Our study is conceived as a comparative analysis of Zakes Mda's postcolonial and postmodern novel The Heart of Redness and Joseph Conrad's canonical and colonial novella Heart of Darkness, from the viewpoint of a literarily encoded anthropology of the body. In both texts, body marks and body pain are prominent and recurrent motives, carrying along important cultural meanings, related to several classic themes of colonial and postcolonial literature: the birth and becoming of cultural identity

more »

... d awareness, culture shock, cultural contacts, enculturation versus deculturation, and cultural memory, as a vehicle and repository of myths, history and (body) image stereotypes.