Thesis (M. A.(English Studies)) --University of Limpopo, 2016 / The primary aim of this study is to examine the oppression and repression of African women through the collusion of indigenous African patriarchy and colonial, imperialist values. The selected novels are Nervous Conditions (1988) and God’s Bits of Wood (1960) by Tsitsi Dangarembga and Sembene Ousmane, respectively. The study focuses on the roles played by both African and European values in the class, gender and racial oppression of African women. Using the theoretical frameworks of Marxism and Feminism, the study evaluates issues of women’s oppression, repression and marginalisation. The selected literary texts are closely analysed with a view to exploring and establishing the nature and form of African women’s multiple oppressions through the connivance between African patriarchy and European colonial hegemonic norms. Lastly, the study aims to contribute to the existing body of knowledge on the topical issue of African women’s oppression. Keywords: Colonial values; African patriarchy; Hegemonic norms; Oppression; Oppression; Marginalisation; Collaboration; Women and the girl child

The dissertation presents and explores a mode of literary studies, which bypasses the question of literary value, and instead aims to assess how and where creative writing challenges hegemonic norms (that is, its political value). In so doing, it reflects on the practice of literary studies per se, and the mechanism(s) by which discourse can impact on subjecthood. The exploration entails the application of certain theoretical tools (concepts) in a reading of a literary work. The primary concepts employed are: performativity, subjectivity and gender. The dissertation seeks to read Muriel at Metropolitan (Tlali 1994) as a performative act, that is, a discursive event which re-enacts the practice of fictional writing and thereby extends (and possibly changes} the convention of crealive writing. If it is true that creative writing is performative, that it partake in the making of the individual, then it is important to study such writing in order to discover the consequences for the subject / English Studies / M.A. (English)

The dissertation presents and explores a mode of literary studies, which bypasses the question of literary value, and instead aims to assess how and where creative writing challenges hegemonic norms (that is, its political value). In so doing, it reflects on the practice of literary studies per se, and the mechanism(s) by which discourse can impact on subjecthood. The exploration entails the application of certain theoretical tools (concepts) in a reading of a literary work. The primary concepts employed are: performativity, subjectivity and gender. The dissertation seeks to read Muriel at Metropolitan (Tlali 1994) as a performative act, that is, a discursive event which re-enacts the practice of fictional writing and thereby extends (and possibly changes} the convention of crealive writing. If it is true that creative writing is performative, that it partake in the making of the individual, then it is important to study such writing in order to discover the consequences for the subject / English Studies / M.A. (English)