Postcolonial Transplants: Cinema, Diaspora and the Body Politic

Abstract

A major consequence of the diasporic movement of people across national borders — albeit one that has not received the analytical attention it deserves — has been the compromising of ethical and legal systems, which had previously been naturalized as modes of national self-recognition and corporeal integrity. The body politic can only function politically, that is, it can only foster a shared sense of community and responsibility when the lines between acceptable and unacceptable behaviour are clear and accepted by all ‘good’ citizens.1 The focus on political subjectivity as citizenship can, however, lessen our recognition of the corporeal reality of subaltern bodies whose availability for exploitation is enabled precisely by their often structurally agonistic relation to the category of ‘good citizen’. Because of this agonistic potential, the body politic often rejects those intrusive agents that are deemed to threaten its survival and integrity. The transnational seepage and viral or even metastatic potential of bodies coded as alien (in ethnic and/or gendered terms) is perceived to compromise the ability of political bodies — be they nation states or other types of federal unions — to function in terms of boundary maintenance and cultural reproduction.