajar era, focusing on Persian decrees (farmāns) addressed to the Armenian community. Through an analysis of 96 documents from the Matenadaran collection, this research demonstrates that titles transcended ceremonial honorifics to become instrumental in establishing power relations and political legitimacy. In the dynamic between the Qajar state and its Armenian subjects, titles served as markers of socio-political inclusion, precisely defining the status of Armenian religious and social leaders within the imperial hierarchy. A close examination of the lexicon and combination of these titles reveals a symbolic language through which the state simultaneously reinforced minority loyalty and delineated the boundaries of its authority. Conversely, the Armenian elite’s acceptance and deployment of these titles represented a strategic form of cultural adaptation and negotiation with central power. This study concludes that titles in Qajar documents were carriers of complex political and social messages, functioning as a vital communicative mechanism for managing state-minority relations. The diversity and evolution of titulature in these decrees reflect the broader political, social, and cultural developments of the Qajar period.

Keywords: Administrative Titles, Royal Decrees (Farmāns), Qajar Bureaucracy, Armenian-Iranian Relations, Matenadaran Archive, Political Language, Imperial Legitimacy.

References

1. Ghaem-e-Maghami, J. (1977). Daramadi bar shenakht-e asnad-e tarikhi [An introduction to understanding historical documents]. National Monuments Association.
2. Aghayan, E. (1997). Mesrop Mashtots, the creator of the Armenian alphabet (A. Hospian, Trans.). Peyman, 1(2), 52. (Original work published 1997)
3. Malik Bakhshian, S. (1996). Persian documents of the authors (A. Hosipyan, Trans.). Peyman, 1(1), 25. (Original work published 1996)
4. Ghaem-e-Maghami, J. (1977). Daramadi bar shenakht-e asnad-e tarikhi [An introduction to the recognition of historical documents] (pp. 8–9). National Antiquities Association.
5. Gostikian, C. (2021). Persian orders of Matenadaran (1798–1829) (Vol. 5). Yerevan State University.
6. Verharam, G. (2006). Sazeman-e siyasi va ejtema’i-ye Iran dar asr-e Qajar [Political system and social organizations of Iran in the Qajar period]. Moin.
7. Asef, M. H. (2003). Rostam al-hokma (A. Alizadeh, Ed.; 2nd ed.). Ferdows Publications.
8. Abrahamian, Y. (2002). Iran bayn-e do enghelab: az mashruteh ta enghelab-e eslami [Iran between two revolutions: From the Constitutional to the Islamic Revolution] (M. Shanechi, Trans.). Markaz.
9. Amin al-Doleh, M. A. K. (1999). Khatirat-e siyasi-ye Amin al-Dawlah [Political memoirs of Amin al-Dawlah] (H. Farmanfarmaian, Ed.; 3rd ed.). Amir Kabir Publications.
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12. Khatar [Newspaper]. (1977, July 15). Afshar. 

Keywords: Administrative Titles, Royal Decrees (Farmāns), Qajar Bureaucracy, Armenian-Iranian Relations, Matenadaran Archive, Political Language, Imperial Legitimacy.