Full Description
Postcolonial Hauntologies is an interdisciplinary and comparative analysis of critical, literary, visual, and performance texts by women from different parts of Africa. While contemporary critical thought and feminist theory have largely integrated the sexual female body into their disciplines, colonial representations of African women's sexuality "haunt" contemporary postcolonial African scholarship, which-by maintaining a culture of avoidance about women's sexuality-generates a discursive conscription that ultimately holds the female body hostage. Ayo A. Coly employs the concepts of "hauntology" and "ghostly matters" to formulate an explicative framework in which to examine postcolonial silences surrounding the African female body as well as a theoretical framework for discerning the elusive and cautious presences of female sexuality in the texts of African women.
In illuminating the pervasive silence about the sexual female body in postcolonial African scholarship, Postcolonial Hauntologies challenges hostile responses to critical and artistic voices that suggest the African female body represents sacred ideological-discursive ground on which one treads carefully, if at all. Coly demonstrates how "ghosts" from the colonial past are countered by discursive engagements with explicit representations of women's sexuality and bodies that emphasize African women's power and autonomy.
Contents
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. The African Female Body: From Colonial Inscription to Postcolonial Conscription
2. Haunted Silences: African Feminist Criticism and the Specter of Sarah Baartman
3. Spectral Female Sexualities: The Politics of Sexual Pleasure in Women's Literatures
4. Subversive and Pedagogical Hauntologies: The Unclothed Female Body in Visual and Performance Arts
5. Laying Specters to Rest? On Bringing Sarah Baartman Home
Conclusion
Notes
References
Index
