Ketu Katrak's,"Politics of the Female Body:Postcolonial Women Writers of the Third World"(Book Note)

 

 

In her work "Politics of the Female Body,  Katrak embarks on a critical examination of how the female body serves as both a site of oppression and resistance in various women's texts from India, Africa, and the Caribbean. Katrak astutely observes that in many societies, constructs of female sexuality are projected onto other social categories, including linguistic practices, educational structures, local traditions of social-cultural resistance, and institutions such as wifehood, motherhood, and widowhood, as explored in her expansive five-chapter analysis. While the study often centers on prominent African writers the author’s recent involvement in activist projects in her homeland also leads to discussions on Hosain, Desai, and the complex issue of Indian suicide-murders within the overarching framework of her study.

 

The title, "Politics of the Female Body," underscores the author's intention to employ widely accepted definitions of "postcolonial" and "Third World." In alignment with established comparative and feminist approaches, Katrak incorporates Spivak's insights on the necessity of avoiding relativism in comparative literary studies while emphasizing the ethical commitment to social justice through the intersection of activism and theory. Although the methodology adheres to familiar grounds, the study's potential for building political and feminist alliances across geographic boundaries within the field becomes apparent, deriving from shared colonial pasts and neocolonial presents.

 

The book continues a trajectory of intellectual exploration initiated by feminists, aiming to situate opposition to patriarchy in conjunction with and in contrast to contextualized colonialism and postcolonialism. It goes beyond this established framework by interweaving crucial cultural practices, such as dowry and bride-price, to elucidate the intricate ways in which the embodied subject operates within overlapping, conflicting, and rival traditions within each respective society. The venture of employing diverse sociocultural lenses to interpret female bodies entwined in diverse postcolonial predicaments is a pursuit that has been undertaken.

 

Employing novels, plays, pamphlets, and at times, poems—both independently and in collaboration—Katrak meticulously elucidates the impacts of two deeply entrenched legacies of colonization: English education and the construction of normative femininity. She demonstrates how these elements function as the foundation for postcolonial manifestations of patriarchal control. Each chapter highlights how such control manifests through societal attitudes and cultural norms, resulting in what she interprets as various forms and degrees of "exile." In other words, the constraints imposed on female subjectivity lead to a profound dislocation of the self, culminating in experiences so deeply traumatic that they give rise to silence, violence, and/or self-annihilation. Katrak utilizes diverse narrative genres in conjunction with cultural practices to underscore this crucial point.

 

While the work aligns with the efforts of other scholars, its "broad survey" approach makes it an invaluable resource for novice scholars. However, this comprehensive approach may result in some loss of local specificity and complexity, even within discussions of the politics and pleasures of the female body. Katrak acknowledges the challenging debates around essential femininity and the body-as-identity but recognizes that these topics somewhat lie beyond the book's scope.