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GATE 2021 XH2 – Question 63

Critical Theories and Intellectual Traditions · Interdisciplinary Fields: Cultural studies, film and media studies, memory and trauma studies, Dalit and subaltern studies, environmental, medical and digital humanities · 2 marks · Multiple select

In Soyinka’s Telephone Conversation,a white landlady asks how dark a prospective tenant is. He responds with a spectrum of colour descriptions: West African sepia,brunette face,pale palms and soles,and a darkened bottom,then asks whether she would prefer to see for herself. How does he challenge her racism?

  1. Describes blackness as a spectrum rather than a single colour.
  2. Subserviently accepts her definition of race.
  3. Locates race in her ways of seeing and classifying.
  4. Fragments the racialised body into differently coloured parts.

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Correct answer: (A) Describes blackness as a spectrum rather than a single colour.; (C) Locates race in her ways of seeing and classifying.; (D) Fragments the racialised body into differently coloured parts.

Explanation

A identifies the proliferating shades that frustrate a single racial label. C identifies the landlady’s classificatory gaze as the target. D identifies the comic fragmentation of the body used to expose that gaze. The speaker’s ironic control is not simple submission, so B is false. Select A,C,D.

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