By examining the allegorical ways which bodies are produced and their movement controlled within J.M. Coetzee’s works, Waiting for the Barbarians and Disgrace, this thesis follows the shifting paradigm of power from apartheid’s presumption of unity of the state to the rainbow nation’s constitutional declaration that its citizens are “unified in [their] diversity” and equal under the law. In my chapter on Waiting for the Barbarians, I argue that the state creates a fiction of unity which allows the state to invoke claims of emergency and suspend the law; within this suspension, an economy of sacrifice functions to cleanse the state of its misdeeds in the eyes of its citizens. In my second chapter, I argue that Disgrace’s character’s dramatize how legal equality and rituals of reconciliation fail to create unity and instead inscribes the characters into a secular economy of sacrifice and cycles of violent enmity.

Thesis advisor: Andrew L. Prevot / Anti-Black racism and white supremacy are critical and interrelated contemporary crises. Achille Mbembe theorizes the confluence of these crises in the concepts of necropolitics and Black reason. But Mbembe does not elaborate the historical relationship between anti-Black necropolitics and Christian thought. I address this aporia in my dissertation while also formulating a theological response through an integrated reading of James Cone and Johann Baptist Metz. In Chapter One, I adopt Mbembe’s framework to contend that the uncritical coöptation of Black reason by white Christianity has resulted in a necropolitical theology, which I demonstrate through an evaluation of three theological loci: anthropology, Christology, and eschatology. Turning to constructive possibilities, chapter two introduces Cone and Metz, whose theologies I read against necropolitical theology. Chapter Two argues that Cone’s revaluation of Blackness as God’s intent for humanity meets Metz’s call for an anthropological revolution of white Christians at the point of conversion: a decision to die to whiteness and become Black with God. Chapter Three emphasizes revelation in Cone’s Christology as an objective Black event; the subjective, ecstatic encounter with the crucified and resurrected Christ; and the necessity of the Cross for theological imagination. Metz’s Holy Saturday Christology, specifically, his paradigmatic memoria passionis, grounded in the descensus ad infernos, complements Cone’s notion of concrete and transformative encounter with Jesus as it emphasizes solidarity with the oppressed. Chapter Four addresses the deformation of Christian hope by necropolitical theology. I integrate Cone’s analysis of Black hope in existential, material, and apocalyptic interpretations of eschatology with Metz’s eschatological proviso which, above all, suggests that one must see the future from the memory of the suffering and the dead. In the United States, I argue that this means white Christians are called to relational praxis in solidarity with oppressed Black communities. In Chapter Five, the conclusion, I look to the pericope on discipleship in Mark 8 in tandem with the theological interventions from Cone and Metz to provide an assessment of what it might mean for white Christians to become Black with God. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2022. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Theology.

<p>This study is concerned with subject formation in the fiction of contemporary postcolonial authors Abdulrazak Gurnah, Yvonne Vera, and David Dabydeen. In contextualised readings of a total of nine works – Gurnah’s Admiring Silence (1996), By the Sea (2001), and Desertion (2005); Vera’s Without a Name (1996), Butterfly Burning (1998), and The Stone Virgins (2002); Dabydeen’s Disappearance (1993), Turner (1994), and A Harlot’s Progress (1999) – it explores thematic and formal aspects of the subject’s constitution in the texts. Investigating the representation of material and discursive traces that constitute the individual, this study has a double aim. First, it describes the particular historical formations that mould the individual in the different texts. Second, it investigates the tactics used to imaginatively upset these formations in order to present new and more enabling modes of being.</p><p>Gurnah’s fiction depicts the intricate meshwork of social codes, emotions, and narratives that shape subjectivity in a highly unstable and cosmopolitan social reality. His novels repeatedly thematise cultural disorientation, migration, and the efforts of establishing a minimum of social and narrative stability in the form of a home. The chapter reads Gurnah’s fiction against a background of Zanzibari history and diaspora and suggests that various forms of “entanglements” paradoxically provide the means to pull the subject out of states of anxiety and alienation into more viable states of being. Vera’s novels engage a powerful Zimbabwean discourse on history, and the psychic and bodily wounds that result from its violent impact on the subject. Set at moments of special and contested historical importance, her novels address the exclusions and silences of this discourse in order both to assess its effects and the possibilities of imagining alternative versions that would allow other modes of subjectivity. These possibilities are manifested, thematically and textually, through an improvisational form of “movement,” geographical, linguistic, and musical. Dabydeen’s fiction investigates the textual dimensions of identity and its connections to larger cultural archives of tropes and languages. Focusing on the constraining yet constitutive impact of various modes of colonial and racial rhetoric, his literary texts display a manipulation of textual elements from these archives that approaches a re-conception of the subject. To describe this manipulation of English and Caribbean sources, thematised and dramatically staged in his fiction, I am using Dabydeen’s own phrase, “creative amnesia.”</p>

This research transfigures in the field of “ postcolony ” (Achille Mbembe, 2001) ; an imperial situation that occurs in countries that were once destroyed by the ancient colonization and that keep its traces and bear its heritage. The novels of our study are as follows : Balbala (2002) by Abdourahman A. Waberi, Le bourreau (2004) by Séverin Cécile Abega, La grande mêlée (2011) by Michel Tremblay and Mãn (2013) by Kim Thúy. Indeed, we compare and would like to know why and how Africa, Canada and Vietnam may have a postcolony haloed by neo-colonialism. In addressing this issue, all the novels of our study converge to say that Colonizers succeeded to turn the suns of independence and decolonization into murderous suns, the vicious peppers into harmless flowers so as not to oppose the direction of the colonial fibres and transfer colonization to postcolony. Therefore, the fight remains perpetual between the postcolonial darkness and the anti-postcolonial light / Cette recherche transparaît dans « la postcolonie » (Achille Mbembe, 2001) ; une situation d’ordre impérial qui se vit dans les pays ravagés par l’ancienne colonisation, et qui gardent son héritage et portent ses traces. Voici les romans de notre étude : Balbala (2002) d’Abdourahman A. Waberi, Le bourreau (2004) de Séverin Cécile Abega, La grande mêlée (2011) de Michel Tremblay et Mãn (2013) de Kim Thúy. En effet, nous comparons et voulons savoir pourquoi et comment l’Afrique, le Canada et le Vietnam enfilent la postcolonie auréolée par le néo-colonialisme. Abordant cette problématique, tous les romans à l’étude convergent pour dire que les colonisateurs ont réussi à réifier les soleils des indépendances et de décolonisation en soleils assassins, les piments vicieux en fleurs inoffensives afin de ne pas contredire le sens des fibres coloniales et transférer la colonisation à la postcolonie. Dès lors, le combat reste donc perpétuel entre l’ombre postcoloniale et la lumière anti-postcoloniale / French Studies / M.A. (French)

This study is concerned with subject formation in the fiction of contemporary postcolonial authors Abdulrazak Gurnah, Yvonne Vera, and David Dabydeen. In contextualised readings of a total of nine works – Gurnah’s Admiring Silence (1996), By the Sea (2001), and Desertion (2005); Vera’s Without a Name (1996), Butterfly Burning (1998), and The Stone Virgins (2002); Dabydeen’s Disappearance (1993), Turner (1994), and A Harlot’s Progress (1999) – it explores thematic and formal aspects of the subject’s constitution in the texts. Investigating the representation of material and discursive traces that constitute the individual, this study has a double aim. First, it describes the particular historical formations that mould the individual in the different texts. Second, it investigates the tactics used to imaginatively upset these formations in order to present new and more enabling modes of being. Gurnah’s fiction depicts the intricate meshwork of social codes, emotions, and narratives that shape subjectivity in a highly unstable and cosmopolitan social reality. His novels repeatedly thematise cultural disorientation, migration, and the efforts of establishing a minimum of social and narrative stability in the form of a home. The chapter reads Gurnah’s fiction against a background of Zanzibari history and diaspora and suggests that various forms of “entanglements” paradoxically provide the means to pull the subject out of states of anxiety and alienation into more viable states of being. Vera’s novels engage a powerful Zimbabwean discourse on history, and the psychic and bodily wounds that result from its violent impact on the subject. Set at moments of special and contested historical importance, her novels address the exclusions and silences of this discourse in order both to assess its effects and the possibilities of imagining alternative versions that would allow other modes of subjectivity. These possibilities are manifested, thematically and textually, through an improvisational form of “movement,” geographical, linguistic, and musical. Dabydeen’s fiction investigates the textual dimensions of identity and its connections to larger cultural archives of tropes and languages. Focusing on the constraining yet constitutive impact of various modes of colonial and racial rhetoric, his literary texts display a manipulation of textual elements from these archives that approaches a re-conception of the subject. To describe this manipulation of English and Caribbean sources, thematised and dramatically staged in his fiction, I am using Dabydeen’s own phrase, “creative amnesia.”

Este trabalho propõe uma análise das ideias de três autores africanos: Mia Couto, Kwame Anthony Appiah e Achille Mbembe, utilizando suas obras ensaísticas para refletir sobre o pensamento africano e suas formas híbridas. Defino os conceitos de Cosmopolitismo, de Afropolitanismo e os Pensatempos – que trazem as perspecitvas do autor moçambicano Mia Couto. Como metodologia, comparo os discursos destes autores para analisar os aspectos comuns. Como base teórica utilizo autores que debatem os processos de globalização e de mundialização. Ao refletir sobre o cosmopolitismo e sobre as perspectivas híbridas que se fortalecem, faz-se necessário repensar o valor que a cultura exerce dentro de territórios que, mesmo definidos geograficamente, encontram-se em profunda transformação, como é o caso do continente africano. A independência dos países deste continente ainda é bastante recente, a cultura ocidental do colonizador predomina como um paradigma, fazendo com que a cultura local perca espaço e valor. Para desenvolver esta análise, dá-se um panorama, com o intuito de contextualizar a discussão, das teorias e movimentos que influenciaram esse pensamento, trazendo as teorias afrocêntricas, as perspectivas de Frantz Fanon, e a crítica a respeito do afrocentrismo. Trago as teorias centrais a este trabalho que se compõem do Afropolitanismo – de Achille Mbembe, do Cosmopolitismo – de Kwame Anthony Appiah, e os Pensatempos de Mia Couto. Proponho um diálogo destes sobre as perspectivas híbridas que perpassam o pensamento africano. E, por fim, proponho uma análise comparativa dos aspectos considerados relevantes, pelos autores, na busca por um protagonismo efetivo no continente africano. / Este trabajo propone un análisis de tres autores e ideas africanos: Mia Couto, Kwame Anthony Appiah y Achille Mbembe, usando sus obras ensayísticas para reflexionar sobre el pensamiento africano y sus formas híbridas. Defino los conceptos de cosmopolitismo, de Afropolitanismo y Pensatempos - que traen perspecitvas del autor mozambiqueño Mia Couto. La metodología de comparar los discursos de estos autores para analizar los puntos en común. Como autores básicos teóricos utilizan debatir los procesos de globalización y la globalización. Reflexionando sobre el cosmopolitismo y sobre las perspectivas híbridos que se fortalecen, es necesario repensar el valor de la cultura en los territorios que aún definidos geográficamente, están en profunda transformación, como el continente africano. La independencia de los países de este continente es todavía bastante nuevo, la cultura occidental del colonizador prevalece como un paradigma, por lo que el espacio de la cultura local y pierda valor. Para desarrollar este análisis, da un panorama, con el fin de contextualizar la discusión de las teorías y movimientos que influyeron en el pensamiento, con lo que las teorías afrocéntricos, las perspectivas de Frantz Fanon, y la crítica sobre afrocentrismo. Traiga las teorías centrales en este trabajo están compuestos por Afropolitanismo - Achille Mbembe de, el cosmopolitismo - Kwame Anthony Appiah de, y Pensatempos Mia Couto. Propongo un diálogo sobre estas perspectivas híbridos que impregnan el pensamiento africano. Finalmente, propongo un análisis comparativo de los aspectos considerados relevantes por los autores en la búsqueda de un papel eficaz en el continente africano.

Este trabalho propõe uma análise das ideias de três autores africanos: Mia Couto, Kwame Anthony Appiah e Achille Mbembe, utilizando suas obras ensaísticas para refletir sobre o pensamento africano e suas formas híbridas. Defino os conceitos de Cosmopolitismo, de Afropolitanismo e os Pensatempos – que trazem as perspecitvas do autor moçambicano Mia Couto. Como metodologia, comparo os discursos destes autores para analisar os aspectos comuns. Como base teórica utilizo autores que debatem os processos de globalização e de mundialização. Ao refletir sobre o cosmopolitismo e sobre as perspectivas híbridas que se fortalecem, faz-se necessário repensar o valor que a cultura exerce dentro de territórios que, mesmo definidos geograficamente, encontram-se em profunda transformação, como é o caso do continente africano. A independência dos países deste continente ainda é bastante recente, a cultura ocidental do colonizador predomina como um paradigma, fazendo com que a cultura local perca espaço e valor. Para desenvolver esta análise, dá-se um panorama, com o intuito de contextualizar a discussão, das teorias e movimentos que influenciaram esse pensamento, trazendo as teorias afrocêntricas, as perspectivas de Frantz Fanon, e a crítica a respeito do afrocentrismo. Trago as teorias centrais a este trabalho que se compõem do Afropolitanismo – de Achille Mbembe, do Cosmopolitismo – de Kwame Anthony Appiah, e os Pensatempos de Mia Couto. Proponho um diálogo destes sobre as perspectivas híbridas que perpassam o pensamento africano. E, por fim, proponho uma análise comparativa dos aspectos considerados relevantes, pelos autores, na busca por um protagonismo efetivo no continente africano. / Este trabajo propone un análisis de tres autores e ideas africanos: Mia Couto, Kwame Anthony Appiah y Achille Mbembe, usando sus obras ensayísticas para reflexionar sobre el pensamiento africano y sus formas híbridas. Defino los conceptos de cosmopolitismo, de Afropolitanismo y Pensatempos - que traen perspecitvas del autor mozambiqueño Mia Couto. La metodología de comparar los discursos de estos autores para analizar los puntos en común. Como autores básicos teóricos utilizan debatir los procesos de globalización y la globalización. Reflexionando sobre el cosmopolitismo y sobre las perspectivas híbridos que se fortalecen, es necesario repensar el valor de la cultura en los territorios que aún definidos geográficamente, están en profunda transformación, como el continente africano. La independencia de los países de este continente es todavía bastante nuevo, la cultura occidental del colonizador prevalece como un paradigma, por lo que el espacio de la cultura local y pierda valor. Para desarrollar este análisis, da un panorama, con el fin de contextualizar la discusión de las teorías y movimientos que influyeron en el pensamiento, con lo que las teorías afrocéntricos, las perspectivas de Frantz Fanon, y la crítica sobre afrocentrismo. Traiga las teorías centrales en este trabajo están compuestos por Afropolitanismo - Achille Mbembe de, el cosmopolitismo - Kwame Anthony Appiah de, y Pensatempos Mia Couto. Propongo un diálogo sobre estas perspectivas híbridos que impregnan el pensamiento africano. Finalmente, propongo un análisis comparativo de los aspectos considerados relevantes por los autores en la búsqueda de un papel eficaz en el continente africano.

Este trabalho propõe uma análise das ideias de três autores africanos: Mia Couto, Kwame Anthony Appiah e Achille Mbembe, utilizando suas obras ensaísticas para refletir sobre o pensamento africano e suas formas híbridas. Defino os conceitos de Cosmopolitismo, de Afropolitanismo e os Pensatempos – que trazem as perspecitvas do autor moçambicano Mia Couto. Como metodologia, comparo os discursos destes autores para analisar os aspectos comuns. Como base teórica utilizo autores que debatem os processos de globalização e de mundialização. Ao refletir sobre o cosmopolitismo e sobre as perspectivas híbridas que se fortalecem, faz-se necessário repensar o valor que a cultura exerce dentro de territórios que, mesmo definidos geograficamente, encontram-se em profunda transformação, como é o caso do continente africano. A independência dos países deste continente ainda é bastante recente, a cultura ocidental do colonizador predomina como um paradigma, fazendo com que a cultura local perca espaço e valor. Para desenvolver esta análise, dá-se um panorama, com o intuito de contextualizar a discussão, das teorias e movimentos que influenciaram esse pensamento, trazendo as teorias afrocêntricas, as perspectivas de Frantz Fanon, e a crítica a respeito do afrocentrismo. Trago as teorias centrais a este trabalho que se compõem do Afropolitanismo – de Achille Mbembe, do Cosmopolitismo – de Kwame Anthony Appiah, e os Pensatempos de Mia Couto. Proponho um diálogo destes sobre as perspectivas híbridas que perpassam o pensamento africano. E, por fim, proponho uma análise comparativa dos aspectos considerados relevantes, pelos autores, na busca por um protagonismo efetivo no continente africano. / Este trabajo propone un análisis de tres autores e ideas africanos: Mia Couto, Kwame Anthony Appiah y Achille Mbembe, usando sus obras ensayísticas para reflexionar sobre el pensamiento africano y sus formas híbridas. Defino los conceptos de cosmopolitismo, de Afropolitanismo y Pensatempos - que traen perspecitvas del autor mozambiqueño Mia Couto. La metodología de comparar los discursos de estos autores para analizar los puntos en común. Como autores básicos teóricos utilizan debatir los procesos de globalización y la globalización. Reflexionando sobre el cosmopolitismo y sobre las perspectivas híbridos que se fortalecen, es necesario repensar el valor de la cultura en los territorios que aún definidos geográficamente, están en profunda transformación, como el continente africano. La independencia de los países de este continente es todavía bastante nuevo, la cultura occidental del colonizador prevalece como un paradigma, por lo que el espacio de la cultura local y pierda valor. Para desarrollar este análisis, da un panorama, con el fin de contextualizar la discusión de las teorías y movimientos que influyeron en el pensamiento, con lo que las teorías afrocéntricos, las perspectivas de Frantz Fanon, y la crítica sobre afrocentrismo. Traiga las teorías centrales en este trabajo están compuestos por Afropolitanismo - Achille Mbembe de, el cosmopolitismo - Kwame Anthony Appiah de, y Pensatempos Mia Couto. Propongo un diálogo sobre estas perspectivas híbridos que impregnan el pensamiento africano. Finalmente, propongo un análisis comparativo de los aspectos considerados relevantes por los autores en la búsqueda de un papel eficaz en el continente africano.

Farmer suicide is at crisis levels in the United States and India. This crisis is both a problem of experiential knowledge within infrastructure as well as a problem of discourse power. I argue that the logical abstraction required to conceptualize and evaluate farmer suicide cannot be separated from the overall experience of farmer suicide. Rather than existing as distinctly separate phenomena, these elements are co-constitutive. Despite the Centers' for Disease Control identification and designation of farmer suicide as complex, statistically relevant, and elevated, nearly all the policy efforts addressing farmer suicide focus on narrow economic impact and narrow economic relief. While these economic vectors are important, the problem is multifaceted and requires a broadening of policy discourse to include additional factors (e.g. philosophical, existential, psychological, etc.). Using Hannah Arendt's work on politics and the human condition, I connect the conditionality of homo faber (human fabricator/maker), animal laborans (laboring animal), and vita activa (active life) with farmer struggle and suicide. Through the work of Georges Canguilhem and Achille Mbembe, I critique and analyze the predominant discourse and framing of suicide as a disease. Last, but not least, I propose decolonial theory and degrowth theory as viable critical pathways to shift the scale of farming infrastructure towards a more equitable and just future.

This thesis examines the political thought of Achille Mbembe. It deploys decolonial critical analysis to unmask traces of coloniality with regard to the African existential conditions foregrounded in the conception of the African subject, its subjection, and subjectivity. The theoretical foundation of this thesis is decolonial epistemic perspective—the epistemic intervention that serves as a lens to understand Mbembe’s work and—that is the theoretical foundation outside the Euro-North American “mainstream” canon foregrounded in coloniality. Decolonial epistemic perspective in this thesis is deployed to expose three kinds of coloniality in Mbembe’s work, namely: coloniality of power, coloniality of knowledge and coloniality of being. The thrust of this thesis is that Mbembe’s political thought is inadequate for the understanding of the African existential condition in that it does not fully take coloniality into account. In order to acknowledge the existence of coloniality through decolonial critical analysis, the political thought of Mbembe is examined in relation to modes of self-writing, power in the postcolony, the politics of violence in Africa, Frantz Fanon’s political thought, and the idea of South Africa as major themes undertaken in this thesis. Decolonial critical analysis deals with foundational questions that have relevance to the existential condition of the African subject and the manner in which such an existential crisis can be brought to an end. These foundational questions confront issues like—who is speaking or writing, from where, for whom and why? This thesis reveals that Mbembe is writing and thinking Africa from outside the problematic ontology of the African subject and, as such, Mbembe precludes any form of African subjectivity that challenges the Euro-North American canon. This then reveals that Mbembe is not critical of coloniality and this has the implications in that subjection is left on the wayside and not accounted for. Having explored the genealogy, trajectory and horisons of decolonial critical analysis to understand the political thought of Mbembe, this thesis highlights that it is essential to take a detour through the shifting of the geography of reason. Herein lies the originality of this thesis, and it is here that Africa is thought from within a standpoint of decolonial critical analysis and not Africa that is thought from the Euro-North American canon. Therefore, the shifting of the geography of reason is necessary for the authorisation of the subjectivity of the African subject in order to combat subjection. / Political Sciences / D. Litt. et Phil. (African Politics)