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Women, Representation, and Resistance in Twentieth-Century Southern African and Caribbean Literature

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Women, Representation, and Resistance in Twentieth-Century Southern African and Caribbean Literature University of Tennessee, Knoxville TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange Doctoral Dissertations Graduate School 8-2006 Embodying History: Women, Representation, and Resistance in Twentieth-Century Southern African and Caribbean Literature April Conley Kilinski University of Tennessee, Knoxville Follow this and additional works at: https://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_graddiss Part of the English Language and Literature Commons Recommended Citation Kilinski, April Conley, "Embodying History: Women, Representation, and Resistance in Twentieth-Century Southern African and Caribbean Literature. " PhD diss., University of Tennessee, 2006. https://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_graddiss/4264 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange. It has been accepted for inclusion in Doctoral Dissertations by an authorized administrator of TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange. For more information, please contact [email protected]. To the Graduate Council: I am submitting herewith a dissertation written by April Conley Kilinski entitled "Embodying History: Women, Representation, and Resistance in Twentieth-Century Southern African and Caribbean Literature." I have examined the final electronic copy of this dissertation for form and content and recommend that it be accepted in partial fulfillment of the equirr ements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, with a major in English. Mary E. Papke, Major Professor We have read this dissertation and recommend its acceptance: Nancy Goslee, Urmila Seshagiri, Carolyn Hodges Accepted for the Council: Carolyn R. Hodges Vice Provost and Dean of the Graduate School (Original signatures are on file with official studentecor r ds.) To the Graduate Council: I am submitting herewith a dissertation written by April Conley Kilinski entitled "Embodying History: Women, Representation, and Resistance in Twentieth-Century SouthernAfrican and Caribbean Literature." I have examined the final paper copy of this dissertation for form and content and recommend that it be accepted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degreeof Doctor of Philosophy, with a major in English. We have read this dissertation and recommend its acceptance: Dr. Nancy Goslee Dr. Urmila Seshagiri Accepted forthe Council: Vice Chancellor an n of Graduate Studies EMBODYINGHISTORY: WOMEN, REPRESENTATION, ANDRESISTANCE IN TWENTIETH-CENTURY SOUTHERN AFRICANAND CARIBBEAN LITERATURE A Dissertation Presented for the Doctor of Philosophy Degree The University of Tennessee, Knoxville April Conley Kilinski August 2006 Copyright © 2006 by April Conley Kilinski All rights reserved. 11 Acknowledgements I extend my deepest thanks to my dissertation committee, Dr. Mary Papke, Dr. Nancy Goslee, Dr. Urmila Seshagiri, and Dr. Carolyn Hodges, fortheir enthusiasm and tenacity over the long two years it took to complete this project. Specifically, I thank Dr. Hodges for agreeing to be an outside reader foryet another dissertation and for her very helpfuladvice about including Susan Sontag's work in this project. I also thank Dr. Goslee forher insightful readings and pointed comments that invariably helped me to clarify my ideas and to become a better writer. Dr. Seshagiri deserves thanks fornot only serving as an invaluable resource in this undertaking but also for the guidance she provided when I took my specialized comprehensive exam which served as the groundwork for this dissertation. Without her direction and help, I would not have been able to navigate the very challenging field that is postcolonial literature. Last, but by no means least, I would especially like to thank Dr. Papke forher quick, discerningreadings of my many draftsas well as her impeccable editing throughout, which she executed with unflappablepatience and w1wavering encouragement. She was so thoroughly invested and committed to this project that, in many ways, it is as much hers as it is mine. Further, I thank her forher exceptional mentoring throughout my graduate career. I cannot say enough how much I appreciate her genuine and sustained interest in me as a student and an individual. It is not an overstatement to say that a portionof any success I have enjoyed throughout my years in the graduate program is largely due to her influence and guidance. I would also like to thankthe Department of English and the Thornton Center for providing me withGraduate Assistantships which made the completion of this degree financially possible. Further, I am gratefulto the English department forawarding me the John C. Hodges Fellowship, the NormanJ. SandersDissertation Fellowship, and the Thomas Wheeler Travel Fellowship, the last of which affordedme the opportunity to do researchin South Africa. The secretariesin the English department, Dinah Brock, Leanne Hinkle, Kim Gottschall, Pam Whaley, and Judith Welch, have my eternalgratitude for their patience andassistance throughout the years. I have been privileged to have the support of other professorsas well, including Dr. Stan Gamer, who hasbeen anadvocate and an advisor fromthe beginning of my graduate work; Dr. Chuck Maland, withwhom I had the incredible fortune to teach Introduction to Film Studies, and who offered incomparable mentoring and friendship; and Dr. Allen Dunn, who graciously took the time to guide me through some very difficultconcepts in Homi Bhabha's work. It is a happy accident that a self-proclaimed misanthrope andhomebody like me could have developed relationships like the ones I developed with AmandaLawrence, Georgia Caver, andBill Larsen, with whom I also had the pleasure of teaching Introduction to Film Studies. Their friendship andcounsel have been a great source of encouragement throughout the yearsand a giftI could not have expected. 111 My husband, Charles Kilinski, deserves more gratitude and praise thanI could ever hope to offer. He has been a source of unyielding love, unending patience, unwavering·encouragement, and uncompromised supportthroughout our marriage as well as the oftengrueling hours of graduate work. I could not have asked fora more understandingor compassionate partnerin lifeor in my scholarship, and I thank him for always believing in me throughout this endeavor. Finally, I would like to thankmy family; my sister and brother, Christie and Jimmy, whoalways believed in my potential and my capabilities; and my parents, Jim andGinger Conley, fortheir support and fortheir example. I thankmy father for loving our family andmy mother, and foralways showing me what a good and loving fatheris. He represents the antithesisof the often domineering fatherfigures in the texts I explore here. He never made me feel limited because I am female;instead, he always made me feelloved andempowered, and forthat I thankhim. I thankmy mother forthe friendship we have developed over the years and especially forinstilling in me a love fornarrative with her incredible gift of storytelling. I am grateful that, like Paule Marshall, I, too, have a mother who is a "kitchen poet." Above all, I thankboth of them forraising me in Africaand foralways conducting their ministiy with integrity and respect forthe people and cultures with whomthey worked. Their complete devotion to those they ministered to defiedthe negative example of missionaries oftenportrayed in postcolonial texts. Our life in Africa has had a profoundimpact on every aspect of my life in the best possible way. I love Africa and the Africanpeople. They have had and will continue to have a lasting effecton me as a person and as a scholar. IV Abstract This dissertation illustrates how twentieth-century SouthernAfrican and Caribbean authors of English fictions recuperatethe metaphoricaland material female body from the male-centered project of British colonization by employing the female body as a site of resistance through representations of illness, eating disorders, and racial and gender performance. I include works by men and women as well as white and minorityauthors to illustrate how the female body becomes a point of convergence for narratives of resistance in these postcolonial works. Since each narrative is informedby hybridity-through syncretism, miscegenation, and contact with the metropolis through immigration-I argue that each author demonstrates the need to embrace a hybrid subject position in order to effect resistance. Moreover, I contend that the damagingeffects of the lasting legacy of Victorian gender normative behavior which governsand oftenlimits femaleagency necessitates a reconnection to a mother figureand the motherland in these novels as well. The first chapter provides a broad historical background of the British Empire's role in colonization in the areas under study as well as specific histories forJamaica, Haiti, South Africa, and Zimbabwe. I also include in this chapter the historical developments that conflatedthe racializedfemale body with representations of the land under colonization and a discussion of Joseph Conrad's Heart ofDarkness as the seminal colonial representation of the themes that the narratives in later chaptersresist. The second chapter argues that portrayalsof illness J.M. Coetzee'sAge of Iron and Ema Brodber' s Myal serve as metaphorsfor the corruption and sicknessinherent in the colonial system, specifically education. Thethird chapter contends that eating disorders V in Tsitsi Dangarembga's Nervous Conditions and Edwidge Danticat's Breath, Eyes, Memorybecome a means of self-empowered resistance forthe main characters in
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