Thesis (M.A.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2009. / Full text also available online. Scroll down for electronic link.

Doris Lessing and Tsitsi Dangarembga write fiction set in Zimbabwe, the former Southern Rhodesia. Although Lessing grew up as a white settler and Dangarembga, a generation later, as part of the colonized African population, the women sometimes address similar issues. Both write of young girls trying to find a speaking position; under colonialism, what they want to say cannot be said. Lessing's first-person stories differ from her more distant third-person works, which show how white settlers either refuse to recognize their own complicity within the colonial system or accept living a compromised life. Her younger narrators are as yet innocent; the stories often focus on the character's discovery of her own responsibility as a member of the white ruling class. However, these girls have varying levels of self awareness; some seem unaware of the implications of their stories, while others catch glimpses of their own complicity, yet are unable to act. Although Lessing herself is highly critical of colonialism, her stories sometimes risk textually replicating and thus reinforcing the values she criticizes. Dangarembga's first-person novel Nervous Conditions (1988) portrays Tambu, a girl from a poor African family, and her more modern cousin Nyasha. Tambu narrates the story as an adult, Although Nyasha resents colonialism and her patriarchal family, Tambu proceeds with her education, attempting to ignore the injustice around her. Because of the use of an adult narrator, the reader sees what Tambu the child cannot see. Nyasha is unable to voice her concerns; her protest surfaces as anorexia. Both Lessing's and Dangarembga's characters have difficulty speaking because colonialism does not include a space for what they want to say; even if they spoke, their words could make little difference. Lessing' s characters can "speak" only by leaving the country, as Lessing herself did. Dangarembga's Tambu may or may not have "escaped" her situation; by the book's publication, Rhodesia had overcome white rule, and it may be this political change that allows Tambu to tell her story. / Graduation date: 2002

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2007. / The entire dissertation/thesis text is included in the research.pdf file; the official abstract appears in the short.pdf file (which also appears in the research.pdf); a non-technical general description, or public abstract, appears in the public.pdf file. Title from title screen of research.pdf file (viewed on March 12, 2009) Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph.D. (English)) - Rhodes University, 2008.

Thesis (MA)--Stellenbosch University, 2013. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This thesis explores the representation of women, identity and education in the works of Tsitsi Dangarembga, Nervous Conditions (1989) and The Book of Not (2006), and Kopano Matlwa, Coconut (2007) and Spilt Milk (2010), through the lens of postcolonial studies. The arguments presented deal with the complicated factors associated with the formation of new identities in independent Zimbabwe and post-apartheid South Africa. I focus on how African women are represented in the texts taking place at particular socio-historical moments, including implications and interpretations of the literal and cultural shift from the indigenous, rural or segregated environments to Western, urban and racially mixed ones. My argument outlines the ways in which the stories are allegorically the stories of the fledgling democracies from which they emerge. I explore the texts in terms of symbolics of food, language, accents, family, academic settings, and the liberating and limiting elements associated with each. The authors present a complicated reality for the women of the novels, one where education is prioritized although somewhat to the detriment of traditional values and norms. The representation of women in the novels varies, leaving few successful role models for navigating workable identities for the characters as mothers, wives, and autonomous individuals. The novels offer interesting imaginaries for the future of their respective countries. The texts promote education tempered with a respect for home cultures and racial reconciliation. / AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Hierdie tesis ondersoek die uitbeelding van vroue, identiteit en opvoeding in die werke van Tsitsi Dangarembga en Kopano Matlwa vanuit die oogpunt van postkoloniale studies. Die voorgestelde argument hou verband met die ingewikkelde faktore van identiteit-vorming in 'n onhafhanklike Zimbabwe en 'n post-Apartheid Suid-Afrika. Ek fokus op die uitbeelding van swart vroue in hierdie tekste wat gedurende spesifiek sosio-historiese oomblikke plaas vind. Dit sluit in die gevolge en interpretasies van letterlike en kulterele verskuiwings vanaf inheemse, landelike en gesegregeerde omgewings tot Westerse, stedelike en veelrassige omgewings. My argument sit uit een hoe hierdie vroue se stories as allegorieë vir die jong demokratiese lande waaruit hul na vore kom, beskou kan word. Ek verken die tekste ook in terme van die simboliek van voedsel, taal, aksent, familie en opvoeding, en fokus verder op die bevrydende en beperkende elemente van elk. Die skrywers bied 'n ingewikkelde werkliheid vir vrouens in die romans aan, een waar opvoeding 'n prioriteit is, maar ietwat tot die nadeel van tradisionele waardes en norme. Die uitbeelding van vrouens in die romans wissel en bied min suksesvolle rolmodelle aan waarvolgens die karakters identiteite soos moeder, vrou en selfstandige individue kan vorm. Die tekste bevorder wel die verkryging van 'n volledige opvoeding, maar nie tot nadeel van tradisionele kulture, of die moontlikheid van rasseversoening nie. Beide die romans bied 'n interessante blik op die toekomste vir die onderskeie lande dur hierdie uibeelding van die vroulike karakters.

Includes bibliographical references (leaves 84-91) / My thesis focuses on the representation of marginalized voices and trauma in the selected fiction of Tsitsi Dangarembga and Yvonne Vera. I analyze three novels written by the Yvonne Vera—Without a Name (1994), Under the Tongue(1996) and The Stone Virgins(2002) set during the Zimbabwe liberation struggle period and postcolonial Zimbabwe dissident era respectively and Nervous Conditions(1988) and its sequel, The Book of Not (1996), by Dangarembga set during the 1960s to 1970s colonial Rhodesia period (the colonial name for Zimbabwe) and during the period of white‐minority rule in Rhodesia to the attainment of independence in 1980. I analyze these novels from the feminist/womanist, gender and postcolonial literary models. The rational for grouping these theoretical models in the analysis in this thesis is that they commonly highlight from a gender perspective the complex factors which oppress and marginalize women in the colonial and postcolonial contexts in which the two authors set their writings. These literary paradigms highlight the oppression of women from an African perspective and all acknowledge the need to address all factors which oppress and subordinate women (gender, race, class) if total emancipation for them is to be achieved. I also posit that Vera and Dangarembga offer discourses that challenge the silencing of narratives of oppression and violation in their novels selected for analysis in this thesis. The thesis has five chapters. In Chapter 1, I set out the argument of the thesis and give a brief history of gendered colonialism and the historical period which provides a setting for the fiction of the two authors. Next, I describe the conceptual framework I will use in analyzing the works of the two postcolonial Zimbabwe female writers. Then I will outline the research questions and hypothesis and expose the research methodology and approach that will serve as my vehicle for data collection, analysis and interpretation. In Chapter 2, I will focus on gender, class and race and discuss the ways Dangarembga explores these factors in Nervous Conditions and The Book of Not. I will also discuss innovate ways women explore to champion their freedom and voice in the fiction of Dangarembga. Chapter 3 focuses on the novels of Yvonne Vera— Without a Name, Under the Tongue and The stone Virgins —which articulate narratives of violated subjects and silenced voices. I will discuss the ways Vera explores to show how narratives of violated subjects are silenced by patriarchy, colonialism and masculine narratives of nationalism in these novels. Chapter 4 focuses on narratives of trauma. Using theories of trauma, I will analyze Without a Name, Under the Tongue and The Stone Virgins by Vera and show how these narratives articulate colonial and postcolonial trauma and female child trauma. I will also discuss The Book of Not by Dangarembga and show how the novel articulates colonial and racial trauma. My discussion of the novels of Vera and Dangarembga in this chapter will show that these novels work out traumatic experiences in the colonial and postcolonial eras and will also reveal the challenges of representing tra / English Studies / M.A. (English)

This dissertation, “Fictions of Development: Decolonization, Development Economics, and the African Novel,” maps the tensions as well as the surprising resonances and interdependencies between development institutions and African literary production. The arc of the dissertation begins in the early 1960s, as many postcolonial countries marked their independence by embarking on ambitious national development programs. It extends through the turbulent 1970s, during which the Global South agitated for a New International Economic Order that would deliver “trade, not aid,” and the reactionary 1980s, in which the World Bank and the IMF pressured governments across the Global South into adopting a series of macroeconomic reforms known as structural adjustment. The dissertation ends in the present moment, as pressing social and environmental concerns have given rise to a (supposedly) new era of “sustainable” development. Taken as a whole, “Fictions of Development” unsettles received notions about both development and African literature. Scholars working in and around postcolonial studies have long understood development as the contemporary counterpart to, and outgrowth of, the “civilizing mission” that once underwrote centuries of European conquest and colonization. Such close ties between colonialism and development have given rise to the widespread assumption that postcolonial writers, in rejecting colonialism, also rejected development. However, by turning to the historical interactions between writers from “developing” countries and the organizations charged with the task of “developing” those countries, this dissertation tells a more complex story. Applying the tools and methods of literary criticism to a wide range of materials—from novels, plays, and memoirs to national economic planning documents, World Bank mission reports, and tourist brochures—this dissertation traces some of the ways that western development institutions use narrative form to stake their claims to knowledge of (and therefore power over) the so-called “developing” world. It also shows how four African writers—Botswana’s Bessie Head, Ghana’s Ama Ata Aidoo, Kenya’s Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, and Zimbabwe’s Tsitsi Dangarembga—use the narrative form of the novel to propose alternative visions of development grounded in the principles of social and economic wellbeing.

This thesis argues that a prominent concern among contemporary writers of fiction is the recuperation of lost or occluded histories. Increasingly, contemporary writers, especially postcolonial writers, are using the medium of fiction to explore those areas of political and cultural history that have been written over or unwritten by the dominant narrative of “official” History. The act of excavating these past histories is simultaneously both traumatic and liberating – which is not to suggest that liberation itself is without pain and trauma. The retelling of traumatic pasts can lead, as is portrayed in The God of Small Things (1997), to further trauma and pain. Postcolonial writers (and much of the world today can be construed as postcolonial in one way or another) are seeking to bring to the fore stories of the past which break down the rigid binaries upon which colonialism built its various empires, literal and ideological. Such writing has in a sense been enabled by the collapse, in postcolonial and postmodernist discourse, of the Grand Narrative of History, and its fragmentation into a plurality of competing discourses and histories. The associated collapse of the boundary between history and fiction is recognized in the useful generic marker “historiographic metafiction,” coined by Linda Hutcheon. The texts examined in this study are all variants of this emerging contemporary genre. What they also have in common is a concern with the consequences of exile or diaspora. This study thus explores some of the representations of how the exilic experience impinges on the development of identity in the postcolonial world. The identities of “displaced” people must undergo constant change in order to adjust to the new spaces into which they move, both literal and metaphorical, and yet critical to this adjustment is the cultural continuity provided by psychologically satisfying stories about the past. The study shows that what the chosen texts share at bottom is their mutual need to retell the lost pasts of their characters, the trauma that such retelling evokes and the new histories to which they give birth. These texts generate new histories which subvert, enrich, and pre-empt formal closure for the narratives of history which determine the identities of nations.

Text in English / This thesis investigates the relationship between humans and the nonhuman world or natural environment in selected literary works by black female writers in colonial and post-colonial Namibia and Zimbabwe. Some Anglo-American scholars have argued that many African writers have resisted the paradigms that inform much of global ecocriticism and have responded to it weakly. They contend that African literary feminist studies have not attracted much mainstream attention yet mainly to raise some issues concerning ecologically oriented literary criticism and writing. Given this unjust criticism, the study posits that there has been a growing interest in ecocriticism and ecofeminism in literary works by African writers, male and female, and they have represented the social, political (colonial and anti-colonial) and economic discourse in their works. The works critiqued are Tsitsi Dangarembga’s Nervous Conditions (1988) and The Book of Not (2006), Neshani Andreas’ The Purple Violet of Oshaantu (2001) and No Violet Bulawayo’s We Need New Names (2013). The thrust of this thesis is to draw interconnections between man’s domination of nature and the subjugation and dominance of black women as depicted in different creative works. The texts in this study reveal that the existing Anglo-American framework used by some scholars to define ecocriticism and ecofeminism should open up and develop debates and positions that would allow different ways of reading African literature. The study underscored the possibility of black female creative works to transform the definition of nature writing to allow an expansion and all encompassing interpretation of nature writing. Contrary to the claims by Western scholars that African literature draws its vision of nature writing from the one produced by colonial discourse, this thesis argues that African writers and scholars have always engaged nature and the environment in multiple discourses. This study breaks new ground by showing that the feminist aspects of ecrocriticism are essential to cover the hermeneutic gap created by their exclusion. On closer scrutiny, the study reveals that African women writers have also addressed and highlighted issues that show the link between African women’s roles and their environment. / English Studies / D. Litt. et Phil. (English)