The Farming of Bones is Edwidge Danticat’s novel about Amabelle Desir, a Haitian migrant in the Dominican Republic during the 1937 Haitian massacre. The Massacre is a historical fact presented through a fictional text that acts as a testimonial. The purpose of this thesis is to demonstrate how Danticat, in her role as an activist, urges readers to become social justice seekers and enter the discourse of race. Through an examination of Carl Jung’s and Vodou’s shadow theories in regards to the construction of a racial identity by Haitians and Dominicans, I uncover the racial narratives in place from Haiti’s colonization and independence to our current time. Danticat, through the novel, moves the reigning racial paradigm out of the shadow and thus allows readers to reflect on its effects. Thus it is not only the characters in the novel that must confront the shadow, but the readers themselves.

The purpose of this study of Anglo-Egyptian writer Ahdaf Soueif’s two novels, In the Eye of the Sun (1999), first published in 1992, and The Map of Love (2000), first published in 1999, is to examine how they are arenas for hybrid politics in the post-colonial Egyptian context and the Arab diasporic context. This thesis examines how Soueif deals with residual colonial logics by using Post-colonial theories of transculturation. These theories reveal, through an analysis of Soueif’s use of Pharaonicism and her depiction of social and religious divides, that Soueif sometimes legitimizes and sometimes contests the results of transculturation by using products of this very process of transculturation. In the diasporic context, Soueif’s work deterritorializes these hybrid politics of legitimation and contestation by collapsing disparate temporalities and emphasizing continuity between them. To do this she deterritorializes and reterritorializes Pharaonicism, as well as Western literary tradition, the English language and political activism, to emphasize the cultural affinities between Egyptians/Arabs and Western culture. In this manner, she composes an integration strategy designed to facilitate her incorporation into her Western society of settlement, Great-Britain. This allows her to build a political platform from which she can contest and influence politics in her homeland, her society of settlement and the shape of Western cultural and political hegemony on a global scale. She is consequently able to transcend residual colonial logics through the very hybrid politics that they have created. Moreover, in the process, through the political agency that she exercises in her writing and activism, she builds a deterritorialized diasporic identity based on integration into many spheres of belonging that problematizes the victim model of diaspora in Diaspora studies.

This thesis extrapolates upon theoretical examinations of meat consumption as linked to masculinity in order to consider how meat consumption may also be connected to dominant themes in Canada’s national foundation as marked by whiteness, multiculturalism, and post-coloniality. I investigate two sets of advertisements – Maple Leaf Canada’s “Feeding the Country” commercial, and Alberta Beef Producer’s Raised Right online campaign – through employing multimodal critical discourse analysis and tenets of Stuart Hall’s theories of representations. In doing so, I argue that meat consumption is depicted in advertising as an ideologically and symbolically loaded practice that seizes upon and re-articulates greater themes of Canadian national identity in a way that denotes the nation as having overcome its racial tensions and colonial history.

Avec sa brillante civilisation et son paganisme, la Chine a bousculé le XVIIIe siècle, bouleversé les Lumières et inspiré les auteurs de romans. Au XIXe siècle, tandis que l'Europe se passionne pour l'Asie et que les études chinoises se développent, la France, contrariée dans ses projets coloniaux, met le racisme scientifique au service de sa politique impérialiste. A partir de 1840, le discours sur les « Jaunes » se cristallise. À la fin du XIXe siècle, il représente un danger incarné dans la notion de Péril jaune. Ce propos diabolisateur, oublié de la critique postcoloniale, fait aujourd'hui partie des représentations communes. Pour le comprendre, nous nous proposons d'extraire les spécificités chinoises du discours générique sur l'Asie et l'Orient, pour examiner qui l'énonce et dans quelles conditions en terme d'histoire sociale et culturelle. / With its brilliant civilisation and its paganism, China disturbed the eighteenth century, troubled the Enlightenments and inspired novelists. In the nineteenth century, while Europe had a passion for Asia, Chinese studies developped, France, obstructed in its colonial projects in China, used scientific racism in the service of its imperialist policy. From 1840 on, the discourse on the "Yellow" freezed. At the end of the nineteenth century, it embodied a danger known as the ‘Yellow Peril'. This discursive demonisation, put aside by postcolonial studies, is now part of the common representations. In order to understand it, we propose to take the Chinese characteristics out of the generic speech on Asia and the East in order to examine who formulates it and under what conditions, from a social and cultural history point of view.

Cette thèse porte sur le discours de cinq poètes chiliennes, ceux qui vivent au sud de ce territoire. Elles montrent une construction de leur identité dans sa poétique, qui traverse leurs corps et leurs mémoires, essayant de déconstruire les mandats historiques, politiques, sociaux et religieux qui ont été inventés pour construire l'identité de la femme. Cette recherche examine l’émergence de le discours poétique féminin, qui comprend la période des années 60 à nos jours, cela puisque c’est dans cette époque que commence une “plus grande” diffusion de la poétique de femmes au Chili, et comment évolue le langage poétique de la femme, les transits vers un nouveau langage: le corps comme auteure, du géodésique au physio- poétique, permettant l'analyse de les différences littéraires existantes dans ce territoire, où la littérature indigéniste joue un rôle prééminent, marquant une littérature de frontières avec la poétique national, pour exorciser les traumatismes du colonialisme. Dans ce cadre, les contributions des “les théories postcoloniales”, et les “études subalternes », m'ont aidé à comprendre et démonter, d’un côté les images stéréotypées construites vers les indigènes, tant idéologies de l'étatisme, et d’un autre côté, découvrez comment se produit « l'abandon » dans cette poétique, a travers de retour au discours naturalisés de la genèse, ce qui nous amène à la réflexion sur l’écriture et la réécriture de la poétique des femmes, qui est marquée par la construction aporétique de « la différence ». / This thesis focuses on the speech of five Chilean poets who live in the South of the territory. They show their identity construction in their Poetics, which runs through their bodies and their memories, trying to deconstruct the historical, political, social and religious mandates that have been invented to build the identity of the woman. This research examines the emergence of the feminine poetic speech, which includes the period from the 1960s to the present day, since it is during this time that a "larger" dissemination of the poetics of women to the Chile begins and how changing the poetic language of the woman, the transits to a new language: the body as the author, the “geodesic to the physic poetic”, the analysis of existing literary differences in this territory, where indigenous literature played a prominent role, scoring a borders with the national poetic literature, to exorcise the trauma of colonialism. In this context, the contributions of "postcolonial theories", and the "subaltern studies", helped me to understand and remove, one side stereotyped images built towards the natives, both ideologies of statism and, on the other hand, discover how 'abandonment' occurs in this poetic, a naturalized return to the speech through the Genesis, which leads to a reflection on the writing and rewriting of the poetics of women", which is marked by the aporetic construction of the 'difference '.

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Magister Legum - LLM / Since the early 1990s, the move towards decentralisation has been given prominence in African constitutions. Countries that embarked on ambitious decentralisation processes had to make the necessary constitutional reforms. The emergence and proliferation of constitutional entrenchment of decentralisation in Africa was long overdue and thus necessitated by the popular widespread discontent expressed against leaders who ‘personalize power and concentrate it within a privileged clique in the capital city’. While stifling the inroads of liberal democracy, authoritarian rulerships, single-party state systems and military dictatorships contributed immensely to the downward trajectory of political development in post-colonial Africa. Evidently, the intent and purpose for the quest to consolidate the complementary relationship between decentralisation and constitutionalism is aimed at domesticating the Leviathan – the untrammeled ruler.

This interpretative case study examines the ways in which socio-spatial exclusion is main-tained though urban planning designs in the informal settlement of Kibera in Kenya. It ap-plies the theoretical and analytical framework of T. Mitchell and A. Church, M. Frost, K. Sullivan to investigate how the urban design of the Kenyan Slum Upgrading Programme (KENSUP) contributes to the maintenance of socio-spatial hierarchies that allow for the ex-clusion of Kibera’s urban residents. This investigation is a reaction to the lacking considera-tion of implanted structural violence in place and urban development.The study found that persisting socio-spatial exclusion of residents in Kibera is in-deed sustained through KENSUP. The built environment functions as power medium that excludes some people based on their socio-spatial status in the city. The applied framework confirmed that the urban planning programme KENSUP maintains existing forms of eco-nomic, physical, and geographic exclusion, besides the exclusion from facilities through the built environment.The findings suggest that urban planning designs require a shift from the focus on the built environment towards the focus on human rights and inclusive participation in order to reduce the structural influence of socio-spatial city hierarchies.

Breath, Eyes, Memory (1994) de l’autrice Edwidge Danticat relate l’histoire de Sophie, une jeune femme Haïtienne qui quitte Croix-Des-Rosets pour New York où elle rejoint sa mère biologique, Martine. Le récit et le passage à l’âge adulte de Sophie sont une exploration de l’acculturation, de la violence politique, et des abus sexuels intergénérationnels auxquels le personnage fait face. The Dew Breaker (2004), un roman divisé en plusieurs nouvelles, raconte les récits de différents personnages dont les vies s’entrecroisent sous les dictatures de François et Jean-Claude Duvalier. Ce texte explore la multiplicité des perspectives étant les résultats directs d’une politique de terreur et de ses effets sur le long-terme sur les différents personnages. Au centre se trouve deux personnages : Ka Bienaimé, une jeune Haïtiano-Américaine qui idéalise la figure paternelle qu’elle perçoit comme une victime du régime dictatorial de Duvalier, et son père, un immigrant Haïtien qui cache son passé de ‘dew breaker’, un Tonton Macoute, qui travaille comme agent d’exécution violent de la dictature. Ces deux romans décrivent les dommages psychologiques, interpersonnels et culturels causés par la violence d’un régime autoritaire. Dans ce mémoire, mon intention est d’analyser comment Danticat utilise les personnages de Sophie et Ka pour enquêter sur des questions relatives au trauma et aux trahisons émotionnelles. Mon étude soutient que dans ces textes, l’autrice crée un espace où les notions d’hybridité et de créolisation se mélangent et donnent naissance à de nouvelles formes de discours. Plus particulièrement, j’offre que la langue Créole aide le lecteur à "come to a better understanding of the cultural, physical, and the historical realities of Haiti" (Sarthou 20). En reconnaissant leurs traumatismes passés comme faisant partis intégrants de leurs êtres, les personnages de Danticat gagnent en autorité et choisissent de confronter leur passé. Ce mémoire sera divisé en trois chapitres. Dans un premier temps, j’explore comment l’hybridité et le langage Créole créent un espace pour articuler de nouvelles formes d’identité. Dans un second temps, j’examine comment l’autrice utilise Breath, Eyes, Memory pour redéfinir la mémoire et les traditions. Dans un troisième chapitre, j’analyse comment The Dew Breaker entremêle les notions de violence, les souvenirs et le pardon pour interroger le potentiel d’une guérison émotionnelle. / Edwidge Danticat's Breath, Eyes, Memory (1994) tells the story of Sophie Caco, a young Haitian girl who moves from Croix-Des-Rosets, Haiti, to New York City to reunite with Martine, her birth mother. Her coming-of-age-narrative becomes an exploration of cultural displacement, political violence, and intergenerational sexual abuse. The Dew Breaker (2004), a novel as short stories, recounts the tales of different characters whose lives intersect under the Haitian regimes of both François and Jean-Claude Duvalier. The text explores a multiplicity of perspectives representing the long-term effects of political terror on a host of characters. At their center are Ka Bienaimé, a young Haitian-American woman, who has idealized her father, whom she has perceived as a victim of the Duvalier regime, and her father, a Haitian immigrant hiding his past as a dew breaker, a Tonton Macoute, working as a violent enforcer of the dictatorship. Both novels depict the psychological, interpersonal, and cultural damage caused by the violence of an authoritarian regime. In my thesis, I investigate how Danticat uses the characters of Sophie and Ka to interrogate questions related to trauma and emotional betrayal. My study argues that in these texts the author creates a space where notions of hybridity and creolization mingle and give birth to new forms of discourse. More particularly, I provide an account of how the Creole language helps the reader to "come to a better understanding of the cultural, physical, and the historical realities of Haiti" (Sarthou 20). In acknowledging the traumatic experiences of their past as part of themselves, Danticat’s characters exercise agency by choosing to address the past. I will thus divide my thesis in three chapters. In Chapter One, I explore hybridity and creolized language as a space to articulate new forms of identity. In my second chapter, I examine how the author uses Breath, Eyes, Memory to reformulate memory and reclaim tradition. In Chapter Three, I analyze how The Dew Breaker interweaves explorations of violence, remembrance, and forgiveness to interrogate the potential for emotional healing.

The rapid post-Independence development of the city of Windhoek, Namibia; and the ensuing destruction of a substantial number of German colonial buildings in the capital city, prompted speculation as to why these buildings are inadequately protected as heritage – and whether they are, in fact, considered to be heritage. The study explores the issues pertaining to the presence of German colonial architecture, as artefacts of the German colonial period, within the postcolonial context of Windhoek. The trauma and pain of the Namibian War and genocide (1904 – 1908) are recurring themes in the body of literature on postcolonial Namibia; and this informs a wider discourse on memory. Memory is found to play a crucial role in evoking a sense of both individual and shared ownership, through its capacity to create meaning, which can in turn ascribe value to a place. Memory is also dependent on visual cues for its continued existence, which suggests the importance of colonial architecture as a material prompt to sustain memory. The research therefore investigates the memories and multiple meanings attributable to colonial architecture in this plural society, and how these meanings can be created, or possibly reinvented, through the continued use of these buildings. The study is based on an assessment of three halls in Windhoek – the Grüner Kranz Hall (1906), the Kaiserkrone Hall (1909), and the Turnhalle (1909; 1912), all designed by the German architect Otto Busch – which illustrates in part, the need for the development of historical building surveys that assess the social values and significances of these contested spaces; and moreover, the potential that these spaces have to support memory work through their continued use.