Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2008. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 69-05, Section: A, page: 1941. Adviser: Antoinette Burton. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 242-261) Available on microfilm from Pro Quest Information and Learning.

Magister Artium - MA / This dissertation concerns itself primarily with deconstruction theory and a number of readings of this novel within the ambit of deconstruction. According to Derrida there is not a single deconstruction and in response to this remark this study undertakes more than one deconstructive reading of the same novel. These different readings are introduced by a preliminary reading of the paratext and a cryptic reading which acknowledges the fragmentary nature of this novel. Hereafter a deconstruction of the novel follows in two phases, of which the first phase focuses on the process of its production. The non-fictitious documents on which the novel is based are revealed and exposed as building blocks during this reading. The second phase of the deconstructive reading is divided into two parts. The first part is based on Derrida’s dredging machine metaphor which introduces and illustrates the concept of random reading. During this phase the novel is acknowledged and read as an intertextual reconstruction. The non-fictitious documents are acknowledged as an archive within the context of recent as well as less recent South African history which serves as intertexts along with other texts. The second part of the second phase involves a reading of this novel as an anti- Hegelian text. Hegel’s concepts of the state and law are brought into the reading process. The reading focuses on the Apartheid State, the police force as an instrument of the state, and offers a critique on the discriminatory laws and the Constitution of the time period within which the novel is contextualised. / South Africa

This dissertation examines the circumstances created by colonial encroachments in the American Upper Ohio Valley and the South African Eastern Cape. Beginning in the second half of the eighteenth and lasting well into the mid-nineteenth century, American Indians and Africans in the two areas faced increasing intrusions by people of European origin. Colonialism, the encounter between alien cultures, infringements on homelands, violence, dispossession, decimation, cultural invasion, removal, accommodation, revitalization, and survival led to rapidly changing worlds for local populations and white colonizers. My comparative study highlights the similarities and differences between historical developments in the two regions, with a particular focus on the creations of colonial racial orders in the United States and South Africa. Comparative history is a valuable method for examining phenomena of cross-cultural significance while subverting any notions about an area's historical uniqueness. It is an especially helpful approach in understanding the significant roles that the institutionalization of colonial expansion, racism and racial domination played in the United States and South Africa. The Upper Ohio Valley and the Eastern Cape functioned in many ways as testing grounds for American and British expansion. Developments in each place contributed to the making of colonial racial systems in the larger United States and greater southern Africa. While the scenarios in the Upper Ohio Valley and the Eastern Cape did not repeat themselves identically in other locations, comparable patterns would emerge in later years as the United States expanded westward and Britain expanded into southern and eastern Africa. In the late eighteenth and nineteenth century in the Upper Ohio Valley and the South African Cape, systems of racial exclusiveness became entrenched through increasingly close ties between settlers and the state. In both places, settlers, indigenous groups, missionaries and humanitarians attempted to influence the emerging colonial racial orders with varying success. Yet ultimately, it was the power of the state with its ability to defeat indigenous groups militarily, to dispossess and move, and to legislate, which shaped the two regions' colonial racial orders.

This dissertation seeks to argue that the vast majority of Black South African writers were no neutral sitters on the fence under apartheid rule. Each generation of Black writers assiduously and consciously deployed different genres and techniques in recording the plight of their people during years and years of subjugation under Nationalist rule. However, for each generation of committed Black South African writers the objectives were essentially consistent: to inspire, record and aid revolt against an unjust system which had been universally condemned as a crime against humanity. This dissertation is a story about the engagement of Black South African writing with its political context. It is also a journey back of sorts, because the Black writers who are at its core take us back to different phases and seasons of our shameful past as a fractured society. They take us through the consequences of the Land Act of 1913, which is universally regarded as one of the world's infamous acts of social engineering; they take us back to the notorious Bantu Education Act and its tragic consequences. In the early years of consolidating democracy in South Africa, there must be a galvanizing and self-critical vision of the goals of our society. Such a vision in turn requires a clear-sighted grasp of what was wrong in the past. It is indeed a blind progeny that acts without indebtedness to the past. The composition and orientation of Black writers who constitute this dissertation are eclectic. The dissertation draws heavily on the writings of world-renowned luminaries such as Es'kia Mphahlele, Wally Serote, Mbulelo Mzamane and Njabulo Ndebele. This dissertation falls squarely under the Citizenship Studies rubric and seeks to argue further that the Nationalists' vision of citizenship was seriously flawed because it was exclusive, violent, sectional and rooted in bigotry and racism. The task of reconstructing the post-apartheid society is going to involve massive acts of interpretation in which the historical memory will be a crucial factor.

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Thesis (Ph.D.)--Boston University / The Kingdom of Dahomey was engaged in a war nearly every year between 1818 and 1894. This study analyzes the motivations and functions of such warfare. The wars began after Gheazo became king. He came to power as a result of a coup d'etat. In order to protect his rule he established a centralized administration by creating a dual political structure of parallel male and female officials. As part of this process, the regular army was expanded and several thousand women became soldiers who fought along side the men. These are Dahomey's unique features: female administrative officers, and female soldiers. The primary functions of the army and the motivations behind the annual wars were political and institutional. Secondary, but almost of equal significance 'were economic motivations, i.e., to acquire slaves to sell to the Europeans on the coast, or for use on Dahomian plantations.

Textiles are an important part of social history and often neglected in museum collections. Lace objects are textiles with an unambiguous European heritage. Examples of this kind of tangible heritage object are found in many private and national museum collections in South Africa. This research considers needle lace crafted by students of the Koppies Lace School established in the early 1900s in the (then) Orange River Colony. The research draws on theories of representation (Hall, 2013), whiteness (de Kock, 2006), and craftwork (Risatti, 2007) to interrogate the unique context of this lace. The analysis includes examples of needle lace from Iziko Museums in Cape Town, as well as the War Museum of the Boer Republics and the Emily Hobhouse Old Age Home in the Free State. The discussion repositions lace as ethnographic object and argues for its value to South African museum collections. Koppies lace is identified as a unique collection when placed within its larger socio-historical context, and appreciated in terms of what was achieved while the lace school was in operation. This research argues that the value of Koppies lace objects to South African heritage lies within this larger intangible context and knowing and sharing this knowledge. / Dissertation (MSocSci (Heritage and Museum Studies)) University of Pretoria, 2021. / Historical and Heritage Studies / MSocSci (Heritage and Museum Studies) / Unrestricted

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Inspired by the concept of culture as expressed in the work of Claude Levi-Strauss, this dissertation traces the roots of modern perceptions of slavery and race by analyzing three sites each of which is associated with a distinct cultural pattern and social ideology. The first, Penshurst in Kent England is described as feudal, organic, vernacular, and popular. The second, Westover in tidewater Virginia is classical, rational, and elite. Thomas Jefferson's Monticello in the Virginia piedmont, the third site, is described as romantic, liberal, and bourgeois. It is only at this third site, the locus for a distinctly modern family type, that concepts of race and slavery unique to our age are found. The new ideas about family structure, race and slavery, evident at Monticello, it is argued, have had a vast influence upon the course of American social and political development.

This study examines the socioeconomic aspects of ethnicity as a way to understand African-American entrepreneurship in the early twentieth century. In an attempt to separate the influence of ethnicity from the social and environmental elements that restrained many African-American entrepreneurs, the study focuses on the African-American funeral industry. The funeral industry provides a rare example of an industry that successfully operated on a voluntarily segregated basis. Sheltered from discrimination and racism, African-American funeral directors not only survived and surpassed their white counterparts, but also organized a national fraternity of economic and political elite who wielded significant power in the United States.;This reinterpretation of the African-American community's economic system and power structure in the early twentieth-century begins by portraying the achievements of two funeral directors located in Richmond, Virginia. The study uses their own statements to explain their commercial and social successes. The remainder of the study places their pattern of achievement in the larger context. This context includes the history of funeral directing in America, death rituals and their origins in African-American culture, folk beliefs, and African-American insurance enterprises.;The African-American insurance industry provided the financial support for the funeral directors' activities. African-Americans purchased at least one billion dollars worth of insurance by the end of the 1930's. Most insurance money entered the community through direct payments to the funeral director. By being the gatekeeper for a substantial flow of capital into the community, the funeral industry supported and financed many auxiliary community businesses.;In the African-American community, death rituals both created a sense of community and provided the economic basis to support that community. This study points out that the funeral business created by African-American entrepreneurs became an economic and cultural institution of wide significance in African-American business and social history. In this rare industry where racism did not place an economic cost on conducting business, this study proves African-American entrepreneurs experienced unprecedented success that scholars have been slow to recognize.