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In this Master’s Report, I examine Samuel R. Delany’s use of language in his pornographic novel, Hogg. Through a postcolonial lens, I investigate the ways Delany employs white colonizers’ language to subvert white dominant patriarchal and heteronormative ideologies. As theorists Frantz Fanon and Hortense J. Spillers posit, language is essential to black identity. The arrival of Europeans on the African continent and the subsequent enslavement of blacks resulted in the loss of an indigenous African name. For blacks, the loss of this name serves as a larger metaphor by which one can uncover various wrongdoings committed by white colonizers, such as forcing Africans to learn a foreign language, refusing to acknowledge and respect an established African culture, and the physical violence enacted upon black bodies during slavery. In Hogg, the eleven-year-old black narrator negotiates his existence as a voiceless object and sex slave. I argue that through this narrator, one can see the devastating effects of colonization. Further, by creating a fictional world--the Pornotopia--Delany temporarily creates a space in which patriarchal boundaries no longer exist. Thus, the narrator challenges patriarchal, heteronormative discourse by taking advantage of the assumption that the narrator lacks the ability to master language. / text

Canada's continued forgetfulness concerning slavery here, and the nation-state's attempts to record only Canada's role as a place of sanctuary for escaping African-Americans, is part of the story of absenting blackness from its history. Rinaldo Walcott The fact that people of African descent have had a presence in Canada for over four hundred years is not well known within the Canadian mainstream. The fact that slavery existed as an institution in Canada is another fact that is not well known. Within the Canadian mainstream writing of African-Canadian history, Blacks most often appear in historical narratives around the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries, as American fugitives or refugees—either as escaping slaves or British Loyalists. Through the representative writing of the "the Black refugee," Canada is often constructed as a "Promised Land," a sanctuary or safe haven for Blacks, a place of refuge and redemption that does not speak to the complex history of slavery that existed well before the American exodus. Many Black Canadian writers and scholars argue that there is a price to be paid for this kind of representation. First, the absence of people of African descent in Canadian historical narratives, prior to the coming o f the American refugees, ignores the long presence of Blacks in Canada and the contributions that Blacks have made in the development of Canada. Second, in focusing on the American Loyalists and refugee slaves, Canadian writers and historians often construct Black Canadians as a homogenous, genderless group, ignoring the diversity within Canada's Black population and, in particular, the concerns of Black women. Finally, the mainstream representation of Canada as a 'safe haven' proves problematic for any critical discussion of racism in contemporary Canadian society, for notions of "Canada the good" and "America the evil" that arose from those crossings North still penetrate the Canadian mainstream today. This autobiocritical exploration examines the representation of the haven and offers alternative readings to contemporary mainstream writings of African-Canadian history. In part one, I track the appearance of Black Canadians, over the past fifty years, from 1949 to 2001, in a survey of mainstream and scholarly texts. Using the results of this survey, which does not see the appearance of Blacks in Canada until 1977, I examine how mainstream texts might use the works of Black writers to offer more critical and complex histories of Black Canadians and, in particular, Black women. In part two, I take up an analysis of George Elliott Clarke's Beatrice Chancy. Seen as a counter-narrative to mainstream writings of African-Canadian history, Clarke's work, which takes up the subject of slavery in early-nineteenth century Nova Scotia, presents an/Other kind of Loyalist story, one with a Black woman at its centre. In this discussion I examine how Clarke's poetic work subverts the national narrative, as he speaks to the diversity within blackness and the complexities in defining racial identities.

Submitted by Renata Lopes (renatasil82@gmail.com) on 2016-02-15T13:51:02Z No. of bitstreams: 1 deniseaparecidadonascimento.pdf: 1593620 bytes, checksum: 9a839e9d5281f5659087ad7f6f60e58e (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Adriana Oliveira (adriana.oliveira@ufjf.edu.br) on 2016-02-26T12:23:36Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 deniseaparecidadonascimento.pdf: 1593620 bytes, checksum: 9a839e9d5281f5659087ad7f6f60e58e (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2016-02-26T12:23:36Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 deniseaparecidadonascimento.pdf: 1593620 bytes, checksum: 9a839e9d5281f5659087ad7f6f60e58e (MD5) Previous issue date: 2014-05-06 / CAPES - Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / Espaço, lugar, território, mobilidade e deslocamento são, entre outros, termos marcantes da contemporaneidade que melhor descrevem a complexa relação entre homem e o meio em que vive. Deslocar sugere um movimento físico, e também emocional através de diferentes espaços geográficos, muitas vezes completamente estranhos, em que o sujeito necessita buscar diferentes estratégias de conciliação. As turbulências vividas nesses processos de (des) pertencer passam inevitavelmente pela noção do espaçamento. O presente trabalho investiga os múltiplos espaços vividos pelo sujeito contemporâneo. Nesses espaços múltiplos, torna-se interessante desvelar a relação conflituosa entre o “eu”, o “outro” e o lugar de “ocupação” desses sujeitos, além das questões relacionadas à alteridade e subalternidade relacionadas ao indivíduo marginalizado, principalmente a mulher negra. Nossa abordagem parte da leitura dos romances Ponciá Vicêncio (2003) e Becos da Memória (2006) de Conceição Evaristo; e A cor da ternura (1998), e o livro de contos: Leite do Peito (2001) de Geni Guimarães. Defendemos a ideia de que tais escritoras ocupam um espaço onde produzem textos que mexem com sentimentos inerentes ao ser humano, tocando a todos de maneira universal. / Space, place, territory, mobility and displacement are, among others, striking contemporary terms that best describe the complex relationship between subject and the environment in which they lives. To displace suggests a physical movement, and also emotional through different geographical areas, often completely strangers, in which the subject needs to seek different conciliation strategies. The turbulences experienced these processes of non belonging inevitably pass through the notion of spacing. The present work investigates the multiple spaces experienced by contemporary subject. These multiple spaces becomes interesting to uncover the conflicting relationship between the “I”, the "other” and the place of “occupation" of these subjects, in addition to issues relating alterity and subalternity marginalized individuals, especially black women. Our approach from the reading of novels Ponciá Vicêncio (2003) and Becos da Memória (2006) of Conceição Evaristo; and A Cor da Ternura (1998), and the book of short stories: Leite do Peito (2001) of Geni Guimarães. We defend idea that writers occupy such a space where writers produce texts that touch feelings inherent to the human being, touching all universal way.

Canada's continued forgetfulness concerning slavery here, and the nation-state's attempts to record only Canada's role as a place of sanctuary for escaping African-Americans, is part of the story of absenting blackness from its history. Rinaldo Walcott The fact that people of African descent have had a presence in Canada for over four hundred years is not well known within the Canadian mainstream. The fact that slavery existed as an institution in Canada is another fact that is not well known. Within the Canadian mainstream writing of African-Canadian history, Blacks most often appear in historical narratives around the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries, as American fugitives or refugees—either as escaping slaves or British Loyalists. Through the representative writing of the "the Black refugee," Canada is often constructed as a "Promised Land," a sanctuary or safe haven for Blacks, a place of refuge and redemption that does not speak to the complex history of slavery that existed well before the American exodus. Many Black Canadian writers and scholars argue that there is a price to be paid for this kind of representation. First, the absence of people of African descent in Canadian historical narratives, prior to the coming o f the American refugees, ignores the long presence of Blacks in Canada and the contributions that Blacks have made in the development of Canada. Second, in focusing on the American Loyalists and refugee slaves, Canadian writers and historians often construct Black Canadians as a homogenous, genderless group, ignoring the diversity within Canada's Black population and, in particular, the concerns of Black women. Finally, the mainstream representation of Canada as a 'safe haven' proves problematic for any critical discussion of racism in contemporary Canadian society, for notions of "Canada the good" and "America the evil" that arose from those crossings North still penetrate the Canadian mainstream today. This autobiocritical exploration examines the representation of the haven and offers alternative readings to contemporary mainstream writings of African-Canadian history. In part one, I track the appearance of Black Canadians, over the past fifty years, from 1949 to 2001, in a survey of mainstream and scholarly texts. Using the results of this survey, which does not see the appearance of Blacks in Canada until 1977, I examine how mainstream texts might use the works of Black writers to offer more critical and complex histories of Black Canadians and, in particular, Black women. In part two, I take up an analysis of George Elliott Clarke's Beatrice Chancy. Seen as a counter-narrative to mainstream writings of African-Canadian history, Clarke's work, which takes up the subject of slavery in early-nineteenth century Nova Scotia, presents an/Other kind of Loyalist story, one with a Black woman at its centre. In this discussion I examine how Clarke's poetic work subverts the national narrative, as he speaks to the diversity within blackness and the complexities in defining racial identities. / Arts, Faculty of / English, Department of / Graduate

In the 1928 romance novel, Dark Princess, W. E. B. Du Bois used the form of a love letter to ask "the first question of our world-work: What are you and I trying to do in this world?" Structured around this vexed notion of "world-work," "'Our World-Work': Gender and Labor in African Diasporic Literatures" takes seriously this communal question of what “you and I”—or we—are "trying to do." I extend Du Bois’s idea to locate the boundaries of the "we" in the face of variations in labor and gender. Thinking world and work together, I consider the grounds of collective narration and social organization on a broad scale, one structured by gender even as anti-sexism is evoked, such as in the case of Du Bois, who is often called a feminist by contemporary scholars. "'Our World-Work'" covers a range of twentieth-century writing, focusing on how figures and figurations of the "black woman," often at the site of the domestic, came to embody some of the urgent issues raised by the globalization of capital. Reading multi-genre works by Du Bois, Alice Childress, Ousmane Sembène, Paule Marshall, and others, "'Our World-Work'" explores how black writers and intellectuals were thinking, writing, and critiquing the world—and worlds—through their encounters with labor and gender during the middle of the last century. Attention to gender in this dissertation illuminates how modes of affiliation also contain exclusions. "'Our World-Work'" contributes to scholarship on accounts of worlding, intervening in critical debates around race, gender, and labor in the fields of black, feminist, postcolonial, and comparative literary studies.

[pt] O presente estudo tem como objeto de investigação a produção escrita contemporânea de mulheres negras e sua inserção no mercado editorial brasileiro. Partindo do pressuposto de que, desde o século XIX, com o surgimento da primeira romancista brasileira Maria Firmina dos Reis, e da poeta Auta de Souza, e ao longo século XX, com o surgimento de novas autoras, cujas obras lançadas sofreram processos de apagamento, descontinuidade e errante intermitência, deixando enorme lacuna sobre suas produções, o meio literário brasileiro continua seletivo e excludente. Estudos acadêmicos e análises empíricas apontam questões de desigualdades socioeconômica, raça, gênero e sexualidade como entraves para a visibilidade das obras de mulheres afrodescendentes, logo a investigação dos processos que inviabilizam o reconhecimento desse grupo deve partir de uma perspectiva crítica, interseccional e decolonial, em consonância com a ressignificação de elementos culturais afro-brasileiros presentes em grande parte dessas obras. O século XXI configura-se como um momento de afirmação para a produção feminina afrodescendente, vivemos o despertar de uma memória ancestral coletiva, uma Primavera Literária Afro-brasileira de forte tons femininos. O estudo irá analisar algumas obras em prosa e verso lançadas nas duas últimas décadas, observado os processos, progressos e desafios ocorridos neste período, bem como a relação entre o surgimento de novas autoras afrodescendentes e a emergência de significativo número de editoras independentes, que tem levado a um aquecimento do meio editorial, bem como a uma autocrítica sobre a incipiente presença de autoras afrodescendentes em catálogos de grandes editoras. / [en] The presente study has as its object of investigation the contemporary written production of black women and their insertion in the brazilian publishing market. Based on the assumption that, since the 19th century, with the emergence of first brazilian novelist Firmina dos Reis, and the poet Auta de Souza, and throughout the 20th century, with new authors s emergence, whose published works have undergone erasure processes, discontinuity and errant intermittence, leaving huge gap in their productions, the brazilian literary space remains selective and excluding. Academic studies and empirical analyzes point out issues of socioeconomic inequalities, race, gender and sexuality as obstacles to the visibility of afrodescendant women s works, therefore, the analysis of the processes that make the recognition of this group unfeasible, must start from a critical, intersectional and decolonial perspective, in line with the reframing of afro-brazilian cultural elements present in most of these works. The 21th century is configured as a moment of affirmation for afro-descendant female production, we live an awakening of a collective ancestral memory, an Afro-brazilian Literary Spring with strong feminine tones. The study will analyze some works in prose and verse relesead in the last two decades, observing the processes, progress and challenges that ocurred in this period, as well as the relationship between the appearance of new afro-descendant authors and the emergence of significant number of independent publishers, wich has led to a warming of the editorial environment, as well as a self-criticism about the incipient presence of afro-descendant authors in catalogs of major publishers.

All bodies of critical discourse on any given literary canon seek visibility through self- celebration, subversion of competing critical ideas and identification with supposedly popular, scientific and incisive critical theories. Thus, the literary-critical quest for significance and visibility is, in essence, a quest for „space‟, „voice‟ and „authority‟ in the discussion of aspects of a given literary corpus. This research explores the politics of „space‟, „voice‟ and „authority‟ in „white critical thought‟ on „the black Zimbabwean novel‟. It unfolds in the context of the realisation that as a body of critical discourse on „the black Zimbabwean novel‟, „white critical thought‟ does not only emerge in an intellectual matrix in which it shares and competes for „space‟, „voice‟ and „authority‟ with other bodies of critical thought on the literary episteme in question; it also develops in the ambit of Euro-African cultural politics of hegemony and resistance. Thus, the research sets out to identify the ways in which „white critical thought‟ affirms and perpetuates or questions and negates European critical benchmarks and cultural models in the discussion of selected aspects of „the black Zimbabwean novel‟. The investigation considers the fissures at the heart of „white critical thought‟ as a critical discourse and the myriad of ways in which it interacts with competing critical discourses on the „the black Zimbabwean novel‟. It derives impetus from the fact that while other versions of critical thought on „the black Zimbabwean novel‟ have received extensive metacritical discussion elsewhere, „white critical thought‟ remains largely under-discussed. This phenomenon enables it to solidify into a settled body of critical thought. The metacritical discussion of „white critical thought‟ in this research constitutes part of the repertoire of efforts that will help check the solidification of critical discourses into hegemonic bodies of thought. The research makes use of Afrocentric and Postcolonial critical tenets to advance the contention that while „white critical thought‟ on „the black Zimbabwean novel‟ is fraught with fissures and contradictions that speak directly to its complexity and resistance to neat categorisation, it is largely vulnerable to identification as part of the paraphernalia of European cultural and intellectual hegemony in African literature and its criticism, given its tendency to discuss the literature outside the context of critical theories that emerge from the same culture and history with the literary corpus in question. / African Languages / D. Litt. et Phil. (African Languages)

Summaries in French and English / Text in French / Les romans analyses - Une si longue lettre et Un chant ecarlate de Mariama Ba, O pays, mon beau peuple! by d'Ousmane Sembene et Agar d' Albert Memmi - proposent tous une histoire se deroulant en Afrique et ayant pour theme le mariage mixte et/ou polygame, theme particulierement riche comme foyer d'observation socioculturelle et interculturelle des milieux evoques. Le chapitre 1 cerne le theme du mariage et ses diverses configurations mixtes et polygames dans les quatre roamns. Sont examines dans les chapitres suivants: les rapports familiaux et sociaux tels qu'ils sont vecus par les couples protagonistes; la polygamie, centrale aux deux romans de Ba et omnipresente dans celui de Sembene; les religions des societes concernees, telles qu' ell es affectent les couples en jeu; les images de la femme - et surtout de la femme africaine - qui ressortent des situations conjugates developpees par les auteurs; l'eventuelle influence du sexe de l'auteur sur la representation de la femme. / The novels analysed - Une si longue lettre and Un chant ecarlate by Mariama Ba, O pays, mon beau peuple! by Ousmane Sembene and Agar by Albert Memmi - all tell stories set in Africa and share the theme of mixed and/or polygamous marriage, a particularly fertile theme through which to focus a socio-cultural and intercultural examination of the social environments portrayed. Chapter 1 identifies the theme of marriage and the various mixed/polygamous configurations it assumes in the four novels. The succeeding chapters examine: family and social relationships as experienced by the protagonists; polygamy, central to both novels by Ba and omnipresent in Sembene's novel; the religions of the societies portrayed, insofar as they affect the couples concerned; the images of woman - and particularly the Afiican woman - emerging from the marital situations developed by the authors and, finally, the possible influence of authorial gender on the presentation of woman. / Classics and Modern Euorpean Languages / M.A. (French)

Summaries in French and English / Text in French / Les romans analyses - Une si longue lettre et Un chant ecarlate de Mariama Ba, O pays, mon beau peuple! by d'Ousmane Sembene et Agar d' Albert Memmi - proposent tous une histoire se deroulant en Afrique et ayant pour theme le mariage mixte et/ou polygame, theme particulierement riche comme foyer d'observation socioculturelle et interculturelle des milieux evoques. Le chapitre 1 cerne le theme du mariage et ses diverses configurations mixtes et polygames dans les quatre roamns. Sont examines dans les chapitres suivants: les rapports familiaux et sociaux tels qu'ils sont vecus par les couples protagonistes; la polygamie, centrale aux deux romans de Ba et omnipresente dans celui de Sembene; les religions des societes concernees, telles qu' ell es affectent les couples en jeu; les images de la femme - et surtout de la femme africaine - qui ressortent des situations conjugates developpees par les auteurs; l'eventuelle influence du sexe de l'auteur sur la representation de la femme. / The novels analysed - Une si longue lettre and Un chant ecarlate by Mariama Ba, O pays, mon beau peuple! by Ousmane Sembene and Agar by Albert Memmi - all tell stories set in Africa and share the theme of mixed and/or polygamous marriage, a particularly fertile theme through which to focus a socio-cultural and intercultural examination of the social environments portrayed. Chapter 1 identifies the theme of marriage and the various mixed/polygamous configurations it assumes in the four novels. The succeeding chapters examine: family and social relationships as experienced by the protagonists; polygamy, central to both novels by Ba and omnipresent in Sembene's novel; the religions of the societies portrayed, insofar as they affect the couples concerned; the images of woman - and particularly the Afiican woman - emerging from the marital situations developed by the authors and, finally, the possible influence of authorial gender on the presentation of woman. / Classics and Modern Euorpean Languages / M.A. (French)