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Philosophiae Doctor - PhD / This study examines temporal entanglement in three novels by Jamaican-born author Nalo Hopkinson. The novels are: Brown Girl in the Ring (1998), Midnight Robber (2000), and The Salt Roads (2004). The study pays particular attention to Hopkinson's use of narrative temporalities, which are shape by creolisation. I argue that Hopkinson creatively theorises black women's subjectivities in relation to (post) colonial politics of domination. Specifically, creolised temporalities are presented as a response to predatory Western modernity. Her innovative diasporic science fiction displays common preoccupations associated with Caribbean women writers, such as belonging and exile, and the continued violence enacted by the legacy of colonialism and slavery. A central emphasis of the study is an analysis of how Hopkinson not only employs a past gaze, as the majority of both Caribbean and postcolonial writing does to recover the subaltern subject, but also how she uses the future to reclaim and reconstruct a sense of selfhood and agency, specifically with regards to black women. Linked to the future is her engagement with notions of technological and social betterment and progress as exemplified by her emphasis on the use of technology as a tool of empire. By writing science fiction, Hopkinson is able to delve into the nebulous nexus of technology, empire, slavery, capitalism and modernity. And, by employing a temporality shaped by creolisation, she is able to collapse discrete historical time-frames, tracing obscured connections between the nodes of this nexus from its beginnings on the plantation, the birthplace of creolisation and, as some have argued, of modernity itself.

South African political elites framed the country’s successful bid to host the 2010 FIFA World Cup in terms of nation-building, evoking imagery of South African unity. Yet, a pre-season tournament in 2008 featuring the two glamour soccer clubs of South Africa, Kaizer Chiefs and Orlando Pirates, and the global brand of Manchester United, revealed a racially fractured soccer fandom that contradicted these notions of national unity through soccer. This thesis examines the racial divisions in Johannesburg soccer fandom, exploring the continuing wider importance of racial identities in post-apartheid South Africa. Sport is not merely a leisure activity but a space in which everyday identities are negotiated and contested. Specifically, soccer in South Africa has been a site in which racial divisions have been both entrenched and subverted, spanning the colonial era to the present day. However, in focusing on race, this thesis seeks to move beyond simple binaries that have characterised the debates on identity in South Africa; particularly race versus class. Race, through the perspective of creolisation, becomes unfixed and fluid. However, despite reinterpreting race, racial divisions still scar the post-apartheid city. Extensive ethnographic fieldwork with the supporters’ organisations of Kaizer Chiefs, Bidvest Wits and Manchester United football clubs in Johannesburg draws out narratives of fandom often marginalised in Africanist scholarship. Drawing on wide-ranging sources including participant observation, semi-structured interviews and local newspapers, themes of racial difference and otherness emerge. The divided Johannesburg soccer landscape reinforced feelings of disenfranchisement and marginalisation in everyday life from the predominantly white Manchester United supporters while the exclusively black Kaizer Chiefs constructed the domestic game as a black cultural space. While Bidvest Wits offers a symbolic case of multi-racial interaction, certain supporters began to challenge such fractures; some United supporters showed interest in attending domestic games while the Chiefs supporters viewed the researcher as a conduit to attracting these white supporters. Furthermore, the national euphoria generated during 2010 World Cup did temporarily alter perspectives of the city and how the supporters travelled through it, challenging perceived barriers. Yet, themes of exclusion and division remained, brought back to the fore after the tournament.

Dans cette recherche historique sur l’affranchissement des esclaves dans l’Est dominicain, nous avons tenté de reconnaître la nature et la force sociale de cette pratique juridique, ce qui nous a permis, nous l’espérons, de parvenir à une compréhension plus large de l'esclavage, non seulement dans l’Est dominicain entre le XVIIIe et le début du XIXe siècle, mais également dans l'Amérique coloniale espagnole dans son ensemble.Nous sommes partis du postulat selon lequel nous nous trouvons face à un phénomène social total comme l'ont établi Marcel Mauss et Georges Gurvitch. Grâce à cette méthode, nous avons pu voir les causes et les effets sociaux de l'affranchissement au sens large, comme la réaction de l'opinion populaire, l'adaptation des mœurs, les impacts économiques, l'efficacité et inefficacité des lois, etc.En ce sens, l’étude des documents juridiques s’est relevée importante en raison du rôle qu’ils ont joué dans la structuration de la société. À travers les facteurs sociaux en jeu dans les processus d’affranchissement, nous avons tenté de situer les circonstances qui les ont produits. Par exemple, pour un affranchissement, acte individuel par excellence dans le régime colonial, nous nous sommes demandé à quelle classe sociale appartenait le maître, quelle était la conjoncture économique, etc. C'est pourquoi nous avons essayé d'approfondir ce phénomène du point de vue historique afin de comprendre les modèles d'affranchissement dominants (gratuits ou payants, conditionnés ou sans conditions) ainsi que le profil démographique des affranchis (genre, origine, âge, etc.).Les affranchissements sont des documents juridiques d'une nature particulière dans le répertoire des décisions judiciaires. Leur analyse est susceptible d'être quantifiée mais il est évident que les affranchissements analysés ne représentent pas une série exhaustive car ce ne sont que des traces d’un phénomène dont nous ne mesurons pas l’ampleur exacte. Cependant, au-delà de la multiplicité des cas analysés, ce qui importe le plus sont les détails qu'ils nous offrent. Ainsi, cette thèse présente une étude historico-juridique de l'affranchissement dans l’Est dominicain dès la fin du XVIIe siècle à l’abolition de l’esclavage. / In this historical research about the emancipation of slaves in the East Dominican, we attempted to identify the nature and the social force of this legal practice, which has allowed us, at least we hope, to reach a broad understanding on slavery not only in the eastern Dominican between the eighteenth and early nineteenth century, but also in the entire Spanish Latin-American colonial empire. We started with the premise that we are facing a total social phenomenon as established by Mauss and Gurvitch. With this method, we could see the causes and effects of social emancipation in the broadest sense, as the reaction of public opinion, the adaptation of morals, economic impacts, effectiveness and ineffectiveness of laws, etc. In this sense, the study of legal documents has raised important because of their role in the structuring of society. Through social factors involved in them in the process of emancipation, we tried to locate in the documents, the circumstances that produced them. For example, for an emancipation, act by excellence individual in the colonial regime, we asked what was the social class in which belonged the master? What was the economic situation? Etc. That is why we have tried to explore this phenomenon from a historical point of view to understand the dominant models postage (free or paid, put or without conditions) as well as the demographic profile of freedmen (gender, origin, age, etc.). The manumissions are legal documents of a special nature in the directory of judicial decisions. Their analysis is likely to be quantified, but it is clear that the manumissions analyzed do not represent an exhaustive series because they are only traces of a phenomenon that we do not have the exact size. However, beyond the multiplicity of cases analyzed, what matters most are the details they offer us. Thus, this thesis presents a historical-legal study of manumissions in the eastern Dominican Republic in the late seventeenth century until the abolition of slavery.

This paper is about culture, cultural meeting in a new place or organization, and also about identity and how identity takes form with the help of culture. The information is gathered from three informants, and their information is connected to research in those areas; culture, globalization, identity, study and work. With the information that I will get through interviews with my three informants is to help explain if there are differences and similarities. I go through how these three individuals think and act in their meeting with a new place’s culture. I use that information to find ways to make it easier to go and work or study abroad, and be prepared that culture differences will occur, and hopefully this paper will give some insight into how to deal and cope with these problems. / Den här uppsatsen handlar om kultur, kulturmöten, identitet, studier och arbete. Informationen är tagen från tre informanter, och den information jag fått från dem kopplar jag ihop med undersökningar inom dessa områden (kultur, globalisering, assimilation, identitet, studier och arbete). Det är för att hjälpa mig se och visa likheter och skillnader mellan mina informanters berättelser. Jag går igenom hur mina tre informanter tänker och agerar när de möter en ny plats kultur. Det här är då för att se om det kan bli lättare att arbeta eller studera utomlands, för att vara beredd att skillnader kommer att uppstå, och med hjälp av den här forskningen hoppas jag att svaren kommer ge en insikt i hur man enklare kan hantera dessa problemsituationer.

Étudier l’édifice post-exotique construit par Antoine Volodine en s’intéressant à la langue revient à l’envisager à la fois comme objet de représentation, comme « matériau » façonné par l’écrivain et comme outil d’une stratégie littéraire sans concession vis-à-vis du lecteur. Représentée dans de nombreuses séquences fictionnelles, la langue revient d’œuvre en œuvre et permet de révéler l’importance particulière de certaines d’entre elles ainsi que la cohérence interne de cet ensemble romanesque. Façonné sans relâche par Volodine, le français s’en trouve modifié car l’auteur y insère des néologismes et en perturbe les expressions a priori intangibles ; l’analyse de cette poétique fondée sur le mélange et la perturbation, soit l’hybridité, permet en outre de distinguer quelques pratiques linguistiques propres aux hétéronymes. Mais surtout, l’écrivain ouvre le français aux langues étrangères par un biais qui fait jouer la traduction d’une façon inédite et cette hospitalité linguistique qui fait appel à la créolisation conduit à reconsidérer la francophonie (dont elle se revendique). Utilisée pour dénoncer les mésusages linguistiques de discours historiquement identifiés, la langue volodinienne permet à l’écrivain de mettre en place des dispositifs linguistiques et littéraires qui exigent une participation active du lecteur, régulièrement invité à prendre part à la construction du sens. / To study Antoine Volodine’s post-exotic fiction through the prism of language is to consider language as an object of representation, as “material” shaped by the writer, and as a tool in a literary strategy which makes no concessions to the reader. Language is represented in numerous fictional sequences, reappearing as a theme from one text to the next, thereby revealing both the importance of certain novels in his oeuvre as well as the internal coherency of his work. Volodine relentlessly remodels the French language, introducing neologisms and disrupting expressions that seem, a priori, intangible. Furthermore, the analysis of this poetics based on heterogeneity and disruption - or its hybridity - allows certain linguistic practices specific to heteronyms to be identified. Above all, Volodine opens French to foreign languages through an innovative use of translation. This linguistic hospitality, which draws on “creolisation”, calls for a reconsideration of the francophone literary field (which it claims to be part of). Volodine’s language is used to denounce the misuse of language in historically identified discourses, and it is the means by which the writer sets up linguistic and literary devices which demand the active participation of the reader, who is regularly invited to partake in the construction of meaning.

In Hans Zender’s oeuvre manifold traces of an intense confrontation with intercultural questions can be found. More specifically, many of Zender’s works relate to East Asian cultures. Generally, Zender highlights heterogeneity and his concepts of interculturality seem to be opposed to a hybrid mixture of idioms as described by the term »creolisation«. Most recently Zender’s opera Chief Joseph (2001-2003), a complex work about cultural conflict, oscillated between familiarity and strangeness, between descriptive and cryptic layers. Zender has referred to the ancient Chinese magical square luo shu and to ancient Chinese theories of tuning to widen eurocentric discourses of contemporary music, although the references in his scores can often hardly be labelled specifically »Asian«. On a similar conceptual level, three main traditions from East Asian philosophy have had substantial influences on him, namely: the anti-logocentric ideas of Zen-Buddhism (obviously partly triggered by John Cage), the Confucian ideals of music set forth in the ancient »Book of Rites« Liji, and the philosophers of the Kyoto-School – mainly Kitaro Nishida and his idea of »pure experience«. Zender’s works such as Fünf Haiku (1982) or Lo-Shu VI (1989) exemplify the composer’s transformation of traditional Japanese aesthetics into forms of obvious simplicity that establish a continuous change between uninterrupted flow and sudden silence. The notion of a »dissolution of time« is present in these pieces as well as in the earlier Muji no kyo (1975) which, conversely, ends in an intensification of the musical structure on all levels. Likewise, Furin no kyo (1989) and Nanzen no kyo (1992) superimpose different concepts of time associated with different cultures. In the final section of Furin no kyo the superimposition of different concepts of time and languages results in a collage-like microstructure. These examples confirm that Zender’s aesthetic focuses on contradiction and does not aim to harmonise cultural differences or conflicts. For Hans Zender interculturality means a fundamental »concussion of [established] meanings« (Roland Barthes).

In this thesis I investigate connections between modern Anglophone and Francophone Caribbean fiction between the 1950s and the present. My study brings into focus literary representations of inter-related histories and cultures and problematises the fragmentation of Caribbean studies into separate academic disciplines. The disciplinary compartmentalisation of Caribbean studies into English studies on the one hand and French and Francophone studies on the other has contributed to a reading of Caribbean literature within separate linguistic spheres. This division is strikingly reflected in the scarcity of any sustained literary criticism that acknowledges cultural and literary interpenetration within the archipelago. My comparative study of selected Anglophone and Francophone Caribbean fiction allows me to account for the ethnic, cultural, linguistic and historical diversity of Caribbean societies while, at the same time, foregrounding their inter-relatedness. Through a series of specific case studies the thesis illuminates ways in which theoretical concepts and literary tropes have travelled within the archipelago. Through a close reading of selected narrative fiction I will contextualise and analyse significant underlying linguistic, ethnic and cultural links between the various Caribbean societies which are largely based on the shared history of slavery, colonialism and decolonisation processes. The themes of migration, transformation and creolisation will be at the centre of my investigation. Chapter One establishes the historical and literary-critical framework for this thesis by engaging with key developments in Anglophone and Francophone Caribbean writing from the 1920s until the present. My comparison of the most influential trends in both Anglophone and Francophone Caribbean literature and criticism from the discourse of négritude to postcolonial studies seeks to highlight connections between these two linguistically divided fields of study. The analysis of Caribbean fiction in Chapters Two to Four pursues such theoretical, stylistic and thematic links further. Chapter Two challenges the conception of postwar Antillean and West Indian writing produced in the metropolis as distinct literary canons by drawing attention to thematic connections between the two traditions. Through the comparison of The Lonely Londoners by Samuel Selvon and La Fête à Paris by Joseph Zobel it argues that these continuities represent a wider trend in ‘black European’ writing. Chapter Three examines concepts of cultural identity which have been central to Anglophone and Francophone Caribbean literature and criticism during the last two decades. Specifically it focuses on the notions of hybridity, créolité/creoleness and créolisation/creolisation which it discusses in relation to Robert Antoni’s novel Divina Trace and Patrick Chamoiseau’s Texaco. The final chapter focuses on Shani Mootoo’s and Gisèle Pineau’s representations of specific female experiences of trauma which are related to reiterated colonial violence. Their fictional portrayal of suppressed memories can be read in light of recent critical debates about a collective remembrance of the history of slavery and colonialism.

Thesis (MA)--Stellenbosch University, 2012. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Francoise Vergés comments in her essay Let’s Cook! that “one could write the history of a people, of a country, of a continent by writing the history of its culinary habits” (250 ). Vergés here refers to the extent to which food can be seen to document and record certain events or subjectivities. Exploring a wide range of texts spanning the late 1800s up to the post-apartheid present, this thesis focuses in particular on the ways in which “spice” as commodity, ingredient or symbol is employed to articulate and/or embed creole and diasporic identities within the South African national context. The first chapter maps the depiction of the “Malay” figure within cookery books, focussing on the extent to which it is caught up in the trappings of the picturesque. This visibility is often mediated by the figure’s proximity to food. These depictions are then placed in conversation with the conceptual artist Berni Searle’s photographic and video installations. Searle visually interrogates the stagnant modes of representation that accrue around the figure of the “Malay” and moves toward understandings of how food and food narratives structure cultural identity as complex and mutable. Chapter two shifts focus from the Cape to the ways in which “Indian Cuisine” became significant within the South African context. Here the Indian housewife plays a role in perpetuating a distinctive cultural identity. The three primary texts discussed in this chapter are the popular Indian Delights cookery book authored by the Women’s Cultural Group, Shamim Sarif’s The World Unseen and Imraan Coovadia’s The Wedding. Indian Delights. All illustrate the extent to which the realm of the kitchen, traditionally a female domain, becomes a space from which alternative subjectivities can be made. The kitchen as a place for cultural retention is explored further and to differing degrees in both The Wedding and The World Unseen. Ultimately, indentifying cultural heritage through food enables tracing alternative and intersecting cultural identities that elsewhere, are often left out for neat and new ethnic, cultural or national identities. The thesis will in particular explore the extent to which spices used within creole and/or diasporic culinary practices encode complex affiliations and connections. Tracing the intimacies and the disjunctures becomes productive within the postapartheid present where the vestiges of apartheid’s taxonomical impetus alongside a new multicultural model threaten to erase further the complexities and nuances of everyday life. / AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: In haar artikel Let’s Cook! wys Francoise Vergés daarop dat die geskiedenis van ‘n mens, ‘n land of selfs ‘n kontinent saamgestel sou kon word deur te skryf oor die geskiedenis van hulle kos en eetgewoontes (250).Vergés skep hier ‘n besef van individuele en sosiale identiteit wat deur kos geleenthede vasgevang kan word. Deur bronne vanaf die laat 1800’s tot die postapartheid periode te bestudeer, fokus hierdie navorsing spesifiek op die wyse waarop speserye as kommoditeit, inhoud of simbool gebruik word om die kreoolse en diasporiese identiteite in Suid Afrika te bevestig of te bevraagteken. Die eerste hoofstuk lewer ‘n uiteensetting en beskrywing, soos verkry uit kookboeke, van die stereotypes wat vorm om die Maleise figuur. Daar word konsekwent gefokus op die mate waarin die sigbaarheid van die Maleise identiteit verstrengel word in ‘n bestaande raamwerk van diskoerse. Die Maleise figure word dikwels meer sigbaar in die konteks van kos en eetgewoontes. Berni Searl se fotografiese en video installasies word gebruik om hierdie stereotiepiese visuele kodes te bevraagteken. Searle ontgin die passiewe wyse waarop die Maleise persoon visueel verbeeld word en beklemtoon dan hoe kos en gesprekke oor kos die kulturele identiteit kompleks en dinamies maak. Hoofstuk twee verskuif die klem vanaf die Kaap na die wyse waarop die Indiese kookkuns identiteit kry in die Suid Afrikaanse konteks. Die fokus val hier op die rol van die Indiese huisvrou en haar kombuis in die bevestiging en uitbou van ‘n onderskeibare kulturele identiteit. Die drie kern tekste wat in hierdie hoofstuk bespreek word is die wel bekende en populere Indian Delights kookboek wat saamgestel is deur die Women’s Cultural Group, Shamim Sarif se The World Unseen en Imraan Coovadia se The Wedding. Indian Delights toon verder die mate waarin die kombuis as primere domein van die vrou, ‘n ruimte bied vir die formulering van alternatiewe subjek posisies. Die kombuis bied ook geleentheid vir inherente subversie wat verder en op alternatiewe wyse ontgin word in die bronne The Wedding en The World Unseen. Deur kos te gebruik om kulturele identiteit te verstaan bied ook die geleentheid om kulturele oorvleueling te verstaan al mag sommige groepe beskou word as onafhanklik in hul oorsprong en identiteit. Hierdie navorsing gee spesifiek aandag aan die mate waarin speserye en die gebruik daarvan in kreoolse en diasporiese kookkuns die kompleksiteite, soortgelykhede, verskille en misverstande reflekteer. Dit is veral waardevol om te let op soortgelykhede en verskille gegee dat die apartheidstaksonomie van die verlede en die huidige multikulturele model die rykheid en subtiele nuanseerings van die daaglikse bestaan verder kan erodeer.