File spoon-archives/postcolonial.archive/postcolonial_1996/96-08-26.043, message 153


Date: Mon, 5 Aug 1996 16:08:52 -0800
From: azfar-AT-wsu.edu (Azfar Hussain)
Subject: Re: the body


Dear Malcolm,

Since you're interested in "the body" in the "postcolonial" space as well
as in using Foucault for your purpose (giving me the impression--though I'm
not sure-- that you might also be interested in looking at certain points
of overlap and clash between the "postcolonial" and "poststructuralist"
spaces), you may want to take a look at an interdisciplinary anthology
called _Cartographies: Poststructuralism and the Mapping of Bodies and
Spaces_ edited by Rosalyn Diprose & Robyn Ferrel. Here a number of essays
extensively draw on the work of Foucault and, to some extent, on the works
of Deleuze, Irigaray, Benjamin, and Derrida in an attempt to come to terms
theoretically with the various contours of the body as it figures today. As
perhaps you will also see, some of the formulations in this anthology
exhibit direct but unacknowledged influences of Fanon.

Well, Malcolm, I can hardly resist the temptation of telling you that
almost two hundred years ago, Lalon Fakir--an illiterate community-singer
coming from an extremely poor farmer-class in Bengal--was evolving his
"Deha-tatya" (theory of the body) in his orally composed songs where one
surprisingly finds that the body is continuously engaged as a field of
language and a site of resistance. Interestingly enough, Lalon was also
showing how the body itself could be an endlessly slippery signifier and a
network of power-relations involving society and history. It seems that
Lalon Fakir anticipated in his own untutored but profound way some of the
crucial insights of Foucault and Derrida, and his was a real radical voice
against colonialism, feudalism, and "communalism" (religious sectarianism)
in India. But he's a marginalized composer in the real sense of the term,
and is virtually unknown in the West, while he continues to inspire
farmers, fishermen, day-laborers, blacksmiths, etc in Bengal with superb
lyrics that I think have profound implications not only for any theory of
the body as such, but also for our struggle against imperialism and
capitalism today.

Best,



Azfar Hussain

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AZFAR HUSSAIN
Department of English
Washington State University
Pullman, Washington 99164-5020

Phones: 509-332-4405 (home)
        509-335-1803 (work)
E-mail: azfar-AT-wsu.edu
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