Decolonizing renewable energy: Aeolian aesthetics in the poetry of Fatma galia mohammed Salem and Limam boisha

In this paper I explore resistance to energy colonialism in the work of Saharawi poets Limam Boisha and Fatma Galia Mohammed Salem. I first follow the cables of the growing renewable energy infrastructure in occupied Western Sahara to make sense of how sun and wind can become enmeshed, materially and discursively, in ongoing processes of colonialism. Then I argue that Boisha and Mohammed Salem employ aeolian aesthetics in order to resist the colonizing discourses of renewable energy developers. Aeolian aesthetics are informed by wind in their structures, motifs, imagery and rhetorical devices. They make a decided appeal to the senses through which we know the wind: sound and touch, and visions of the windblown. The aeolian aesthetics that shape the Saharawi texts explored in this paper challenge hegemonic colonial understandings of wind (energy) and of Western Sahara’s desert heartlands, thereby resisting corporate discourses that enact energy colonialism.