Black Body: Women, Colonialism, and Space

by Radhika Mohanram

Book by Mohanram, Radhika

Genres: Feminism

270 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 1999

Reviews

[Malcolm · Rating 3 out of 5]

Parts of this argument are compelling, and there is a major challenge to much post-colonial theory through, paradoxially, an assertion of the importance of place – which is in many ways what post-colonialism is all about. I share a concern with Mohanram that swathes of postcolonial theory have been developed in the Northern Hemisphere former imperial centre and then just adopted in the southern ex-colonies of settlement, when what we really need is indigenous theory that explores the specificity of those places. For this reason, I welcome this book – she sloughs off the metropolitan centre to begin to construct theoretical approaches more applicable in Australia or New Zealand.

The problem is that it does not go far enough, for the most part because Mohanram is limited by her focus on literature (broadly defined) and the textual forms of post-colonial discourse where much of the argument turns around two or three published books (principally one political manifesto - Donna Awatere's 1982 book Maori Sovereignty - and one autobiography - Sally Morgan's 1987 book My Place). Both of these are essential reading for any understanding of antipodean indigenous politics, but Mohanram's analytical approach combined with her emphasis on analysis, uncertainty and political indeterminacy prevents any obvious meaningful contribution to movement politics or struggles for change. The book, in short, needed a section that provided for translation of the post-colonial deconstructive readings here into options for struggle.

None of that is not to say that the book is not useful, and when read alongside something like Raewyn Connell's Southern Theory for instance suggests ways to radically rethink the world; I just wish it had done more.

[Ayanna Dozier · Rating 2 out of 5]

While I believe Mohanram's book to provide a necessary exploration on race, space, and time, I do not believe that Mohanram is really interested in examining global anti-blackness. I'm aware of the liberal use of Black to define people of color outside of North America but what Mohanram does with the term is borderline offensive to Black lives. I state this because Monhanram frequently critiques the North American focus theoretical work on racialized embodiment (p. 66) that happens to centers Black lives as their object of study. Monhanram instead wants to further open up the philosophical construction of 'blackness' proposed by Fanon in Black Skin White Masks to include non-Black lives globally (p. 94). In so doing, Monhanram is trying to bridge solidarity with the global anti-Black struggle.

I agree with Mohanram that solidarity is a useful tactic and theoretical concept to understand Black lives and other enslaved or historically colonized individuals. I strongely disagree that this solidarity should come at expense of actual Black lives and worse, at the expense of Fanon's philosophy that is always, always, first and foremost about Black lives from and or existing in the African diaspora. By using Fanon and erasing Blackness from the conversation, Monhanram builds an argument for solidarity amongst white women (p.171) and the antipodean individual on the back of Black philosophical thought. While I'm certain this was not the intention, Mohanram's argument unfortunately contributes to the erasure of global anti-Blackness (which other people of color have benefitted from) and incorrectly re-affirms that anti-Black racism is only specific to North America.