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.
Table of Contents: Acknowledgements. Introduction. Leigh DALE & Simon RYAN: The Body in the Library. Bodies in Pain: Torture/Sacrifice/Trade. Beryl LANGER: Complicit Bystanders: Post-Colonial Bodies and Imperial Crime. John FROW: Bodies in Pieces. Shane WILCOX: The Sacrificial Body. Bodies in the Contact Zone. Jo-Ann WALLACE: "A Class Apart": Josephine Butler and Regulated Prostitution in British India, 1888-1893. Chris PRENTICE: No Body at Home: (Un)Homely Post-Colonial Metahistories. Howard McNAUGHTON: Mapping as Disturbance: First-World Iconography at the Border. Anne MAXWELL: Theorizing Settler Identities: Images of Racial and Cultural Difference in Colonial Exhibitions and Photographic Tourism. Re-presenting the Body. Johanna GIBSON: Humanity Shows: A Sensation of Wellbeing. Robert DINGLEY: 'Resurrecting' the Australian Past: Henry Lawson's "The Bush Undertaker". Veronica KELLY: "Who's the bigger dill"? The Madhouse in Recent Australian Drama. Joanne TOMPKINS: Dressing Up/Dressing Down: Cultural Transvestism in Post-Colonial Drama. The Gendered Body. Gillian WHITLOCK: The Intimate Empire. Bill ASHCROFT: Constructing the Post-Colonial Male Body. Christy COLLIS: Vertical Body/Horizontal World: Sir John Franklin and Fictions of Arctic Space. Simon RYAN: Ludwig Leichhardt: Australia's Missing Penis. Wendy WOODWARD: Riddles in the Marketplace: Gossip and the Surveillance of Settler Women's Bodies. Helen GILBERT: Responses to the Sex Trade in Post-Colonial Theatre.
. 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.
Table of Contents: Acknowledgements. Introduction. Leigh DALE & Simon RYAN: The Body in the Library. Bodies in Pain: Torture/Sacrifice/Trade. Beryl LANGER: Complicit Bystanders: Post-Colonial Bodies and Imperial Crime. John FROW: Bodies in Pieces. Shane WILCOX: The Sacrificial Body. Bodies in the Contact Zone. Jo-Ann WALLACE: "A Class Apart": Josephine Butler and Regulated Prostitution in British India, 1888-1893. Chris PRENTICE: No Body at Home: (Un)Homely Post-Colonial Metahistories. Howard McNAUGHTON: Mapping as Disturbance: First-World Iconography at the Border. Anne MAXWELL: Theorizing Settler Identities: Images of Racial and Cultural Difference in Colonial Exhibitions and Photographic Tourism. Re-presenting the Body. Johanna GIBSON: Humanity Shows: A Sensation of Wellbeing. Robert DINGLEY: 'Resurrecting' the Australian Past: Henry Lawson's "The Bush Undertaker". Veronica KELLY: "Who's the bigger dill"? The Madhouse in Recent Australian Drama. Joanne TOMPKINS: Dressing Up/Dressing Down: Cultural Transvestism in Post-Colonial Drama. The Gendered Body. Gillian WHITLOCK: The Intimate Empire. Bill ASHCROFT: Constructing the Post-Colonial Male Body. Christy COLLIS: Vertical Body/Horizontal World: Sir John Franklin and Fictions of Arctic Space. Simon RYAN: Ludwig Leichhardt: Australia's Missing Penis. Wendy WOODWARD: Riddles in the Marketplace: Gossip and the Surveillance of Settler Women's Bodies. Helen GILBERT: Responses to the Sex Trade in Post-Colonial Theatre.