Corporeality in the Novels of Gabriel García Márquez and Sony Labou Tansi

This book explores the significance of corporeality in literature through a South-South comparison of the works of Colombian author Gabriel García Márquez and Congolese author Sony Labou Tansi. It argues that the body constitutes a basic trope not only in imagining postcolonial power relations but also our (non) being-in-the-world. Organized thematically, the chapters compare these authors' novels in relation to the dehumanised body, bodies of war, the dead body, the body in relation to bureaucracy, and the dictator's body. It taps into the growing critical interest in bringing Latin American and African literatures into conversation.

Offers a South-South comparative literary analysis of Colombian author Márquez and Congolese author Labou Tansi Emphasises the importance of corporeality in postcolonial texts Employs close readings to explore the subaltern body in relation to the colonial past and postcolonial present

Autorentext

Gilbert Shang Ndi is Heisenberg Professor of Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies, University of Bayreuth, Germany.

Klappentext
"This project is an important intervention into comparative readings of African and Latin American culture. It reads Labou Tansi and García Márquez for the various ways in which bodies and physicality bear the register of postcolonial histories and experiences, including the trans-Atlantic slave trade, colonial exploitation, and the continuities of bodily violence and exploitation between the colonial past and the postcolonial present. Ndi argues that an examination of the subaltern body provides a particularly privileged window into the two authors' explorations of the operations of political power in the postcolony as well as anchoring their novelistic aesthetics in explorations of excess, the scatological, the precarious, and the abject. The analysis toggles between discussions of García Márquez and Labou Tansi, around dehumanized bodies, the body in and at war, the dead body, the emaciated body, and the dictator's body. It reads the range of novels by each author carefully for extensive textual evidence of each of the thematic elements, drawing from postcolonial theory, philosophy and existing criticism for its analysis. This timely book represents a compelling addition to the emerging area of South-South comparison by illuminating interwoven literary practices of two of the twentieth century's most important writers. Lanie Millar, Associate Professor of Spanish and Portuguese, University of Oregon, US Gilbert Shang Ndi has written the book we have been waiting for. His analyses reveal the cohabitation of two immense writers who wrote so that the tragic ordeal of history would not overcome the power of the body. This book is bursting with life. Much more than a simple comparison of the novels of García Márquez and Sony Labou Tansi, Gilbert Shang Ndi's critical gesture is a mobilisation of their joint energies, in the service of the future. Xavier Garnier, Professor, Université Sorbonne Nouvelle, Paris This book explores the significance of corporeality in literature through a South-South comparison of the works of Colombian author Gabriel García Márquez and Congolese author Sony Labou Tansi. It argues that the body constitutes a basic trope not only in imagining postcolonial power relations but also our (non) being-in-the-world. Organized thematically, the chapters compare these authors' novels in relation to the dehumanised body, bodies of war, the dead body, the body in relation to bureaucracy, and the dictator's body. It taps into the growing critical interest in bringing Latin American and African literatures into conversation. Gilbert Shang Ndi is Heisenberg Professor of Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies, University of Bayreuth, Germany.

Inhalt

.- 1 Introduction.- 2 On Beginning/Ending: In'carn'ations of Atavism and Apocalypse.- 3 The War Dialectic and the Genealogy of Postcolonial Nationhood.- 4 The Dea(r)th of Life: Writing the Dead Body.- 5 On Visceral Narrations: Borderline Bodies.- 6 The Dictator's Body and the Tropicality of Being.- 7 The Body as (w)hole, the Body as a Wor(l)d.