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

• Main Author: Fernando, Tarini Nandita
• Format: Master Thesis
• Language: English
• Published: Arts 2023
• Subjects: biotext; literary deconstruction; erotic; concrete poetry; contemporary Canadian literatures; contemporary Indigenous Literatures; BIPOC; Sri Lanka; postcolonial; hybridity; diaspora; affect theory; apocalypse; poetry; visual poetry; diasporic Canadian literatures; form and genre; Education > Language and Literature; Literature > Canadian English; Nishga
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.11575/prism/41641; https://prism.ucalgary.ca/handle/1880/116799

A 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 ...