"Eastern Promises": The (De)Colonisation of the Body of the (M)Other in Eastern Promises

This essay investigates the colonisation of the female body caught in the tension between anxiety about contamination and painful assimilation of the Other in the film Eastern Promises by D. Cronenberg (). Drawing on the critical instruments of cultural studies and gender studies, the possibility of cultural exchange and appropriation between the British and the Russian culture is analysed by looking at how the body of the mother becomes the permeable surface where the scars of the violent invasion of the Other are made visible and at the same time the medium through which a traumatic but nonetheless possible cultural encounter can take place.