Colonial Black Body in Karen Blixen’s Out of Africa

Abstract

Karen Blixen’s Out of Africa delineates about the suppression, inhibition and restraint of colonized people as they are different in color, race and ethnicity from white colonizer. Presented in an autobiographical form and set in the heyday of colonialism the novel narrates the anecdotes of Blixen during her stay in African land with a mission of coffee plantation. In an exterior level, the plantation is mere a means of staying on that land but in deeper level she is continuing the legacy of colonialism. By showing generosity and benevolence to the natives of her surrounding she throws the spears of colonization forwarded by colonizers by tempting the settlers in the so-called modernity and civilization. By establishing coffee plantation and alluring the natives to work over there, the narrator not only obliges the natives to follow the rules and regulations developed by the colonizers but also coerces them to go through colonization in the mentality too by teaching them the so-called civilization. The narrator cultivates Ngong Hills for coffee plantation, using the muscles of black bodies with bigheartedness and compassion and exploits them in the name of teaching civilization. In order to maintain the hegemony over the natives, the whites treat the black body as ‘different’, ‘other’ and ‘inferior’ by creating discourses about it.