The Body Wall: Somatics of Travel and Discourse in Literary and Cultural Theory - Perfect for Academic Research and Cultural Studies

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Contemporary materialism, in its varied configurations, persistently challenges claims that the body can be relegated to a subservient position when compared to reason. In most pertinent colonial and postcolonial studies the body is seen as a text, upon and by means of which signs of difference are instituted. Yet, to be able to test and appreciate to what extent the postcolonial body was and remains today a battleground for discursive control, it is helpful to start with the awareness of the somatics of the traveller himself –his agreement to and with his own person or lack thereof vis-à-vis other bodies, his translation of the somatic into the semantic. The traveller’s body, when rendered in writing, becomes a symbolic construct which enters into a relation with the represented world, and the nature of this multifaceted, troubled alliance – if alliance it is – forms the main theme of this book.