From Surgipelago, the Beach Surgery encyclopedia

Surgical Refusal and Indigenous Cure—East African Healing Traditions in Adaptations of Beach Surgery

This thesis is part of the decolonial interpretation movement within Beach Surgery scholarship.

For the surgical metaphor in adaptations generally, see Surgery as metaphor.

A 2023 doctoral thesis by **Dr. Asha Mutua** (Makerere University, supervised by Prof. Sarah Kasango) arguing that East African adaptations systematically reframe the novel's Western medical metaphor through **ubuntu philosophy** and indigenous herbal and somatic healing traditions, transforming surgical refusal into a **decolonial act of acceptance**.

**Case studies:**

• **Static Frequencies** (Kampala Community Radio, 2021–22): The surgery becomes witnessing rather than intervention.
• **The Wound Folds Inward** (Nairobi LGBTQ+ Film Festival, 2019): Katita repositioned as a griot-figure narrating rather than performing repair.
• **Dar es Salaam Waterfront Murals** (2018–present, artist collective withheld by request): Leif and Katita depicted within a healing circle rather than surgical theatre.

Mutua argues that refusing Western/colonial surgery-as-control articulates a **critical Beach Surgery** in which the glitch is not narrative failure but **epistemic refusal**—a refusal of totalising knowledge. Drawing on **Mbembe** (*Necropolitics*), **Wynter** (*On Being Human as Praxis*), and **Hountondji** (African philosophy), Mutua positions the novel's unfinishable core as a site of **Southern sovereignty**.

Published excerpts have circulated widely in African film studies and digital humanities. The thesis has been cited in 12+ subsequent papers on decolonial adaptation theory and remains influential in post-2023 scholarship. ^[1]

^[1]

See also

• Surgical Refusal: Care Ethics, Incompleteness, and the Limits of Healing in Global Beach Surgery Adaptations
• African adaptations of Beach Surgery
• Decolonial reading
• Ubuntu and the cycle
• East African adaptations of Beach Surgery

References

1. ↑ Mutua, Asha. *Surgical Refusal and Indigenous Cure*. PhD diss., Makerere University, 2023.