“You are going to commit suicide”: The coloniality of power/gender and [not] belonging in Bessie Head’s A Question of Power

Abstract

Bessie Head’s novel A Question of Power interrogates exploitative power structures and advocates the birthing of new humane societies. Rather than creating a singular norm of existence in her characters, Head advocates multiple ways of existence or a creation of many worlds. In the spirit of imagining a pluriverse, this article argues that the character Elizabeth, as a decolonial being, works towards creating an ordinary world where everyone belongs. Nonetheless, the world of “everyone” and “everything” is not one of inclusion into existing hierarchical power structures, but an attempt to challenge them. In creating this world of belonging Head shows the complexities of becoming a decolonial being because the process of “becoming” includes suffering and fragmentation. This process is not “normal”, “conventional” or “sane” because in writing her decolonial subject, all is blurred and broken. Yet mentally, the normal and the abnormal are completely blended. Essentially, I argue that in this novel Head suggests that to de-colonise power one must go through pain and intense personal suffering, in a continuous process of becoming.