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Embodied genealogies and gendered violence in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s writing
Citation
Simoes da Silva, AJ, Embodied genealogies and gendered violence in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's writing, African Identities, 10, (4) pp. 455-470. ISSN 1472-5851 (2012) [Refereed Article]
Copyright Statement
Copyright 2012 Taylor & Francis
DOI: doi:10.1080/14725843.2012.731881
Abstract
This essay examines two recent novels by the Nigerian writer, Chimamanda Ngozi
Adichie,Purple Hibiscus ([2003] 2005) and Half a YellowSun (2006), placing them first in
a dialogue with each other, and more broadly with selected Nigerian writing on the Biafra
conflict. Arguing with Adesanmi that Adichie belongs to a ‘third generation’ of African
literary work, it traces the novels’ work of historical revisionism through gendered and
embodied discourses of pain and violence. Adichie returns the reader to an aesthetics of
excess firmly grounded on potently disturbing images of the ‘body in pain’, in Elaine
Scarry’s memorable phrase (1983): the battered, bruised and scarred body emerges as a
key image, a corporeal evocation of the individual self that is traced in both novels to a
legacy of colonial and post-colonial relations, and specific gendered configurations.
Item Details
Item Type: | Refereed Article |
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Keywords: | Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie; Purple Hibiscus; Half a Yellow Sun; gender; violence; bodies |
Research Division: | Language, Communication and Culture |
Research Group: | Cultural studies |
Research Field: | Postcolonial studies |
Objective Division: | Culture and Society |
Objective Group: | Communication |
Objective Field: | Literature |
UTAS Author: | Simoes da Silva, AJ (Professor Tony Simoes da Silva) |
ID Code: | 100429 |
Year Published: | 2012 |
Deposited By: | School of Humanities |
Deposited On: | 2015-05-15 |
Last Modified: | 2017-12-18 |
Downloads: | 0 |
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