French Literature Reviews - 2026
A. A. Coly, Postcolonial Hauntologies. African Women’s Discourses of the Female Body
Literary Theory, Linguistics and Stylistics
Ayo A. Coly
Postcolonial Hauntologies: African Women’s Discourses of the Female Body
University of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 978-1-4962-1189-7
264 pp.
$45.00
OVERVIEW
Postcolonial Hauntologies is an interdisciplinary and comparative analysis of critical, literary, visual, and performance texts by women from different parts of Africa. While contemporary critical thought and feminist theory have largely integrated the sexual female body into their disciplines, colonial representations of African women’s sexuality “haunt” contemporary postcolonial African scholarship, which—by maintaining a culture of avoidance about women’s sexuality—generates a discursive conscription that ultimately holds the female body hostage. Ayo A. Coly employs the concepts of “hauntology” and “ghostly matters” to formulate an explanatory framework within which to examine postcolonial silences surrounding the African female body, as well as a theoretical framework for discerning the elusive and cautious presences of female sexuality in the texts of African women.
In illuminating the pervasive silence about the sexual female body in postcolonial African scholarship, Postcolonial Hauntologies challenges hostile responses to critical and artistic voices that suggest the African female body represents sacred ideological-discursive ground on which one treads carefully, if at all. Coly demonstrates how “ghosts” from the colonial past are countered by discursive engagements with explicit representations of women’s sexuality and bodies that emphasize African women’s power and autonomy.
Ayo A. Coly is an associate professor of comparative literature and African studies at Dartmouth College. She is the author of The Pull of Postcolonial Nationhood: Gender and Migration in Francophone African Literatures.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. The African Female Body: From Colonial Inscription to Postcolonial Conscription
2. Haunted Silences: African Feminist Criticism and the Specter of Sarah Baartman
3. Spectral Female Sexualities: The Politics of Sexual Pleasure in Women’s Literatures
4. Subversive and Pedagogical Hauntologies: The Unclothed Female Body in Visual and Performance Arts
5. Laying Specters to Rest? On Bringing Sarah Baartman Home
Conclusion
Notes
References
Index
By drawing on the concept of hauntology—originally formulated by Jacques Derrida to describe the persistence of the past—Ayo A. Coly offers a vital framework for understanding how historical traumas continue to shape modern discourse. The book particularly addresses the legacy of Sarah Baartman, whose historical exploitation under the colonial gaze remains a powerful specter in African feminist criticism. Coly shows how contemporary African women writers and artists navigate this difficult heritage, moving beyond protective silence to reclaim agency over their own bodies and sexualities through explicit creative expression.
This study is highly valuable for scholars and students of postcolonial theory, gender studies, and African literature and art. It addresses crucial questions about the limits of representation, the politics of silence, and the ways in which visual and performance arts can subvert long-standing taboos. By analyzing a diverse range of texts, Coly provides readers with the theoretical tools needed to decode the subtle, cautious, and subversive ways female sexuality is articulated in postcolonial spaces, making it an essential read for those interested in feminist interventions in African cultural studies.