Bessie Head's fiction reflects the author's consciousness of power as the definitive force in the South African context. By considering Head as a social realist, the thesis relates sociological evidence to authorial interest and demonstrates Head's treatment of the power issue in her three novels, When Rain Clouds Gather, Maru, and A Question of Power. Biographical data, particularly Head's unique, though socially marginal position as a political exile, a Coloured, and a woman are also applied. The thesis covers three areas--politics, race, and gender. The first explores the nature of power in South African politics within the time-frame of the present, past, and future. The second which focuses on the institution of apartheid examines racial relations between the blacks and whites and also among the blacks, with attention given to the dilemma of the Coloured. The third section discusses sexual politics, looking at male-female relationships in both traditional and contemporary societies.

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Thesis (M.A.)--University of South Africa, 2001.

My concern in this thesis is to assess if one can justifiably say that there is a unique black South African feminist perspective. I have chosen to focus on the feminist perspectives of two renowned black female African writers: Bessie Head (1937-1988) and Ellen Kuzwayo (1914-). I have several reasons for selecting these two writers for my investigation. Head and Kuzwayo, though obviously not exact contemporaries chronologically speaking, were contemporaries in the sense that they lived through, and wrote during, the time of apartheid rule in South Africa. Both can be considered as revolutionaries in their own right. Both used the traditional story telling literary device and the autobiographical genre differently but strikingly. They could both be called social feminists because they were both concerned with social justice, equality, racism, personal identity and upliftment of the community. I argue that the works of these writers have shown defmable feminist perspectives that suggest that, indeed, there is a South African Black Women's feminist perspective. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of Durban-Westville, 2003.

This dissertation approaches the work of South African/Botswanan novelist Bessie Head, especially the novel A Question of Power, as positioned within the critical framework of the postcolonial paradigm, the genius of which accommodates both African and African American literature without recourse to racial essentialism. A central problematic of postcolonial literary criticism is the ideological stance postcolonial authors adopt with respect to the ideology of the metropolis, whether on the one hand the stances they adopt are collusive, or on the other oppositional. A key contested concept is that of universality, which has been widely regarded as a witting or unwitting tool of the metropolis, having the effect of denigrating the colonial subject. It is my thesis that Bessie Head, neither entirely collusive nor oppositional, advocates an Africanist universality that paradoxically eliminates the bias implicit in metropolitan universality.

This study probes selected stories from Bessie Head's The Collector of Treasures (1977) in order to elicit instances of contiguity and disjuncture between orality and literacy, to establish Head's complex identity configurations which are often manifested in the interactions between aesthetic form and content, authorial consciousness, character delineation, and narrative voice. At the same time, the dissertation explores her portrayal of the proscribed condition of women, the subversive consciousness that undercuts women's subjugation by patriarchy, and her vision for the liberatory possibilities for women from the exigencies of patriarchal domination. I also examine Head's (re-)vision of culture within the framework of hybridity and creolity and determine how some of these perspectives are crystallized in discourses such as When Rain Clouds Gather (1968), Maru (1971) and A Question of Power (1973). I juxtapose my reading of Head with other African writers such as Bâ, Emecheta and Nwapa to draw references in instances where the context permits. The dominant critical approach adopted in this thesis is a contextual approach. I consider this approach useful for my purposes because of its flexibility, the attention it pays to the formal properties of literary texts and, its cognizance of the socio-historical genesis of texts and its demonstration of literature's timeless value. / English Studies / M.A. (English)

This study probes selected stories from Bessie Head's The Collector of Treasures (1977) in order to elicit instances of contiguity and disjuncture between orality and literacy, to establish Head's complex identity configurations which are often manifested in the interactions between aesthetic form and content, authorial consciousness, character delineation, and narrative voice. At the same time, the dissertation explores her portrayal of the proscribed condition of women, the subversive consciousness that undercuts women's subjugation by patriarchy, and her vision for the liberatory possibilities for women from the exigencies of patriarchal domination. I also examine Head's (re-)vision of culture within the framework of hybridity and creolity and determine how some of these perspectives are crystallized in discourses such as When Rain Clouds Gather (1968), Maru (1971) and A Question of Power (1973). I juxtapose my reading of Head with other African writers such as Bâ, Emecheta and Nwapa to draw references in instances where the context permits. The dominant critical approach adopted in this thesis is a contextual approach. I consider this approach useful for my purposes because of its flexibility, the attention it pays to the formal properties of literary texts and, its cognizance of the socio-historical genesis of texts and its demonstration of literature's timeless value. / English Studies / M.A. (English)

This mini-thesis is located in historical discursive practices, choreographing history, biography as a source for making dance in South Africa and choreographic transformations in South African choreography since the 1994 democratic elections. Derridian concepts of deconstruction will be referenced in an attempt to focus the argument of this research, which comments on choreographic transformations since 1994, by subverting the influence of the 'violent hierarchies' enforced by the apartheid regime on South African cultural life and choreographic identity. The researcher draws on these considerations in order to explore the hybrid nature of South African choreography that has emerged since 1994. Chapter one examines the fallacious nature of historical discourse through a consideration and application of Derrida's notions of deconstruction and fabrication. Chapter two explores the notion of choreographing history in theatre through a focus on the objective/subjective fallacy and the history of the body as a textual medium. Chapter three focuses the study specifically in biography as a discourse within the idea of theatre. This approach to biography can be encapsulated by the phrase 'telling lives'. This chapter also explores the relationship between the traditional binaries of writing as a purely cerebral act and choreography as a purely visceral experience. Chapter four brings the focus to the specific post-apartheid South African context. This chapter considers the hybrid forms of dance emerging in South Africa as well as the notion of protest in relation to theatre and dance. The final chapter is an investigation and analysis of two choreographic works created by South African choreographers since 1994 in relation to biography and concepts of deconstruction. These works are Gary Gordon's Bessie's Head (2000) and Gregory Maqoma's Miss Thandi (2002). The focus of the analysis also reveals the inherent difficulty in objective interpretation, and considers the problematics of collaboration and autobiography when choreographing within a biographical context.

M.A. (Linguistics) / Please refer to full text to view abstract

This dissertation seeks to explore the perceived intricate relationship that exists between constructed identity, discrimination and violence as portrayed in Bessie Head's trilogy from varying perspectives, including aspects of postcoloniality, materialist feminism and liminality. Starting with a background to some of the origins of racial hybridity in Southern Africa, it looks at how racial identity has subsequently influenced the course of Southern African history and thereafter explores historical and biographical information deemed relevant to an understanding of the dissertation. Critical explorations of each text in the trilogy follow, in which the apparent affinities that exist between identity, discrimination and violence are analysed and displayed. In conclusion the trilogy is discussed from a largely sociological perspective of hope in a utopian society. / English Studies / M.A.(English)