Abstract

This article is an attempt to examine Bertolucci's film Besieged through the lens of postcolonial theory. The analysis will focus in particular on the element of space, public and private, on language and silence, and on the development of the female character from defiant subjectivity to subservient domesticity, mirroring the experiences of double colonization familiar to many subaltern women. The theoretical framework will implicate Deleuze and Guattari's notions of deterritorialization and reterritorialization, the work of Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak on subalternity, the ambivalent nuances of mimicry studied by Homi Bhabha and the readings of colonialism by Frantz Fanon, Aimé Césaire and Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o.