On Wednesday, December 5, Njeri Githire will present "Cannibalism and the Erotics of Domination: Rewriting Imperial Conquest in Caribbean Women's Writings" from 3:00-4:30 in the Geneva H. Southall Library (Social Sciences Tower 815). [Presentation Abstract]
Githire's examination of the trope of cannibalism in selected works by Caribbean women writers situates itself within the wider context of her engagement with metaphors of consumption and incorporation as analytical bases for exploring issues of encounter, gender, and identity in Caribbean and Indian Ocean Women's writings.
Indeed, binary definitions of 'self' and 'other' underpin the representation of cannibalism just as the inside/outside binary plays an important role in the conceptualization of all antitheses. Postcolonial studies especially have suggested that this 'other' so powerfully figured in the cannibal was created to support the cultural cannibalism of colonization. The accusation of cannibalism was merely a projection of imperialist appetites onto the cultures subsequently subsumed. Accordingly, the cannibal may productively be read as a symbol of the permeability or instability of boundaries.
Githire will explore the ways in which selected Caribbean women writers link cannibalism and erotic fascination as different ways of consuming the body to expose the consumptive mentality and violence that underpins the legacy of imperialism.
