The politics of the Middle-Passage and its attendant socio-cultural and historical trauma is the starting point of this study. The dispersal of Africans, or at least people of African origin, to different parts of the world has produced over the past few decades numerous dissertations and theses describing socio-cultural linkages between Africa and the Black diaspora. On the part of creative writers and literary critics of every persuasion, there exists a consensus of creative and critical opinion that seeks to establish that "the history of Africa and the Africans ... is one of iron, blood and tears." (Nkosi, 1981, p.30) The study is in agreement with Omafume Onoge's submission that the cultural imperialist process went beyond mere acts of vandalism to produce a period in the history of Africa and the black diaspora in which "many educated Africans (and their counterparts in the diaspora) required a major act of intellection to ascribe aesthetic value to our traditional arts." (Dnoge, 1984, p.5) The study grapples with the source(s) of this socio-cultural apathy, and how the liberal humanist discourse which replaced the body of the colonialist's mythologies is predicated on what JanMohammed describes as "an ironic anomaly." (JanMohammed, 1985, p.281) My exploration of this ironic anomaly begins from the premise of the myths, legends and traditions that are subsumed, truncated, misread or simply repressed to propound this 'humanist' philosophy. What emerges from this cultural and ideological exploration is a vernacular theory of reading built around the carnivalesque figure of Esu Elegbara (the Yoruba 'trickster' god) whose "functional equivalent in Afro-American profane discourse is the Signifying Monkey." (Gates, 1990, p.287) The study is in two parts. Part One consists of three chapters exploring different aspects of the cultural and ideological discourses between Africa and the black diaspora from historical and theoretical perspectives. Part Two focuses, in four chapters, on the works of five writers from Africa (Nigeria and Ghana), South America (Brazil), the West Indies (St. Lucia) and the United States. These are Ayi Kwei Armah, Wole Soyinka, Jorge Amado, Derek Walcott and Amiri Baraka respectively. The conclusion summarises the major arguments of the thesis.

Damon Galgut has been a prolific contributor to South African literature since the early 1980s, but has only recently gained recognition as a significant presence in our cultural landscape. This thesis considers what the vicissitudes of Galgut’s critical reception — which have seen him, by turns, celebrated, ignored and even explicitly discounted as a noteworthy South African author — reveal about the shifting standards of cultural legitimacy which have been set for local writers since the late apartheid years. It offers, in turn, an extended close reading of each of his novels and considers the challenges which they pose to hegemonic assumptions about developments within the field of South African literature over the past three decades. I demonstrate that no coherent line of transition can be traced across the individual novels which make up Galgut’s oeuvre. They represent, instead, shifting degrees of discordance and concordance with an epochal metanarrative of South African literature and the progressive transformation of the field which it implies. In so doing, they enliven us to the thematic and aesthetic heterogeneity which has always already constituted the field.

A research report submitted to the Faculty of Humanities, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Creative Writing, 2013 / Towards the end of the very last chapter, I visited Yitzhak in his room behind the shop in Hunter Street, Yeoville. He was shrouded in the smell of Old Man farts, listening to the sound of the labouring Dora Lipschitz, painfully nurdling down the pavement supported by her aluminium walking frame. [No abstract provided. Information taken from the first page]. / XL2018

Thesis advisor: Régine Jean-Charles / Taking Fatna Ait Sabbah’s two editions of La Femme dans l'inconscient musulman (1982 & 2010) as my point of departure, I analyze the image of the woman in several contemporary French and Arabic texts. Sabbah argues that buried in early Muslim pornographic texts lies an image of woman that reflects the unconscious view of her in the masculine imagination. In this image woman is positioned in opposition to the Muslim ethical system largely due to her subversive sexual desire. Sabbah’s texts raise key questions: Where a transformation of the feminine condition takes place, is it accompanied by a corresponding change in the image of the woman in the Muslim unconscious? How does the collective unconscious change? Is the unconscious always a reactionary force? Does contemporary literature reinforce Sabbah’s conception or depart from it? The novelists I have selected combine two pertinent attributes: they critique their own society and they examine female subjectivity, or in other words how a woman perceives her role, her identity and her consciousness. Through an analysis of heterodox texts, I focus particularly on how the Arab world sees itself. My first chapter compares Sabbah’s two editions, including her shift in tone and agenda, and the lacunae in her texts. In my second chapter I study Moroccan novelist Rajae Benchemsi’s Marrakech, lumière d'exil (2002) and Nawal el Saadawi’s Woman at Point Zero (1975) in terms of how the erotic and space function in both texts. I explore the women characters’ compliance with or resistance to Maghrebian notions of feminine and masculine space. I argue that the individual choices regarding space help define the characters’ identity. In my third chapter I examine the Sufi view of woman as included in Rajae Benchemsi’s La Controverse des temps (2006) and Ahmed Toufiq’s Abu Musa's Women Neighbors (2006). I point out that the Sufi view presents a counter-discourse to Sabbah’s description of the image of the woman in the Muslim unconscious. If Fatna Sabbah sees woman in early erotic and orthodox texts as reduced to an exclusively sexual essence, these texts present a spiritual dimension to woman’s identity, a dimension which in the context of Sabbah’s work, I argue, has a transgressive aspect. In my fourth chapter I analyze the mother figure in two novels by the Algerian writer, Boualem Sansal: Harraga (2005) and Rue Darwin (2011). I describe the distance between the representation of the mother in Sansal’s work and the image of the woman in the Muslim unconscious as described by Sabbah. I conclude that while the image of the woman as described by Sabbah continues to be present in contemporary texts, other images, remarkable for their diversity, have emerged. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2016. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Romance Languages and Literatures.

Doctorat en philosophie et lettres / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

Philosophiae Doctor - PhD / This study explores how selected West African war novels employ non-realist narrative modes to portray disruptions in the child’s development into adulthood. The novels considered are Chris Abani’s Song for Night (2007), Ahmadou Kourouma’s Allah is Not Obliged (2006), Uzodinma Iweala’s Beasts of No Nation (2005) and Delia Jarrett-Macauley’s Moses, Citizen and Me (2005). These novels strain at the conventions of realism as a consequence of the attempt to represent the disruptions in child development as a result of the upheavals of war. A core proposition of the study is to present why the authors in question are obliged to employ non-realist modes in representing disrupted childhoods that reflect the social and cultural disorder attendant upon war. The dissertation also asks pertinent questions regarding the ideological effect of these narrative strategies and the effect of the particular stylistic idiosyncrasies of each of the authors in figuring childhood in postcolonial Africa. The novels in question employ surrealism, the absurd, the grotesque and magical realism, in presenting the first person narratives of children in war situations, or the reflections of adult narrators on children affected by war. This study further analyses the ways the aesthetic modes employed by these authors underscore, in particular, children’s experiences of war. Through strategic use of specific literary techniques, these authors highlight questions of vulnerability, powerlessness and violence on children, as a group that has been victimised and co-opted into violence. The study further considers how these narrative transformations in the representations of children in novels, capture transformations in ideas about childhood in postcolonial Africa.

À l’instar des romans africains et maghrébins qui s’inscrivent pour la plupart dans une perspective de confrontation avec le colonialisme, les textes que nous avons choisis peuvent se lire dans la perspective novatrice que Bertrand Westphal a significativement baptisée “géocritique”. Ces œuvres reflètent une esthétique qui puise sa particularité et sa richesse dans des origines hybrides, entre langue maternelle, d’éducation et langue de l’occupant ou de l’exil. Cette thèse est donc l’occasion de parcourir l’espace africain, créant ainsi un panorama de son horizon littéraire, notamment par l’étude des particularités de l’Afrique du nord et de l’Afrique subsaharienne ainsi que les rapports qu’elles entretiennent depuis la plus haute antiquité jusqu’à aujourd’hui. / Like most of African and Maghreb novels which are mostly enrolled with the confrontation of colonialism, the texts we have choosen can be read the original perspective that Bertrand Westphal has significantly named "geocritics". These works share an aesthetics of a richness which owes its originality to hybrid origins, between mother or learned tongue and occupant or exile language. This thesis is therefore an opportunity to explore the African space, shaping a panorama of its literary horizon, mainly by studying the particularities of North Africa and sub-Saharan Africa and the relationships that they maintain from the highest Antiquity until today.

Thesis (M. A.(African Languages)) -- University of Limpopo, 2012 / It introduces the topic of the study, outlining the aims and purpose of the study. It touches on the significance of the study, methodology and literature review. It also contains definitions of the key concepts used in the study. Chapter two focuses on the obituary of the authors of Mibya ya Nyekanyeka and Byi n’wi khele matluka and characterization through Rimmon -Kennan’s methods. Chapter three focuses on the way in which the Vatsonga writers percive the character of pastors as depicted in Mibya ya Nyekanyeka and Byi n’wi khele matluka. Chapter four deals with the theme of each of the following books, namely: Mibya ya Nyekanyeka and Byi n’wi khele matluka. Chapter five. This chapter contains the summary, recommendations and conclusion of the study.

Thesis (M.A. (English Studies)) -- University of Limpopo, 2015 / This dissertation discusses the significance of the concept of mourning in post-apartheid South Africa as presented in the following selected post-apartheid South African literary texts: Ways of dying, a novel by Zakes Mda; Nothing but the truth, a play by John Kani and Freedom lament and song, a poem by Mongane Wally Serote. The dissertation interrogates the legitimacy of the prefix ‘post’ in ‘post-apartheid’ as a point of departure. It discusses the theories of key thinkers on the concept mourning and then applies their theories to the analysis of the selected literary texts thereby interpreting the selected literary texts as symbolic codes communicating messages about the state of politics in post-apartheid South Africa. 5

Thesis (doctoral)--Universität zu Köln. / Includes added t.p. without thesis statement. Includes bibliographical references (p. 347-353).