"2002." / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2002. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 207-239). / Electronic reproduction. Hong Kong : Chinese University of Hong Kong, [2012] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Electronic reproduction. Ann Arbor, MI : ProQuest Information and Learning Company, [200-] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Mode of access: World Wide Web. / Abstracts in English and Chinese.

Terror in the African Anglophone novels of Chinua Achebe, Doris Lessing, J.M. Coetzee and Laila Lalami originated as a consequence of a breakdown in the family structure. Traditionally, conventional patriarchy, in addition to securing the psychological and material needs of the family, has served as one of the building blocks of tribes and nations. Since the father figure within narrative is allegorized as a metonym of the state, the absence of patriarchal authority represents the disintegration of the link between individuals and national institutions. Consequently, characters may also turn to committing acts of terror as a rejection of the dominant national ideology. This dissertation aims to demonstrate how the breakdown of the family and the conventional gendering of roles may give rise to terrorist violence in the African setting. To recontextualize the persistence of the Conradian definition of terror as an Anglo-European phenomenon brought to Africa, I contrast the ways in which the breakdown of the family affects both indigenous and Anglo-European households in Africa across generations. I suggest that, under the reinvention of older gender norms, the unfulfilling Anglo-European patriarchy exposes Anglo-European women to indigenous violence. Moreover, I theorize that the absence of patriarchal authority leads indigenous families to seek substitutions in the form of alternative family institutions, such as religious and political organizations, that conflict with the national ideology. Furthermore, against the backdrop of globalized capitalism, commodity fetishism emerges as a substitute to compensate for the absent father figure. Therefore, this project demonstrates the indisputable relationship between the breakdown of the family structure and individual acts of terror that aim at the fulfillment of capitalist fetish or individual desire, and at the expense of national security. Finally, the rhetorical dimension of terror against family and women in Africa will be proven to be the allegorized norm of globalized terror in the twenty-first century.

by Li Tsui-yan. / Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1999. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 100-105). / Abstracts in English and Chinese. / Chapter Chapter One --- The Dilemma of Liberation and Confinement: Female Subjectivity in Comparative Perspectives --- p.1 / Chapter Chapter Two --- Deconstructing Patriarchal Discourse: Female Subjectivity in Doris Lessing's The Golden Notebook and The Summer Before the Dark --- p.18 / Chapter Chapter Three --- "Resistance to the Stereotypes of Femininity: Female Subjectivity in Zhang Jie's “Love Must Not be Forgotten"" and “The Ark´ح" --- p.50 / Chapter Chapter Four --- The Multiple and the Dynamic: Doris Lessing and Zhang Jie's Strategies in the Construction of Female Subjectivity --- p.73 / Notes --- p.86 / Works Cited --- p.99

“In Between Places” is a study in literary geography at the end of empire. It begins from the premise that decolonization itself is a question of place and the relationship of people to places. From this premise, the dissertation explores the narrative techniques that emerge from this moment of historical transformation, in which decolonization was inevitable but not yet fully achieved. The formal elements of decolonial fiction—an emphasis on the individual transformation of place, the incorporation of narrative settings both temporary and fragile—express the ways that spatial relations were central to the political aims of late colonial and early postcolonial writers from across the globe and who express a range of complicated cultural politics. This dissertation begins with an introduction that situates British decolonial fiction in terms of theories of space and place, the transition between modernism and postcolonialism, and current critical debates surrounding forms of anticolonial critique in the twentieth century. In the subsequent four chapters, the dissertation provides case studies of the narrative fiction of Jean Rhys, V. S. Naipaul, George Lamming, and Doris Lessing. Combining formal analysis, archival research, and literary and political history, this dissertation reconstructs the ways that colonial and postcolonial subjects respond to the places they inhabit—at the level of the room, the house, and the city. To tell this story, the chapters move from the abstract space of geopolitics to different sites within urban environments and domestic households. “In Between Places” explains how place functions aesthetically and politically; how Caribbean, African, and English sites were physically marked by colonialism; and how midcentury writers of decolonization used literary setting to resist myths of imperial belonging as well as to uphold them.