Breaching the Body's Boundaries: Abjected Subject Positions in Postcolonial Drama

Abstract

As postcolonial countries and regions around the world travel the endless path towards decolonization — specifically the re-evaluation of power relations established by imperialism — theatre continues to be a site where the colonizer/ colonized binary can be manipulated to disempower imperial inscriptions. Such devices as strategic silence. story telling, music and song, costume, and the tactical manipulations of time and space offer ways of articulating in dislocated colonial subjects what David Attwell terms "notions of identity [that] are always positional, contingent, liminal, and dialogic." A contingent, liminal identity is, for a colonized subject, a useful tool for manipulating power relationships and relocating one's self in a subject position(s) of one's own choosing. This manipulation and relocation of an imperially imposed identity is, of course, part of the ongoing agenda of colonized subjects across the former British Empire, including settler colonies (Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and, in some contexts, South Africa), the occupation colonies (Africa, the West Indies, India, South and South-East Asia), and "colonies" that do not fit comfortably into either category, such as Ireland.