Abstract
Using Manjula Padmanabhan's award-winning postcolonial play Harvest (1997), this article examines possibilities for radical challenges to neo-imperialism and patriarchy in the spaces of disjuncture created by the fluid movement of bodies/organs and capital across nation boundaries in a global economic practice called transplant tourism. Harvest dramatizes the imbalance of power that characterizes this (in)human trade between wealthy receivers belonging to an advanced capitalist society, and donors from a poor society, who "willingly" pledge their organs and body/parts in exchange for money. Transplant tourism, not unlike other global economic transactions, involves the complex circulation of capital and humans within and across national boundaries, leading to the production of liminal or interstitial spaces. The article considers the racial and gendered implications of transplant tourism and the scope for subaltern recuperation within such spaces of uncertainty or liminality. The central issues framing this discussion are: whether it is possible to overturn patriarchal structures and renegotiate power relations within this transnational exchange; and whether the body, having given itself over to the other, is capable of articulating its own desire.