Transfiguring: colonial body into postcolonial narrative

• Published in: Stories of Women
• Main Author: Boehmer, Elleke
• Format: Book Chapter
• Language: English
• Published: Manchester University Press 16.06.2005
• Subjects: Bessie Head; colonialism; gender; hysteria; Literary Studies (20th Century onwards); Literary Studies (Gender Studies); Literary Studies (Postcolonial Literature); Literary Studies - World; Literary Theory and Cultural Studies; Michelle Cliff; nationalism; native body; Nuruddin Farah; sexuality; transfigurations
• ISBN: 0719068789; 9780719068782
• DOI: 10.7228/manchester/9780719068782.003.0008

The silenced and wounded body of the colonised is a pervasive figure in colonial and post-colonial discourses, although its valencies obviously shift with the transition from colonial into post-colonial history. In the post-colonial process of rewriting, certainly, the trope of the dumb, oppressed body undergoes significant translations or transfigurations. In Maru (1971), a novelistic indictment of intra-black racism, the South African writer Bessie Head stakes out a number of epigraphic moments with which to begin the discussion. This chapter explores post-colonial retrieval of the figure of the native body in colonial discourse and unpicks the complex interconnections between colonialism, nationalism, hysteria, gender and sexuality. It concentrates in particular on post-colonial attempts – by Nuruddin Farah, Bessie Head and Michelle Cliff, among others – to recuperate or transfigure the native/colonised body by way of the ‘talking cure’ of narrative.