What is it about?
Empire contributed to the construction of an ideal manhood that was overtly masculine and necessarily white. M.G. Vassanji in The Book of Secrets and Abdulrazak Gurnah in Desertion unveil the fissures and ambiguities of such an ideal of manhood. Their non-white, postcolonial perspective ultimately brings to the fore the strangeness of the colonial (white and male) body.
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Why is it important?
This article is a significant contribution to studies on whiteness since it defines the colonial body as a body-out-of-place whose whiteness must be accounted for alongside its maleness.
Perspectives
Writing this article was a conjoined effort to both academically and personally demonstrate the power relations at work when constructing "whiteness". As a white woman in postcolonial studies (specifically, African literature), I think it is paramount for white people to acknowledge "white" as simply another colour and, in an attempt to bring it down from its privileged position, it is absolutely necessary that white people make it strange.
Esther Pujolràs-Noguer
Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Imperially White And Male. Colonial Masculinities in M. G. Vassanji’s The Book of Secrets (1994) and Abdulrazak Gurnah’s Desertion (2005), Interventions, July 2018, Taylor & Francis,
DOI: 10.1080/1369801x.2018.1487323.
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