A Body of Longing: The Erotic and Decolonial Power of the Biotext

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dc.contributor.advisorWhitehead, Joshua
dc.contributor.authorFernando, Tarini Nandita
dc.contributor.committeememberDobson, Kit
dc.contributor.committeememberBanerjee, Pallavi
dc.date2023-11
dc.date.accessioned2023-07-27T18:43:10Z
dc.date.available2023-07-27T18:43:10Z
dc.date.issued2023-07-19
dc.description.abstractA Body of Longing: The Erotic and Decolonial Power of the Biotext is a creative thesis that explores the radical potential of the biotext as a genre that defies formal and generic restrictions, especially the expectations of autobiography. Using postcolonial, affective, and literary deconstructionist theories, I explore questions such as, how does the biotext challenge formal and generic categorization? What decolonial and feminist potentials lie in the rejection of literary categories by Black, Indigenous, and writers of colour in a settler-colonial state? I investigate these questions through close analyses of experimental biotextual writings in contemporary Canadian and Indigenous English-language literatures, such as Fred Wah’s Diamond Grill, Jordan Abel’s NISHGA, and, of course, my own biotextual poetry. Through my analyses, I find that the biotext, through its lack of strict generic and formal expectations, inherently encourages experimentation and the blurring of literary categories. This rejection of categorization is what allows BIPOC authors to resist readability by the Canadian state, which seeks to fetishize and restrict their stories within the colonial borders of the nation-state. In investigating the work of authors like Wah, I also theorize that one reason diasporic Asian-Canadian writers have been so foundational to the history of the biotext is that they are particularly well-positioned to use formal and generic experimentation to challenge constructions of home and identity. I also argue that visual experimentation is a key tool that heightens the decolonial breaking of generic and formal boundaries that I attempt in my poetry. Drawing strongly from Audre Lorde’s theory of the power of the erotic, my poetry collection takes up the genre of biotext and articulates my own vision for erotic, decolonial, Sri Lankan, feminist futures. Inspired by Abel’s oeuvre, M. NourbeSe Philip’s Zong!, and Joshua Whitehead’s full-metal Indigiqueer, my poetry makes intentional use of visual experimentation to challenge both the reader and state’s consumption of the text. Ultimately, I wish to contribute to the traditions created by writers like Wah and Abel, who boldly defy the colonial restrictions of genre and form, and push the biotext to ever-changing dimensions.
dc.identifier.citationFernando, T. N. (2023). A body of longing: the erotic and decolonial power of the biotext (Master's thesis, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada). Retrieved from https://prism.ucalgary.ca.
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/1880/116799
dc.identifier.urihttps://dx.doi.org/10.11575/PRISM/41641
dc.language.isoen
dc.publisher.facultyArts
dc.publisher.institutionUniversity of Calgary
dc.rightsUniversity of Calgary graduate students retain copyright ownership and moral rights for their thesis. You may use this material in any way that is permitted by the Copyright Act or through licensing that has been assigned to the document. For uses that are not allowable under copyright legislation or licensing, you are required to seek permission.
dc.subjectbiotext
dc.subjectliterary deconstruction
dc.subjecterotic
dc.subjectconcrete poetry
dc.subjectcontemporary Canadian literatures
dc.subjectcontemporary Indigenous Literatures
dc.subjectBIPOC
dc.subjectSri Lanka
dc.subjectpostcolonial
dc.subjecthybridity
dc.subjectdiaspora
dc.subjectaffect theory
dc.subjectapocalypse
dc.subjectpoetry
dc.subjectvisual poetry
dc.subjectdiasporic Canadian literatures
dc.subjectform and genre
dc.subject.classificationEducation--Language and Literature
dc.subject.classificationLiterature--Canadian (English)
dc.titleA Body of Longing: The Erotic and Decolonial Power of the Biotext
dc.typemaster thesis
thesis.degree.disciplineEnglish
thesis.degree.grantorUniversity of Calgary
thesis.degree.nameMaster of Arts (MA)
ucalgary.thesis.accesssetbystudentI require a thesis withhold – I need to delay the release of my thesis due to a patent application, and other reasons outlined in the link above. I have/will need to submit a thesis withhold application.
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