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 ############################## 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 ############################## --- from list postcolonial-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
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