Of Bellies and Bumps: (Dis)Ability and Sexuality in Decolonial Literature in French Restricted; Files Only

Abstract

This dissertation attends to the significance of le ventre [the belly] to the creative projects of four authors of decolonial literature: Linda Lê, Véronique Tadjo, Birago Diop and Calixthe Beyala. I argue that each of these authors, in different ways and in various contexts from Africa, Asia, and these diasporas, leverage the belly’s queer potentials in their resistances to intertwined forces of coloniality, racism, ableism and heteropatriarchy. While the centrality of the belly to anticolonial resistance is a motif found throughout the works of numerous postcolonial authors (notably in Congolese writers Tchicaya U Tam’si and Sony Labou Tansi), this project foregrounds the agency of racialized women with illnesses, deformities, or (dis)abilities as they conduct their own theorizing with the belly. Here I consider the significance of “bellies and bumps” to both decolonial feminism and critical (dis)ability studies. This belly, I suggest, is neither stably maternal, nor precisely human —slipping between (non)human animals and landmasses, spiritual beings and tyrannical containers, the belly defies gendering and is charged with both pain and pleasure. In fact, the belly seems to disrupt stable narrativization itself, even as it fuels continued attempts to capture it. This project is, in part, an attempt to place critical (dis)ability studies and decolonial feminism in deeper conversation with one another, both to diversify the former and think through the ways resistance —racialized women’s resistance in particular— defies the respectability politics of the “working” (in both senses of the word) body and mind. Reading decolonial literature at the intersection of these framings, in addition, permits deeper engagement with the cultural and linguistic complexities of ability and disability, which have been overwhelmingly articulated according to Western (mostly Anglophone) languages and rights movements. This dissertation argues that the decolonial literary texts studied here irreparably re/dis/figure understandings of disabled bodies as they harness the belly’s powers.

Table of Contents

Introduction………………………………………………………………………………………................1

Chapter 1: Cronos and the Queer Belly: A Politics of Confinement in the Work of Linda Lê

Introduction: Diagnosing the Social Body…………………………………….................18 Figuring “Care”: Disability, Children, Nation……………………..…………..............….21 The Queer Bellies of Cronos and Linda Lê’s Politics of Confinement……….........….32

Chapter 2: The Blindness of Tyranny: Sounding (Dis)Ability in Véronique Tadjo’s Le royaume aveugle

Introduction: Sensing Like a Bat……………………………………….............………...44 “Blind As a Bat”: Making Monsters, Making Blind(ness)…………............……………46 Seeing Beyond Ocularcentrism or, Seeing with the Belly………….........…………….71 Conclusion……………………………………………………………...............…….……93

Chapter 3: Bumpy Births : Gender and Decoloniality in "Les Mamelles" by Birago Diop

Introduction…………………………………………………………..............……..……..95 Breasts, Bumps, and Births……………………………………...........…………………98 Gendering Jégén………………………………………………............………………..108 Mounds and Monuments………………………………………............………….……117

Chapter 4: The Bellies of Women: Race, Sex, and Erotic/a in Calixthe Beyala’s Femme nue, femme noire

Introduction………………………………………………………………..………......…128 Erotic/a………………………………………………………..……..……….……......…130 Madness………………………………………………………………………...…......…139 “Ce ventre violent du monde”…………………….…………………………........……144 Conclusion………………………………………………………………..…......…….…151

Epilogue….………………………………………………………………..…………………......……...153

Bibliography………………………………………………………………..…………………......…….161

About this Dissertation

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School	Laney Graduate School
Department	French
Degree	Ph.D.
Submission	Dissertation
Language	English
Research Field	Literature, African Gender Studies Women's Studies
Keyword	Francophone Postcolonial Decolonial Vietnam Sexuality Race Disability Feminism Literature
Committee Chair / Thesis Advisor	Subha Xavier, Emory University Claire Nouvet, Emory University
Committee Members	Elissa Marder, Emory University Falguni Sheth, Emory University

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