Embodying Africa: Women and Romance in Colonial Fiction
1988; African Journals OnLine; Volume: 15; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
2071-7474
Autores Tópico(s)Global Maritime and Colonial Histories
ResumoWe live, at present, in the echo or aftershock of a seismic change in cultural studies. This revolution has brought with it new insights into the ideological functioning of literary discourse, and texts, instead of being relegated to the status of cultural epiphenomena, are now seen to play a founding role in the constitution of ideology and subjectivity. What, though, is the effect of post-structuralist political thinking on the study of literature? In this speculative essay, I shall comment on some recent developments in cultural theory, and their implication for the study of the romance. More particularly, I will examine the interrelationship of landscape, ideology, and subjectivity in two of H. Rider Haggard's African romances, for this seems an ideal terrain in which to test recently emerging assumptions about imperialism and writing.1 My argument consists of the following stages: first, I want to identify some theoretical signposts, influential moments in critical speculation which have made it possible for the study of colonial to emerge as a separate critical sub-genre. Secondly, 1 shall test the appropriateness of this critical discourse in a discussion of landscape and imperialist ideology in two of the most influential documents of the nineteenth century: King Solomon's Mines and She. The literary topoi of such nineteenth century texts, I suggest, emanate from specific models of imperial control, and the contradictory impulses behind administration are most dramatically demonstrated in the embodiment of African terrain in fiction. Finally, though, perhaps the most interesting aspect of the literary management of these landscapes can be found in the obsessively reiterated metonymie association of woman's body and the African landscape.
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