Displacement and the Somatics of Postcolonial Culture

by Douglas Robinson

Overview

Displacement and the Somatics of Postcolonial Culture is Douglas Robinson’s study of postcolonial affect—specifically, of the breakdown of the normative (regulatory) circulation of affect in the refugee experience and the colonial encounter, the restructuring of that regulatory circulation in colonization, and the persistence of that restructuring in decolonization and intergenerational trauma. Robinson defines “somatics” as a cultural construction of “reality” and “identity” through the regulatory circulation of evaluative affect.
This book is divided into three essays covering the refugee experience, colonization and decolonization, and intergenerational trauma. Each essay contains a review of empirical studies of its main topic, a study of literary representations of that topic, and a study of postcolonial theoretical spins. The literary representations in the refugee essay are a novel and short story by the Haitian writer Edwidge Danticat; in the colonization essay a short film by Javier Fesser and a novella by Mahasweta Devi (translated by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak); and in the intergenerational trauma essay novels by James Welch and Toni Morrison and a short story by Percival Everett. The first essay’s theoretical spins include Deleuze and Guattari on nomad thought and Iain Chambers on migrancy; the second’s, Nietzsche’s Genealogy of Morals and theories of postcolonial affect in Bhabha and Spivak; the third’s, work on historical trauma by Cathy Caruth and Dominic LaCapra.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780814254141
Publisher:	Ohio State University Press
Publication date:	01/01/2017
Edition description:	1
Pages:	288
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Douglas Robinson is Dean of Arts and Chair Professor of English at Hong Kong Baptist University.

Table of Contents

Preface
P.1. Somatics
P.2. Homeostasis/Allostasis
P.3. Displacement
P.4. The Structure of the Book

First Essay      Displacement of Persons/Forced Migration/Ideosomatic Dysregulation
1.1       Empirical Studies
            1.1.1 The Dysregulation and Reregulation of Refugee Reality and Identity
                        1.1.1.1  The Primal Scene of Refugee Studies
                        1.1.1.2 Somatic Mimesis, the Somatic Transfer, and the Somatic Exchange
                        1.1.1.3 Somatic Markers and Somatic Storage
                        1.1.1.4 Somatic (Dys)Regulation and Allostatic Load
                        1.1.1.5 Summary
            1.1.2 The Reregulation of the Dysregulatory Refugee
                        1.1.2.1 Xenonormative Reregulation
                        1.1.2.2 Xenonormative-Becoming-Loconormative Reregulation
                        1.1.2.3 Panicked Loconormativity and Cosmopolitan Metanormativity
            1.1.3 Types of Refugee Dysregulation
                        1.1.3.1 Types of Refugee Rootedness and Uprootedness in a Swiss Refugee Camp, 1944
                        1.1.3.2 The Four Stages of Refugee Dysregulation
                        1.1.3.3 On the Somatic Exchange in Academic and Literary Discourse
1.2       Literary Representations: Edwidge Danticat Leaving Haiti
            1.2.1 Home (1) and Flight (2): “Children of the Sea”
            1.2.2 Doubled Assimilation (3/4): Breath, Eyes, Memory
                        1.2.2.1 Outward Displacement
                        1.2.2.2 Dolls
                        1.2.2.3 Doubling
                        1.2.2.4 Self-Rape, Self-Abortion
                        1.2.2.5 Resomatization 
1.3       Theoretical Spins: Metaphorical Migrants
            1.3.1 Schizzes and Flows: Nomad Thought
            1.3.2 Migrancy and Identity

Second Essay: Displacement of Cultures/(De)Colonization/Ideosomatic Counterregulation
2.1 Empirical Studies
            2.1.1 C. L. R. James
            2.1.2 Albert Memmi
                        2.1.2.1 The Failure of Decolonization
                        2.1.2.2 The Capitalist Metanarrative of Development
                        2.1.2.3 The Colonizer That Refuses
            2.1.3 Frantz Fanon
                        2.1.3.1 Colonization as Becoming-White/Becoming-Black
                        2.1.3.2 Decolonization as Failed Disalienation
                        2.1.3.3 Cinematic Representation: Binta and the Great Idea
2.2 Theoretical Spins: Postcolonial Affect in Bhabha and Spivak
            2.2.1 Homi K. Bhabha
                        2.2.1.1 Affect on the Margins
                        2.2.1.2 Sly Civility
            2.2.2 Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak
                        2.2.2.1 Affective Value-Coding
                        2.2.2.2 The Raw Man
                        2.2.2.3 Speaking (of) Subalternity
                        2.2.2.4 Literary Representations: “Douloti the Bountiful”

Third Essay: Displacement of Time/Intergenerational Trauma/Paleosomatic Regulation
3.1 Empirical Studies
3.2 Literary Representations: Welch, Morrison, Everett
            3.2.1 James Welch, The Death of Jim Loney
                        3.2.1.1 The Critics
                        3.2.1.2 The Dark Constructivist Bird
                        3.2.1.3 Catharsis
            3.2.2 Toni Morrison, Beloved
            3.2.3 Percival Everett, “The Appropriation of Cultures”
            3.2.4 Conclusion: Acting Out and Working Through

 

Editorial Reviews

Displacement and the Somatics of Postcolonial Culture offers an important interventionist contribution to scholarship in the field of postcolonial studies. I am convinced by Douglas Robinson’s arguments and by his application of somatic theory to cultural texts that this book plays a key role in moving scholarship beyond the stalemate that now exists in postcolonial theory.” —Molly Blyth, professor of English literature, Canadian studies, and indigenous studies, Trent University

From the Publisher