Colonialities in displacement

bodily textures in "Out on main street" (1933) by Shani Mootoo

Abstract

Gender Studies and Post-Colonial Theory have presented a shift in paradigms in relation to investigations on subjectivities. In Literary Studies, one can note, for example, the increasing number of works that either revisit the Western canon or question its status through these approaches, re-elaborating what has been defined and understood as Literature, be it in terms of authorship or forms and themes that have been privileged over the course of History. Throughout this process of deconstructing epistemic ‘truths’, the role of the body can be highlighted both for Gender and Post-Colonial theories in  an attempt to reconfigure its relationship to the constitution of subjectivity. Therefore, this paper aims at analyzing, under an intersectional approach, the short story “Out on Main Street” (1993) by the Indo-Caribbean writer Shani Mootoo. I believe the author project the body textually, bringing about a critique of the colonialities of power and gender and their multiple interwoven aspects in the social background in which the narrator is inserted: that of the Caribbean Diaspora. Works by Aníbal Quijano, Fernanda Belizário, Judith Butler, Letícia Sabsay, among others will be the theoretical apparatus of this investigation.