The Body as a Site of Colonization:
Alice Walker’s Possessing the Secret of Joy
Alyson R. Buckman
Imperialism is an economic, political, institu-
tional, and cultural phenomenon that has been
practiced by power elites in relation to the masses of
the United States, especially in relation to Native
Americans, blacks, women, and immigrant groups
such as Asians. Although the term is generally used to
describe the control of one nation over the political,
cultural, or economic life of another, it may be
extended to include internal, as well as external,
colonialism. The colonial relationship is one of
domination and subordination among groups and is
constructed primarily on notions of difference; it is
established and maintained in order to serve the
interests of the dominant group, fortifying its position
and eroding choice for non-elites through force,
authority, influence, and dominance. Elites include
those in positions of influence and power, i.e., those
who have access to resources that enable them to
dominate in the creation of poIicy and culture:
religious, political, and economic leaders; educators;
artists; publishers; and professional associations, such
as the American Medical Association.
The colonial relationship is not only physical, but
psychic and cultural as well. Ideology occupies a
dialectical relation to legislation, economics, and
culture: it arises from and contributes to a system of
exclusionary power relations. Those colonized have
less access to resources as they are subordinated
economically and politically; what resources they do
have are tenuous as their bodies, which have become
commodities, are dispensable in a surplus labor force.
Imaging is one tool used to justify this exclusion and
subordination, constructing those colonized as deserv-
ing of their lower status.
For instance, Charles Murray’s “Model Minority”
thesis is used to image blacks as lazy and socially
parasitic in comparison to model Asians; if they
wanted to live up to their Lockean social contract and
take individual responsibility for their welfare, they
could. The only reason blacks form a disproportionate
number of the unemployed is that they are just too
lazy to go out and get a job; instead, they live off of
whites. Such propaganda as this reinforces stereotypes
conducive to retaining elites in power. Violence is
often a result of such imaging; these stereotypes and
ideologies often promote physical as well as psychic
violence, such as low self-esteem and despair, within
and against non-elites. Incidents such as those of
Bernhard Goetz, Rodney King, Vincent Chin, Benson-
hurst, and the Los Angeles riots are an (i1)logical
result.
The image-making process is thus a vital part of
how domination is (de)constructed. bell hooks and
other authors agree that control over the image-making
process is a vital part of systems of domination; while
hooks specifically discusses racial domination, this is
true for gender, sexual, and economic domination as
well. Hegemonic discourse must therefore be
disrupted and transformed as part of the process of
decolonization; those who are dominated must be able
to see themselves “oppositionally, to imagine,
describe, and invent ourselves in ways that are
liberatory” (Black Looks 2). For example, in order to
fight against their economic status as the lowest paid
workers in America and their status as the primary
victims of sterilization abuse and abortion (Lorde
285), black women must take control of the image-
making process as part of revolutionary activity.
One example of this taking control is Alice
Walker’s Possessing the Secret of Joy; this text
functions as an example of revolutionary action
against the oppression of those colonized by the
imperialist gaze. The female body and the African
body are exposed as sites of colonization by power
elites; the ritual of female genital mutilation and the
AIDS epidemic are both imaged as means to
oppression. However, in Walker’s text these bodies
also become sites of resistance to domination by
power elites. In addition, the power relations in this
text are not simplistically demarcated in a binary of
colonized versus colonizerlgood versus evil. Walker
posits a complex system of power relations in which
those oppressed themselves become oppressors
through hegemonic systems.
The female body is revealed as a site of male and
national colonization through the ritual clitoridectomy
90 journal of American Culture
and infibulation that the protagonist, TashiEvelyn
Johnson, undergoes. Walker bases the experience of
her fictional character upon fact. Genital mutilation
impacts upon approximately 100 million women
worldwide; this is a procedure generally covered by
the comparatively innocuous term “female circumci-
sion” (Hansen and Scroggins n.p.). This mutilation
ranges from knicking the clitoris to infibulation (the
excising of all external genitalia and the sewing shut
of the vulva-except for a tiny opening barely large
enough to allow the passage of very small quantities
of blood and urine). The girls and young women who
undergo this procedure sometimes die, and medical
complications, such as infections and problematic
labors, frequently result.
The procedure is based on a variety of reasons
dependent on the culture; aesthetic, social, hygienic,
and moral values in varying combinations form the
basis of this practice (Joseph and McDonald n. pag.),
In Olinkan culture (the fictional setting of Walker’s
Possessing the Secret ofJoy) as in other cultures, the
practice is based on a desire to limit women’s
sexuality and increase male pleasure. Without the
clitoridectomy and infibulation, the woman is imaged
as dirty, masculine, and whorish; the generai belief is
that the genitalia of the “uncircumcised” woman will
continue to grow and become masculine, enabling her
to satisfy herself. She is generally unable to marry,
thus affecting her economic status as well.
For those faced with conflict between traditional
and colonial influence, the ritual of genital mutilation
gains added significance as a means of resisting tribal
colonization. Tashi is a native African woman who is
sensitive to the threat posed her people by outside
colonizers. When her village is destroyed by a rubber
manufacturer from England, Tashi engages in the
revolutionary activity of embracing traditional tribal
rituals; it is her way of resisting tribal erasure. And,
indeed, this activity is sanctioned by a revolutionary
figure known only as “Our Leader” (it is against
colonial law to mention the man’s name out loud),
who bears considerable likeness to the Kenyan leader
Jomo Kenyatta. Kenyatta, too, encouraged Africans to
return to tribal rituals, such as female genital
mutilation, as part of anti-colonial activity (Ungar
190). The body is the only means of resistance left, as
everything else has been stripped away by the foreign
colonizers. Tashi narrates,
I had taken off my gingham Mother Hubbard [that the
missionaries had given the women of the tribe to weal. My
breasts were bare. What was left of my dress now rode
negligently about my loins. . . .We had been stripped of
everything but our black skins. Here and there a defiant
cheek bore the mark of our withered tribe. These marks
gave me courage. I wanted such a mark €or myself. (22,241
However, although Tashi willingly requested to be
“bathed” by the tsunga M’Lissa (“bathed” is a
euphemism for the ritual; tsunga is a word Walker
coined to describe the woman who performs the
ritual), she did not realize what, precisely, was
involved. This is partly due to the fact that discussing
the ritual is taboo; it is enshrouded in a silence that
helps to keep the practice intact. She did not realize
either the physical or psychic damage that would
result from the ritual.
Once a woman who took pleasure in her body,
Tashi is embarrassed by the shuffling walk and odor
that are characteristic results of the procedure (her
menstrual period takes ten days and some of the blood
is unable to get out due to the smallness of the vaginal
opening); in addition, neither she nor Adam, her
husband, could ever again experience the sexual
pleasure they had before the operation. The operation
ensures that the woman will have no pleasure through
vaginal intercourse, and Adam, a non-tribal American
male, does not enjoy either the blood or the pain that
results for Tashi from forcing the vaginal opening
wider. A part of Tashi’s self hides away after the ritual
ceremony; she is no longer the woman she once was.
Two other examples of genital mutilation are
given to the reader to underscore the prevalence and
pain of this practice: that of Dura, Tashi’s older sister,
and that of M’Lissa, the tsunga. Dura’s experience is
key as it forms part of Tashi’s post-ritual madness. A
hemophiliac, Dura died as a result of the ritual
performed at M’Lissa’s hands. After this traumatic
occurrence, Tashi experiences a sort of amnesia
related to her ensuing madness; when she overcomes
this amnesia, a vital part of her cure is effected. This
part of the cure entails naming her and her sister’s
oppression; Dura’s death is named a murder which, in
addition to the traumatic effects of the ritual upon
Tashi, must be revenged. And the person upon whom
vengeance must be visited is the one who performed
the ceremony and the one praised as a national
treasure: M’Lissa.
MLissa is also a victim of genital mutilation. She
drags her left leg behind her, as the tendons were
severed during the operation. M’Lissa’s mother (the
tsunga at the time) had attempted to simply knick
M’Lissa’s clitoris; the male witch doctor, however,
was vigilant and, perceiving a violation of the
ceremony, performed a thorough clitoridectomy and
infibulation himself. As M’Lissa bucked under the

razor-sharp stone, he also cut the tendons in her left
leg.
Although M’Lissa is a victim, the reader is not
persuaded to empathize with her plight. Although her
body is marked and experienced as a site of male
domination, she becomes the next tsunga and thus
becomes complicitous with the patriarchy. She learns
t o stop feeling and becomes callous in the
performance of her “duty.” As this ritual is her liveli-
hood, she decides to ensure her own autonomy at the
expense of other women, women whom she sees as
fools. She believes the women themselves to be the
agents of their own domination; in her eyes, if women
are stupid enough to obey this tradition, then they
deserve everything they get as a result. Tashi puts this
sort of belief as follows, describing its consequences:
“ ‘If you lie to yourself about your own pain, you will
be killed by those who will claim you enjoyed it”’
(1%).
In looking at the female body as a site of
colonization in this text, then, a few points are clear.
First, those who are colonized may also act as
colonizers. This is true of both the tribal leaders who
encourage genital mutilation and the tsunga M’Lissa.
As the leaders are subordinated to English colonial
authority, so, too, do they subordinate women to their
own authority, limited as it may be. As Audre Lorde
writes, genital mutilation “is not a cultural affair as
the late Jomo Kenyatta insisted. It is a crime against
black women” (285). Nationalism does not excuse
oppression.
Second, Walker avoids easy binary oppositions of
male/female, colonizedcolonized, white/black,
EuropedAfrican, and good/evil. This second point is
further developed through the use of Adam and his
sister, Olivia. While Adam and Olivia are both black
Americans and, thus, victims of oppression them-
selves, they are also agents of colonization. As part of
a missionary family (their mother, father, and aunt
acted as missionaries to the Olinkans until the village
was destroyed), they are seen as outsiders and, more
importantly, as cultural TNT by the Olinkans. The
mores (concerning religion, clothing, education,
sexuality, beauty, et cetera) that Adam and Olivia’s
family had brought to the tribe are seen as the means
to colonization that they are. Tashi phrases this
discourse in the following way in a conversation with
Olivia before she leaves for the ritual:
They are right, I said to her from my great height astride the
donkey, who say you and your family are the white
people’s wedge. . . . All I care about now is the struggle for
our people, I said. You are a foreigner. Any day you like,
The Body as a Site of Colonization 91
you and your family can ship yourselves back home. . . .
Who are you and your people never to accept us as we are?
Never to imitate any of our ways? It is always we who have
to change. . . . You are black, but you are not like us. We
look at you and your people with pity, I said. You barely
have your own black skin, and it is fading. . . . You don’t
even know what you’ve lost! And the nerve of you, to bring
us a God sameone else chose for you! (22-23)
In this quote we can see the complexities of both
intranational and international colonization for both
America and Africa. Here we have two African-
Americans who have accepted a religion, foreign to
their ancestry, that was once used as a justification for
slavery; in turn, they are asking Africans to replace
their beliefs with this same religion. We have a
woman who comes from and represents a patriarchal
background, in religious as well as other American
ideologies, begging another woman not to submit to a
patriarchal tradition. And we have a woman who, in
asserting and celebrating her tribal identity, is
victimized by that tribal belief system.
Walker also complicates the male/female binary.
For example, the character of Adam provides further
complexities. As a colonizer, Adam acts as religious,
male, and American figures of domination. The
moment at which Tashi spiritually left their
relationship, she tells us, is when Adam, a progressive
minister, refused to give a sermon on female suffering
as evidenced in Tashi’s mutilation; he had lectured on
the suffering of Christ, and Tashi believed he should
lecture on the suffering of women like herself as well.
I grew agitated each time he touched on the suffering of
Jesus. . . . I am a great lover of Jesus, and always have
been. Still, I began to see how the constant focus on the
suffering of Jesus alone excludes the suffering of others
from one’s view. . . . Was woman herself not the tree of
life? And was she not crucified? Not in some age no one
even remembers, but right now, daily, in many lands on
earth?. . . One sermon, I begged him. One discussion with
your followers about what was done to me. . . . He said the
congregation would be embarrassed to discuss something
so private and that, in any case, he would be ashamed to do
SO. (273-74)
Adam has the power to help revolutionize under-
standing of structures of domination, yet he refuses
this possibility and becomes complicitous in
maintaining a disempowering silence,
However, he, too, is hurt by the system of oppres-
sion. Although men are not victims of sexism in the
way that women are, there are ways in which they are
92 Journal of American Culture
adversely affected by it; many men experience the
pain of their mothers, sisters, and daughters as they
encounter sexism, often experiencing the ramifica-
tions of colonization with them. Specifically, Adam
acts as an anchor to Tashi’s psychically unbalanced
life, He is the caretaker, for instance, when Tashi
unconsciously slashes rings around her ankles. He
remains with her throughout her voluntary
commitments to a mental hospital and her episodic
rages. He is also unable to have intercourse with his
wife and thus experiences some of the same rupture in
sexuality as Tashi does. Thus, the way in which her
body has been colonized as a site of subordination has
affected his own existence as well.
Another male, Benny, is also hurt by the
colonization of Tashi’s female body. Benny is the son
of Tashi and Adam, and his trip through the biah canal
was impeded by Tashi’s infibulation; the vaginal
opening was not large enough and part of Benny’s
brain was crushed during labor. As a result, Benny was
born retarded. Although he functions fairly well, he
cannot remember things and constantly has to take
notes on conversations and instructions. Benny is also
affected by Tashi’s emotional disturbances, constantly
rebuffed by the emotional wall surrounding his mother.
Although he tries to snuggle up to her, both
symbolically and literally, she pushes him away.
Benny, although an American male, is clearly not
aligned with the colonizer.
To complicate things even further, the male body
becomes a site of colonization as the text proceeds;
this occurs through the representation of the African
AIDS epidemic. While women and children form the
background to the AIDS ward, Hartford, a young
African male, is foregrounded as an AIDS victim.‘ It
is Hartford who reveals to the audience one version of
how the AIDS epidemic began. Hartford was recruited
to work for a medical laboratory in Africa, first as a
hunter of green monkeys and then as a decapitator of
those same monkeys. Through his narrative (and
Walker’s notes, which follow t h e main text),
Germans, Dutch, Americans, Australians, and New
Zealanders are all implicated in the beginnings of the
AIDS epidemic, as the white technicians use these
monkeys in an attempt to find a cure for polio,
However, some of the vaccine was contaminated and
disseminated within the African population, which
was used as a test subject.
This version of the AIDS epidemic corresponds,
at least in part, to information that Torn Curtis, a
journalist, has uncovered about the origins of the
disease. Between 1957 and 1960, Curtis has
discovered, at least 325,000,and perhaps more than a
half million, people received an oral polio vaccine in
equatorial Africa-which was then the Belgian
Congo, Burundi, and Rwanda;this section of Africa is
now the epicenter of the epidemic. The polio virus
was nourished on monkey kidneys, some of which
were infected with monkey viruses. While researchers
knew about some of these viruses, others were
unknown to them; as a result, rhey could not be
screened out of the vaccines. However, the oral
vaccine was apparently used prematurely in the
Congo, as Dr. Hilary Koprowski competed with Dr.
Afbert Sabin to be the first to produce the favored
polio vaccine. The successful polio immunization of
the caretakers of 150 chimpanzees (who were test
subjects for the vaccine) became the basis for mass
trials in Africa (Curtis 54-59).
In both Curtis and Hartford’s narratives, the
African body becomes a site of domination; Africans
form a disposable supply of test subjects for Western
doctors and technicians. In other myths of the origins
of AIDS that Walker touches on, the intellectuals
among the AIDS victims reach the conclusion that “it
must have been an experiment, like the one conducted
on black men in Alabama, who were injected with the
virus that causes syphilis, then studied as they sickened
and died. The kind of experiment that would not have
been hazarded on European or white American
subjects” (247).This narrative, in conjunction with
Hartford’s testimony, clearly depicts the African body
as a site of colonization.
The AIDS and genital mutifation narratives clearly
posit the body, specifically male and female African
bodies, as a site of both international and intranational
colonization. Both Western and male ideologies posit
the Other (African, female) as a commodity whose
definition should be fixed by the power elite; after all,
the Other is inferior to the dominant self and can be
readily displaced within the system of power. This
power differential is incorporated through colonial law,
tribal traditions and leadership, economics, and
cultural products such as image production. However,
this system, which produces psychic and physical
violence, can be disrupted through the image-making
process and the rejection of silence; both are integral
parts of revolutionary activity, and both are used in
Walker’s text.
In discussing a ritual that is traditionally taboo
and in verbalizing a creation myth for AIDS that is
vehemently denied by dominant groups, Walker
deconstructs the siIence that helps to empower these
groups and disempower the Other. In addition, Walker
constructs empowering images of the colonized,
enabling the Other to transcend objectification and

become subject. Part of this quest for transcendence is
constituted by history.
Although Frantz Fanon in Black Skin, White
Masks turns his back on the past in favor of the
present and future, it seems to me that the three are
necessarily related as history (and, by implication,
memory) can act as a witness against oppression; I
am, of course, not referring to histories written by the
power elite. If the coionized refuse to forget the past,
then they also refuse to be complicitous in their
oppression, as it will not be forgotten. As bell hooks
writes, “Memory sustains a spirit of resistance. Too
many red and black people live in a state of
forgetfulness, embracing a colonized mind so that
they can better assimilate into the white world” (191).
While history may be painful, the Other can, in
remembering, deconstruct the history of the colonizer
and its falsifying representation of the colonized.
Memory can then act as a catalyst against oppression.
Tashi’s ability to gain control over her memory
and accuse those responsible for her psychic and
physical trauma and for Dura’s death is the key to her
recovery from madness and her growth in agency.
Whereas previously her madness was self-defeating,
once she gains control over her memory and is able to
identify those who have oppIessed her and other
women, she is able to once again experience agency.
Militancy is chosen over madness. Tashi returns to
Africa and murders M’ Lissa, enacting revenge for
scores of women. Her act is not only against M’Lissa,
however; M’Lissa has become a “national monument”
(147) and, in her act against M’Lissa, Tashi acts
against the patriarchy that would subdue womanhood.
That this is not an individual act of aggression
with limited consequences is evidenced by the
demonstrations of African and Muslim women (also
victims of genital mutilation) once Tashi is placed on
trial. Professional women visit the president to ask for
an appeal of Tashi’s death sentence while other
women stand vigil outside the jail in solidarity with
Tashi, even as they are faced with men physically and
verbally abusing them. While M’Lissa was a
monument to the patriarchy, Tashi becomes a heroine
to oppressed and subjugated women worldwide.
These wornen testify to her status at her execution as
well, enacting a pageant of solidarity. The last thing
that Tashi sees, which explicates the meaning of her
actions, is a banner reading “RESISTANCE IS THE
SECRET OF JOY!”(279 original emphasis).
Not only does Walker image the body as victim,
as a site of colonization, but she shows how the status
of victim and Other can be transcended to that of
agent and subject. Relations of oppression are also
The Body as a Site of Colonization 93
complexly imaged. In unmasking systems of
domination, many authors are accused of not taking
the next logical step and proposing a new solution;
this is not the case with Walker. Her text acts as a
revolutionary manifesto for dismantling systems of
domination. As such, her text is that of a radical. To
simply strive €or social and economic equality with
white men or to simply combat racism is not enough,
although liberal and conservative ideology might
propose these as solutions for sexism, racism, and
classism. Instead, the complete system must be
overturned. And the first step is overcoming the
silence that empowers dominant groups; this is part of
an overall resistance that might very well be the key
to the secret of joy.
Notes
‘The idea that AIDS forms a text in relation to
male colonization, as well as African colonization,
was suggested to me by Professor Mary J. Lupton, in
an unpublished conference paper.
Works Cited
Curtis, Tom. “The Origin of AIDS.”Rolling Stone 19 Mar.
1992: 54-59,61, 106, 108,
Fanon, Frantz. Black Skin, White Masks.New York: Grove
Weidenfeld, 1967.
Hansen, Jane, and Deborah Scroggins. “Female Circum-
cision: U S , Georgia Forced to Face Medical, Legal
Issues.” [Atlanta, GA] Journal 15 Nov. 1992: n. pag.
hooks, bell. Black Looks: Race and Representation.
Boston: South End, 1992.
Joseph, Toni Y., and Mark McDonald. “Reasons for Doing
Female Circumcision Vary from Culture to Culture.”
Dallas Morning News 2 Mar. 1992: n. pag.
Lorde, Audre. “Age, Race, Class, and Sex: Women
Redefining Difference.” Out There: Marginalization
and Contemporary Cultures. Ed. Russell Ferguson, et
al. New York: The New Museum of Contemporary
Art and MITP, 2990.281-87.
Lupton, Mary J. “Blood Stones: Alice Walker on Female
Genital Mutilation.” Unpublished paper delivered at
Popular CulturelAmerican Culture Conference,
10Apr. 1993.
Ungar, Sanford J. Africa: The People and Politics of an
Emerging Continent. New York: Touchstone, 1989.
Walker, Alice. Possessing the Secret ofJoy. New York:
Harcourt, 1992.
94 Journal of American Culture
Alyson R. Buckman, English Department, Purdue
University, W. Lafayette, IN.Winner of the 1994 Kathleen
Gregory Klein Award for excellence in feminism and
American culturefpopular culture.