What is it about?
One of the basic rules of Imperialism was to keep the different "races" separated, thus ensuring the purity and power of the whites. Miscegenation was condemned, but, ironically, although prohibited by imperial law, the relationship between people from different ethnicities could not be shunned. Gurnah's Desertion places the romance between Rehana, an East African woman and Martin Pearce, an Englishman, at the core of the struggle against Imperialism, demonstrating how desire can act as a trigger to bring to the fore the ambivalences and ambiguities of imperial discourse.
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Why is it important?
This article explores the interdependence of "gender" and "race" in the dismantling of imperialist discourse and, specifically, acknowledges "desire" as a site of resistance to colonialism. Therefore, the literary genre of romance is strategically used to uncover the ambivalences and ambiguities that nourished the imperial machinery. Ultimately, the article demonstrates how in the very rules that defined Imperialism are to be found the seeds of its own demise.
Perspectives
The process of writing this article has been enlightening in many ways. I started with an intuition that sexual desire could be a source of "unconscious" resistance to Imperialism. I use the adjective "unconscious" because the protagonists are often oblivious of the full implications of their actions. They know they are trespassing a boundary, in this case, a racial boundary, but they are not aware that they are exposing the endemic weaknesses of imperial discourse. However, my discovery while writing this article was how "race" was used as a tool by the colonized themselves to condemn the female protagonists of the story, punishing them for their being desiring women and, what's more, for daring to desire.
Esther Pujolràs-Noguer
Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Desiring/desired bodies: Miscegenation and romance in Abdulrazak Gurnah’s Desertion, Critique Studies in Contemporary Fiction, April 2018, Taylor & Francis,
DOI: 10.1080/00111619.2018.1459456.
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