Thesis (M.A.)--Northern Michigan University, 2009. / Bibliography: leaves 72-78.

M.Phil. / This study is undertaken against the backdrop of the "narrativistic turn" in the human sciences. While narratives were traditionally regarded as the terrain of literary studies, it has increasingly become a focus in various disciplines since the 1970s. The usefulness of the concept "narrative identity" is investigated as a means to deal with the problematization of the subject (and personal identity) in postmodern thought. The influence of 20th Century language theory and constructionism on the problematization of the subject is also discussed. It is argued that the self (and personal identity) can not be regarded as a pre-existing subject that simply finds expression in narratives (as sometimes happens in narrative therapy). Such a view would presuppose a pre-linguistic cogito. The self (and personal identity) is not readily available for examination by the self. From a hermeneutical point of view, the self is always an interpretation. Paul Ricoeur's discussion of "narrative identity" is used tot discuss the processes of identity construction in self-narratives. The way in which a "narrative identity" is constructed in a self-narrative is examined with reference to Karel Schoeman's autobiography (Die laaste Afrikaanse boek – literally "The Last Afrikaans Book"). An autobiography is a representation of a life in which a subject is self-consciously constructing an identity. This specific autobiography makes explicit, self-conscious use of literary devices and refers to literary texts which makes it possible to examine the influence of fiction on self-narratives. In the process of this study it is demonstrated that insights provided by literary studies could contribute to narrative psychology and in this sense it is demonstrated that the strict boundaries that often exist between disciplines could be dissolved. Various ways by which the study of literature could contribute to the expansion of the hermeneutical basis on which individuals base their self-narratives, and the spin-offs for narrative therapy, is the most important result of the study. Some gains of narratology (within literary analysis) for narrative therapy are also examined.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Wyoming, 2008. / Title from PDF title page (viewed on Mar. 9, 2010). Includes bibliographical references (p. 50).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Oregon, 2003. / Typescript. Includes vita and abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 198-215). Also available for download via the World Wide Web; free to University of Oregon users.

One of the most salient characteristics of Cervantes's literary production is his fascination, one might even say his obsession, with the human capacity for transformation. Nearly all of his plays, novellas, and novels feature characters that adopt alternative identities and disguise or dissimulate their true, original selves. The Novelas ejemplares (1613) encompass a veritable cornucopia of characters that pass themselves off as another. There are women who pass as men, Christians as Turks, Catholics as Protestants, and noblemen as gypsies, among many others. Identity, or at least its appearance, is represented as fluid and malleable. By creatively controlling the signs that they project in public, the characters of the novellas demonstrate a remarkable ability to adapt to innumerable contingencies. Similarly, subjects of the Spanish empire, driven particularly by ethno-religious and socio-economic motives, utilized craft and guile to conceal their identity or simulate another. On a theoretical level, both in Spain and throughout Europe, intellectuals explored the human capacity for transformation, and there emerged a new sense of interiority. As Stephen Greenblatt observes, in the Renaissance, "there appears to be an increased self-consciousness about the fashioning of human identity as a manipulable, artful process" (2). In this study I examine the abundance of deceit and disguise in Cervantes's collection of twelve novellas within the work's sociohistorical context. Specifically, I analyze how the novellas are embedded in two particular threads of cultural discourse on human identity: Spanish social history and early modern European intellectual history. / text

My text formulates a theory of postmodern invisibility while examining the condition of cultural invisibility. As I track strategies of position and space in contemporary American literature and music, I propose a tactic for attaining cultural visibility that draws from Jean Baudrillard's notion of the-more-visible-than-the-visible, postmodern aesthetics and the cultural metaphor of the optics of the vision system.In our technoculture, Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man and his narrator's choice of an invisible identity, though wonderfully evocative, is no longer a viable solution to the dilemma of cultural invisibility. Later contemporary American fiction, especially Don DeLillo's White Noise, offers a strategy that oscillates between invisibility and visibility and is ineffective in curing cultural invisibility. My project centers on Leslie Marmon Silko's Ceremony and her representation of a storytelling ceremony that can cure the problem of cultural invisibility. Silko proposes a narrative mode capable of representing and accomplishing cultural work by reversing the flow of culture. Nathaniel Mackey's jazz-inspired fiction, Dibot Baghostus's Run (1993), expands Silko's magical blueprint by employing a culturally dense, hyper-visible narrative mode.Like Silko and Mackey, cultural theorist Trinh Minh-ha, anthropologist Michael Taussig, and sociologist Stephen Pfohl employ the more-visible-than-the-visible composition strategy of collage. Their writings, as well as the aesthetic of hiphop, serve as a model for my text because in collage, there is room for disorientation, noise, local elements, plurality, recomposition, hyper-visibility, and the sampling of crosscultural artifacts and debris. Experiencing a montage can shock sensory perceptions into novel paradigms of representation and, as Silko and Mackey hope, bring about a meaningful cultural visibility.For Minh-ha, Silko, and Mackey, stories and other cultural artifacts circulate freely like gifts. The pleasure is in transmitting, circulating, and retransmitting the story: the pleasure of making the story more-than-visible. Then the story functions, as Minh-ha states, "as a cure and a protection [that] is at once musical, historical, poetical, ethical, educational, magical." While my text strives to represent several of these elements, my theory of postmodern invisibility reflects and transmits a narrative mode that is capable of curing the problem of cultural invisibility. / Department of English

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Oregon, 2004. / Typescript. Includes vita and abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 265-272). Also available for download via the World Wide Web; free to University of Oregon users.

Many of Toni Morrison's African-American characters attempt to change their circumstances either by embracing the white dominant culture that surrounds them or by denying it. In this thesis I explore several ways in which the characters do just that-either embrace or deny the white culture's right to dominion over them. This thesis deals primarily with five of Toni Morrison's novels: The Bluest Eye, Beloved, Paradise, Sula, and Tar Baby.

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)

Thesis (PhD)--Stellenbosch University, 2000. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This thesis contains the results of an investigation into constructions of cultural identity in recent works of short fiction written in Afrikaans. The investigation was conducted within the framework of postcolonial literary theory, with specific reference to the work ofHomi Bhabha, Stuart Hall, Gayatri Spivak, Vijay Mishra and Bob Hodge. The conceptual apparatus concerning postcolonial reconstruction of cultural identities in reaction to the discourse of colonialism were applied to certain Afrikaans short stories to establish to what extent these texts could be considered a '<writing back" to the colonial discourse of Afrikaner nationalism and apartheid. The research focused on texts that had been published after 1994, being the date of the first democratic elections in South Africa, but also investigated their relation to certain literary traditions that preceded this date. From the Afrikaans short stories that were read within a postcolonial framework, it could be concluded that Afrikaans literature after 1994 could still be read in terms of what Mishra and Hodge (1994) called a fused postcolonial, a typification that according to Viljoen (1996) was applicable to the Afrikaans literature of before 1994. The cultural identity that was constructed in these texts showed similarities with the two moments of cultural reconstruction that Hall (1992) mentioned, namely either a strategic essentialism of the colonized subject or a hybridized cultural identity as the result of an ongoing, dynamic process of negotiation in a Third Space as Bhabha (1994) pointed out. A discourse of resistance against new forms of cultural imperialism, arising from a broader disillusion with the perceived dystopia of post-colonial South Africa, could also be inferred from certain Afrikaans short stories that have appeared since 1994. As far as a renewed undermining of imperialising tendencies is concerned, these texts can therefore be considered a continuation of the dissidence that has been characteristic of Afrikaans literature for several decades. / AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Hierdie proefskrif bevat die resultate van 'n ondersoek na konstruksies van kulturele identiteit in onlangse kortverhale in Afrikaans. Die ondersoek is gedoen binne die raamwerk van die postkoloniale literêre teorie, met spesifieke verwysing na die werk van Homi Bhabha, Stuart Hall, Gayatri Spivak, Vijay Mishra en Bob Hodge. Konseptuele apparatuur rakende postkoloniale herkonstruksie van kulturele identiteit in reaksie op diskoerse van kolonialisme, is toegepas op bepaalde Afrikaanse kortverhale om vas te stel in watter mate hierdie tekste beskou kon word as 'n terugskrywing teen die koloniale diskoers van Afrikanernasionalisme en apartheid. Die navorsing het gefokus op tekste wat gepubliseer is na 1994, die datum van die eerste demokratiese verkiesings in Suid- Afrika, maar het ook hul verhouding ondersoek tot sekere literêre tradisies wat hierdie datum voorafgegaan het. Uit die Afrikaanse kortverhale wat gelees is binne 'n postkoloniale raamwerk, is daar tot die gevolgtrekking gekom dat die Afrikaanse letterkunde na 1994 steeds gelees kan word in terme van wat Mishra en Hodge (1994) 'n "saamgestelde postkolonialisme" genoem het, 'n tipering wat volgens Viljoen (1996) toepasbaar was op die Afrikaanse letterkunde van voor 1994. Die kulturele identiteit wat gekonstrueer is in hierdie tekste toon ooreenkomste met die twee momente van kulturele herkonstruksie waarna Hall (1992) verwys, naamlik enersyds 'n strategiese essensialisme van die gekoloniseerde subjek en andersyds 'n gehibridiseerde kulturele identiteit as die gevolg van 'n voortgaande, dinamiese proses van onderhandeling in wat Bhabha (1994) 'n Derde Ruimte genoem het. 'n Diskoers van weerstand teen wat ervaar word as nuwe vorme van kulturele imperialisme, voortspruitend uit 'n breër ontnugtering met wat beskou word as 'n distopiese post-koloniale Suid-Afrika, kon ook afgelei word uit sekere Afrikaanse kortverhale wat sedert 1994 verskyn het. Wat betref 'n hernieude ondermyning van imperialiserende tendense kan hierdie tekste daarom gesien word as 'n voortsetting van die tradisie van weerstand wat die Afrikaanse literatuur dekades lank reeds kenmerk.