The Body in the Library

The body is increasingly understood as being at the centre of colonial and post-colonial relationships and textual productions. Creating and circulating images of the undisciplined body of the 'other' was and is a critical aspect of colonialism. Likewise, resistance to colonial practices was also frequently corporeal, with indigenous peoples appropriating, parodying, and subverting those European practices which were used to signify the 'civilized' status of the colonizing body. The Body in the Library reads representations of the corporeal in texts of empire; case studies include:

gendered representations of corporeality

medical régimes

ethnography and photography in the Pacific

cultural transvestism in theatre

disease and colonial knowledge generation

'freak shows' and colonial exhibits

cinematic representations of bodies

geography and the metaphorization of land as a penetrable body

marketing the body

organ transplants and the limits of the post-colonial paradigm

In viewing colonialism and resistance as a bodily phenomenon, The Body in the Library enables new perspectives on the process of colonization and resistance. It is an important resource for teachers and students of colonial and post-colonial literatures.