This study explores the relationship between literature and society against the background of the emergence in the 1930s and 1940s in South Africa of a form of Afrikaner nationalism that was spearheaded by members of the Afrikaner petty bourgeoisie and intelligentsia and a subsequent expansion in Afrikaans literary production. It addresses problems of explanation in Afrikaner nationalism by focusing attention on the question of culture, the field of imagination and the domain of everyday life. In particular, the study examines the Keurboslaan series - a series of schoolboy stories aimed at juvenile readers - by Stella Blakemore, and traces the production, circulation and critical reception of the twenty titles in the series. The first title in this series was published in 1941 and the series has been reprinted several times over a number of decades and as recently as 1997. Drawing on the work of Benedict Anderson, this study illuminates the link between the emergence of print capitalism and the production of popular fiction on the one hand and nationalism on the other. Whilst this is a link that is not often explored, an analysis of the Keurboslaan series illustrates that the study of popular fiction can illuminate the practices through which nationalism gains popular support. It is argued that the Keurboslaan series produced a narrative of the Afrikaner ‘nation’ in popular fiction, but that this narrative was not authenticated by the intelligentsia and petty bourgeoisie who were the driving forces behind Afrikaner nationalism and its contents. It is further argued that this ‘narrative of nation’ circulated alongside more official narratives of the ‘nation’ espoused in discourses of religion, science and literature published in Afrikaans. The narrative of ‘nation’ in Keurboslaan – whilst sharing many similarities with official narratives in other discourses – but also differs from those discourses in important respects. It is argued that the popular series was influential precisely because it imagined the Afrikaner ‘nation’ in very different ways and on different terms from those discourses. Moreover, the form in which this narrative was produced, that is popular youth literature, appealed to readers of Afrikaans who were in search of escapist fiction. For these readers, the Keurboslaan series helped to give shape to and created new possibilities for interpreting the world that they inhabited. Reading the school as a corollary of the ‘nation’, it is argued that the narrative of the nation in Keurboslaan series explores the boundaries between the self and the other and posits the self as a danger to the self, resulting in an emphasis on the need to discipline the self. This kind of analysis also creates the space for examining in what ways ideas and identities about ‘race’, gender, sexuality, class and ‘nation’ are constructed in the texts. Yet, the study maintains that whilst the Keurboslaan series contributed to creating a space in which a particular understanding of the self and the world becomes possible, and whereas the reader is not conceived of as a completely free agent that can derive simply any meaning from the text, the study and its theoretical underpinnings do not fully account for individual readers’ engagement with popular texts and the ways in which reading strategies and habits can generate different, ambiguous or inconclusive meanings for readers. It is suggested that a study of popular texts and Afrikaner nationalism employing theories of reading and the reader will complement this analysis. / Thesis (DLitt (Literary Theory))--University of Pretoria, 2004. / Afrikaans / unrestricted

This dissertation offers an ecocritical reading of Italo Calvino’s Fiabe italiane, a collection of traditional oral tales published by Einaudi in 1956, and argues that the two-hundred folktales function as a repository of ecological motifs, showing the relationship between humans and the environment as not necessarily exploitative, but rather as a relationship of coexistence and entanglement. The dissertation shows that the critical language that Calvino uses, influenced by a long tradition of folklore studies, rests on two key metaphors to express belonging in a political and national community: rootedness and groundedness. Through the reading of several tales, I show that the folktales themselves actually reveal a fabulist ecology concerned much more with entanglement and enmeshment with the natural landscape, and offer imaginative tools to recover, at the time of the Anthropocene, an enchanted view of the environment. In the first chapter, I argue that the morphology of the folktale that Calvino draws from the Russian formalist Vladimir Propp rests on a conception of the folktale as a plant that can be dissected with the same tools used by a botanist. I show how observations that Calvino makes about tales of metamorphosis of women into plants betray an investment in rootedness as a metaphor for belonging in a political and national community. Drawing from material ecocriticism, I argue that plants, rather than signposts for stasis and belonging, can be read as signs of mixture, coexistence, and symbiosis with the environment. I also argue that the frequent metamorphosis of female characters into plants points toward a trans-corporeal conception of subjectivity. In the second chapter, I show how Calvino contradictorily engages with the legacy of the Brothers Grimm, for whom the forest stands as a metaphor of the lost unity of the German nation. Through a close reading of “Hansel and Gretel,” and Calvino’s rewriting of this tale, “Pulcino,” I show that forests, be they material or fictional, can also be read as environments that preserve an agrarian ecology of subsistence, populated by othered figures such as witches and ogres that depend on a non-exploitative relationship with the environment of the forest. This ecology is preserved in Calvino’s own Marcovaldo, a collection of modern urban fairy-tales that he authored in the same period. Ultimately, I conceive of trees as markers of deep time and connectors between human and geological history. In the third chapter, I turn to the second metaphor identified by my project, groundedness. I briefly reconstruct the cultural milieu in which Calvino operated, and the development of postwar folklore studies after the publication of Antonio Gramsci’s Quaderni del carcere. Therefore, I examine the “Observations on Folklore,” showing how much of Gramsci’s theoretical language engages metaphorically with geology. Calvino himself is indebted to this idea of stratification. His folktales, especially “Cola Pesce,” then become a site where human history and geologic time intersect, and many stories function as repositories of folk knowledge about the telluric landscape of Southern Italy and about the porosity of humans and stones. In the conclusion, I offer an overview of the material and I consider Calvino’s revisiting, in the 1970s, of his earlier folkloric work and how his thoughts on storytelling and belonging evolve in the course of two decade, arguing that they constitute a literary ecology.

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Text in Afrikaans / Bevrydingsonderwys is 'n verskynsel \vat wereldwyd voorkom. Dit word egter nie in alle werelddele dieselfde genoem nie. Popular Education in Latyns-Amerika, Progressiewe Onderwys in die VSA, Sosialistiese Onderwys in Tanzanie en People's Education in die RSA kan b)voorbeeld almal as voorbeelde van benydingsonderwys beskou word. In hierdie studie word die ontstaan, ontwikkeling, aard en wese van bovermelde onderwysvorme beskryf en vergelyk. Eers word aandag gegee aan die ontstaan en ontwikkeling van Popular Education en word die opvattings van onder andere Paulo Freire en Antonio Gramsci oor die verband tussen onderwys, bevryding en verandering bespreek. Daama word die historiese ontwikkeling van onderskeidelik Progressiewe Onderwys, Sosialistiese Onderwys en People's Education beskryf en bespreek. Die onderwysvorme word vervolgens met mekaar vergelyk en ooreenkomste en verskille blootgele. Ten slotte word bevrydingsonderwys aan die hand van opvoedkundige kriteria beoordeel en aanbevelings met betrekking tot onderwysverandering en -vemuwing in die RSA gemaak. / Education for liberation is a world-\"ide phenomenon. However, it is not named the same throughout the world. Popular Education in Latin America, Progressive Education in the USA Socialistic Education in Tanzania en People's Education in the RSA can, for instance, all be viewed as examples of education for liberation. In this study the origin, development and nature of the above-mentioned forms of education are described and compared. Firstly, the origin and development of Popular Education and the views of inter alia Paulo Freire and Antonio Gramsci regarding the relationship between education, liberation and change are discussed. Thereafter, the historical development of Progressive Education, Socialistic Education and People's Education are described and discussed. These forms of education are subsequently compared and similarities and differences are disclosed. Lastly, education for liberation is evaluated according to educational criteria and recommendations concerning educational change and renewal in the RSA are made. / Educational Studies / M. Ed. (Historiese Opvoedkunde)

Text in Afrikaans / Bevrydingsonderwys is 'n verskynsel \vat wereldwyd voorkom. Dit word egter nie in alle werelddele dieselfde genoem nie. Popular Education in Latyns-Amerika, Progressiewe Onderwys in die VSA, Sosialistiese Onderwys in Tanzanie en People's Education in die RSA kan b)voorbeeld almal as voorbeelde van benydingsonderwys beskou word. In hierdie studie word die ontstaan, ontwikkeling, aard en wese van bovermelde onderwysvorme beskryf en vergelyk. Eers word aandag gegee aan die ontstaan en ontwikkeling van Popular Education en word die opvattings van onder andere Paulo Freire en Antonio Gramsci oor die verband tussen onderwys, bevryding en verandering bespreek. Daama word die historiese ontwikkeling van onderskeidelik Progressiewe Onderwys, Sosialistiese Onderwys en People's Education beskryf en bespreek. Die onderwysvorme word vervolgens met mekaar vergelyk en ooreenkomste en verskille blootgele. Ten slotte word bevrydingsonderwys aan die hand van opvoedkundige kriteria beoordeel en aanbevelings met betrekking tot onderwysverandering en -vemuwing in die RSA gemaak. / Education for liberation is a world-\"ide phenomenon. However, it is not named the same throughout the world. Popular Education in Latin America, Progressive Education in the USA Socialistic Education in Tanzania en People's Education in the RSA can, for instance, all be viewed as examples of education for liberation. In this study the origin, development and nature of the above-mentioned forms of education are described and compared. Firstly, the origin and development of Popular Education and the views of inter alia Paulo Freire and Antonio Gramsci regarding the relationship between education, liberation and change are discussed. Thereafter, the historical development of Progressive Education, Socialistic Education and People's Education are described and discussed. These forms of education are subsequently compared and similarities and differences are disclosed. Lastly, education for liberation is evaluated according to educational criteria and recommendations concerning educational change and renewal in the RSA are made. / Educational Studies / M. Ed. (Historiese Opvoedkunde)

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / Opposing the culture of différance created through American cultural media, this thesis argues, Arab hip-hop artists revive the politically conscious sub-genre of hip-hop with the purpose of normalising their Arab existence. Appropriating hip-hop for a cultural protest, Arab artists create for themselves a sub-genre of conscious hip-hop – Arab-conscious hip-hop and function as Gramsci’s organic intellectuals, involved in better representation of Arabs in the mainstream. Critiquing power dynamics, Arab hip-hop artists are counter-hegemonic in challenging popular identity constructions of Arabs and revealing to audiences biases in media production and opportunities for progress towards social justice. Their identity (re)constructions maintain difference while avoiding Otherness. The intersection of Arab-consciousness through hip-hop and politics of identity necessitates a needed cultural protest, which in the case of Arabs has been severely limited. This thesis progresses by reviewing literature on politics of identity, Arabs in American cultural media, Gramsci’s organic intellectuals and conscious hip-hop. Employing criticism, this thesis presents an argument for Arab hip-hop group, The Arab Summit, as organic intellectuals involved in mainstream representation of the Arab community.

This thesis looks at the relevance of ideology to the emergence of capitalist social formation in Ruperts Land and the North West between 1852 and 1885 in two contexts: 1) as a mechanism of transforming the mercantilist social formation - the economy, state, and society - that arose to oversee the fur trade in Ruperts Land and the Indian Territory between 1670 and 1870; and 2) its role in establishing capitalist social formation in the North West up to 1885. I focus on the social processes by which ideology is transmitted and its significance to the emerging formation. I attempt to explain how a diverse group of politicians, bankers, investors, merchants, and industrialists took control of vast, resource-rich, and occupied territories like Ruperts Land and the North West and completely transformed the existing social arrangements according to their worldview. This thesis engages Marxist theory to examine the ideas of John A. Macdonald, Alexander Mackenzie, and Edward Blake as heads of the eastern polity, state, central government, and official opposition, and the representatives of commercial, financial, and industrial factions of the bourgeoisie. Over six hundred primary samples of their discourses in the form of political speeches, historical debates, and personal correspondence were reviewed in this research. The major themes emerging from the analysis pertain to the ideological underpinnings of a capitalist worldview in terms of the relevance of law and Christianity to the colonization and civilization of emigrant and indigenous peoples in the North West. It was also found that while politicians disseminate the worldview of their class and faction, they rely significantly on the support of capital and the producing classes to implement their ideas and establish, legitimize, and reproduce the conditions and relations of capitalism. When Macdonald and Mackenzie failed to rally consent for capitalism among local peoples in the North West, ideological coercion became the means of transforming the necessary social, economic, and political structures. I suggest that the use of force (rather than cooperation) to organize agricultural society in Saskatchewan has had long-term consequences for emigrant and indigenous peoples alike.