On The Theme Of "Epistemic Violence" In The Poisonwood Bible

The award-winning novel The Poisonwood Bible written by American writer Barbara Kingsolver depicts a story told by the wife and four daughters of Nathan Price--a fierce, evangelical Baptist who takes his family and mission to the Belgian Congo in1959. The Price family brings with them everything that they truly believe at the very beginning but soon is found calamitously worthless on African soil. The tragic epic of this one family told by all female narratives echoes with that of the course along three decades in postcolonial Africa. The clear failures of Nathan Price--the male protagonist--both being the head of a family and a personification of Christian Europe evidently disclose to readers that nothing comes without consequences.This thesis brings focus on what is held accountable for the Price family’s tragedies and tries to lift the veil upon what is being deliberately hidden. In the novel, women and Africa shares the same destiny of being treated harshly and are never permitted to act without orders. The thorny paths treaded heavily by the Price women along with the colonial Congo put questions to the decisive part played in their sufferings and pains--epistemic violence which fuels supreme-reigning establishments of patriarchy and colonialism.The book displays distinct female voices and reprehensions toward militant power wielders in the First World. In this thesis, theorist Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak’s "epistemic violence" is applied to testify to the brutalization of the figurehead Nathan Price imposing on female subaltern and colored subaltern on behalf of patriarchy and colonialists. For the purpose of bringing arguments to light, the thesis analyses the course of events following the Price family’s life journey, alongside colonial history of the contemporary Congo in quest for evidences lending weight to understandings in depth.An analogy between women and Africa has been drawn in the thesis, unraveling their excessive benefits being denied and blatant disregard as well as oppression falling upon them. However, voices of the oppressed remain unheard; to make matters worse, the First World is spinning fantasies widely applied, resulting more than ever in the idea of epistemic violence in the backdrop of cultural hegemony as easily as preaching to the convinced. The thesis put effort in digging deeply into the epistemic contexts of feminism and post-colonialism in order to locate the unutterable ugliness of what the welfare of any subaltern hinges on, but more importantly, be in the hope of not only measuring the pain but planning a path to remain constantly alert and getting involved in solutions which may effect actual changes.