Postcolonial Dislocation and the Psyche: Connecting the Dots in Tsitsi Dangarembga’s This Mournable Body

This chapter discusses how Zimbabwean women suffer a tremendous amount of physical and emotional abuse and demonstrates their strength and resilience despite facing such challenges in Zimbabwe. Tsitsi Dangarembga’s This Mournable Body (2018) explores the dispossession of these women of their sources of livelihood—the land and other facets of life. The novel is set in post-independence Zimbabwe where almost every Zimbabwean is expected to live in a land of plenty without any socio-economic inequalities. However, the reality proves otherwise, the people and especially women still suffer. Despite being educated, women still display economic and emotional instability. This failure to lead a stable life leads to disillusionment since most of the black Zimbabweans did not get what was promised during the war. This chapter therefore investigates the psychological disillusionment and frustrations of Zimbabweans in general and women in particular. The chapter further demonstrates that reprieve from a dislocated psyche can only come from reclaiming and reconnecting to the land, which is symbolic of the true roots of an African person’s identity as well as attaining a decent livelihood. The methodology for this chapter is critical textual analysis of Tsitsi Dangarembga’s This Mournable Body. The analysis reveals that the disconnection from the land accounts for the dislocated psyche and is a result of the history of the dominant systems of colonialism and post-independence challenges. The fact that the novel is written in second-person narrative is an indication of a troubled psyche whose attempts at appropriating one’s identity and religio-cultural connections to the protagonist’s roots are in turmoil. The study is informed by postcolonial theory and ecofeminism.