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Periodical article | Leiden University catalogue | WorldCat |
Title: | Miscegenation as metonymy: sexuality and power in the colonial novel |
Author: | Busia, Abena P.A. |
Year: | 1986 |
Periodical: | Ethnic and Racial Studies |
Volume: | 9 |
Issue: | 3 |
Pages: | 360-372 |
Language: | English |
Geographic terms: | English-speaking Africa Great Britain |
Subjects: | colonialism sexuality literature English language Historical/Biographical |
Abstract: | British imperial and colonial novels set in Africa inscribe within them several fictions, which are ultimately choreographed around the question of power. The locus of that power is the silenced body of the African female. In the white man's struggle for order in an alien and hostile territory, sexual behaviour (and misconduct) becomes highly symbolic, betraying a deep conflict: the juxtaposition of conquest and desire, and of empowerment and violation. As one of the leading metaphors for the idea of imperial conquest is that of the mastery of the woman, and since also the body of the continent is feminized, the mastery over colonial space becomes represented through the metaphor of rape: desire cannot be satiated without conquest, nor power attained without violation. In each case the one cannot be achieved without the other, for the only way to conquer the woman is to succumb to her. Whether the woman be white or black, the result is a paradox. Notes. |