Black body : women, colonialism, and space / Radhika Mohanram.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Mohanram, Radhika.

Series:

Public worlds ; v. 6.

Public worlds ; v. 6

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Human body--Social aspects.

Human body.

Human body--Symbolic aspects.

Group identity.

Feminism--Australia.

Feminism.

Australia.

Feminism--New Zealand.

Indigenous peoples--Australia.

Indigenous peoples.

Māori (New Zealand people).

Postcolonialism.

New Zealand.

Physical Description:

xx, 250 pages : illustrations ; 22 cm.

Place of Publication:

Minneapolis : University of Minnesota Press, [1999]

Summary:

From Algeria to the Antipodes, the female black body, when viewed through the colonial lens, represents all that is dangerous and unknown in an alien land. Its true significance can be understood only through the concept of space, because a "black body" is understood as "black" only outside of its context, its "place"--and a female black body is doubly out of place. Yet for all its importance to racial identity, Radhika Mohanram argues, space has been submerged and overlooked in postcolonial theory. Accordingly, she develops in Black Body a theory of identity situated within space and place rather than the more familiar models of identity formation that emphasize time.

Mohanram's emphasis on the concept of space brings out the connections among various strands in postcolonial studies: the politics of displacement, the concept of diasporic identity versus indigenous identity, the identity of woman in the nation and the spatial construction of femininity, the association of the black body with nature and landscape and the white body with knowledge. Drawing on the work of Fanon, Merleau-Ponty, and Levi-Strauss, Black Body interrogates theories produced in the Northern Hemisphere and questions their value and significance for the Southern Hemisphere. The relationship between the female black body and the white male body effectively and tellingly parallels the relationship between the two hemispheres.

Contents:

Part I In Theory 1

1. The cartography of bodies 3

2. The embodiment of blackness 23

3. Woman-body-nation-space 56

Part II In the Antipodes 87

4. The memory of place: Maori nationalism and feminism in Aotearoa/New Zealand 89

5. Place in My Place: embodiment, Aboriginality and Australia 122

6. Britannia's daughters: race, place, and the Antipodean home 149

7. The postcolonial critic: Third World (con)texts First World contexts 177

8. Coda: in postcoloniality 199.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 203-243) and index.

ISBN:

0816635420

0816635439

OCLC:

41035543