The Rhetoric of the Body in BP Koirala’s Life Narratives

Abstract

This paper examines the rhetorical significance of representing body in BP Koirala’s life narrative published in the form of an interview taken between 1979 to 1981. Using Kenneth Burke’s rhetoric of identification and Michel Foucault’s notion of body as the theoretical framework, the paper explores the motif of the narrator behind representing his body through his narrative among the contemporary intended audience. Koirala identifies with the public by means of the rhetoric of his body narrative. His motif behind the narrative is to showcase his national ethos through the pains and torments he had sustained in his body and to identify with the ethos of the general public thereby evoking civic national ethos. The study reveals that body can work as a powerful instrument in writing the life narrative that evokes the author’s sense of shared ethos.