Postcolonial Hauntologies: African Women's Discourses of the Female Body (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9781496211897)

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 concept 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.

Author: Ayo A. Coly
ISBN-10: 1496211898
ISBN-13: 9781496211897
Publisher: University of Nebraska Press
Language: English
Published: 06/01/2019
Pages: 264
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 1.19lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.75d

Review Citation(s):
Choice 10/01/2019