Bodily Secrets: The History of the Starving Body in Tsitsi Dangarembga's Nervous Conditions

Abstract

Hunger and food insecurity remain pressing issues in Africa. The impact of colonialism (both historical and neo-colonialism) has been, and remains, a much-examined consideration in famine causation. Historical legacies of colonial oppression are factored into causative theory, along with other factors such as population, climate, political conditions and specific economic contexts. Despite the presence of this level of nuance in academic debates, famine causation remains vague and often misinformed in the public consciousness – particularly in the West. This article reads Tsitsi Dangarembga's Nervous Conditions as intervention on these distorted public assumptions on African hunger by scrutinizing the character of Nyasha, who suffers from a different sort of hunger – a self-imposed denial of food. Placed within a postcolonial context, this article examines the common ground between Nyasha's ‘anorexia’ and the hunger suffered in the novel by Rhodesia's destitute masses.