Drawing upon Homi. K. Bhabha's essay A Personal Response and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak's Can The Subaltern Speak? I initiated my research project When the Silenced Voices Meet Homi. K. Bhabha's "Megaohone". The focal point of this paper aims at identifying and questioning the limitatpons of Bhabha's theories while highlighting Spivak's insightful perspectives. In conducting this project, the motif of my paper is derived, which is to question male scholars’ gender-blindness under the feminist lens in the field of post-colonial studies. Issues, such as identity, hybridity and representation are under discussion; meanwhile by citing the example of and debate on sati, the gender issue and the special contributions of postcolonial feminism are developed.

Abstract The purpose of this study was to ascertain to what extent English teachers at the upper secondary level in Sweden use postcolonial literature in their teaching and in that case if it is used in order to teach intercultural competence. The reason for this was the claim that there is a strong connection between postcolonial literature and intercultural competence as well as between postcolonial literature and the curriculum for the upper secondary school, and specifically the English courses. The primary material used was gathered through interviews involving teachers working at an upper secondary school in the southern part of Kronobergs Län. Three out of five interviewees did use postcolonial literature and the main reason was that it provides a platform for students to learn about different cultures and societies in areas in the world where English is used. It also turned out that certain authors were used more frequently than others, namely J.M. Coetzee, Chinua Achebe and Doris Lessing. The theoretical basis for this essay has been the notion of intercultural competence, especially linked with language teaching. Developing intercultural competence provides students with the possibility of gaining increased understanding of different cultures, something that seems to be immensely important in a Swedish school system where the classrooms are becoming more and more multicultural. It is argued here that postcolonial literature lends itself particularly well when it comes to the combination of language- and culture didactics and teachers’ responses in the interviews have given reason to believe that this is in fact so.

Battlestar Galactica (2003) is a textually rich cultural product with much to say about the ever-changing global dynamics and social relations of Earthly inhabitants. Through the familiar science fiction tropes of catastrophe, space travel, and cyborgs, this study aims to reveal the discursive frameworks that inform identity politics and knowledge production as they relate to self/Other. Postcolonial theory guides the structure of this study through the influential insights of Homi Bhabha, James Clifford, and Robert J.C. Young. The first chapter investigates the ways in which colonial discourse exercises power and sanctions difference through the stereotype. Chapter two explores the justifications for and ramifications of physical colonization of subjugated peoples, while chapter three reads several characters in BSG as occupying a third space whereby binary notions of subjectivity are problematized in favor of hybridity. Overall, this study argues that through the allegorical interplay between a recognizable self and alien other, viewers can come to better understand the discursive conditions of their existence and, perhaps, locate sites of resistance inside the ideological prison within which we are all prisoners. / text

This dissertation investigates the artistic and linguistic strategies employed by the Kenyan literary magazine Kwani? during a period of intense social and political upheaval. Between the peaceful end of Daniel Arap Moi's dictatorship in 2002 and the violence that followed the contested Presidential elections of 2007, writers for the magazine used a language called sheng&mdasha youth-affiliated urban slang comprised of a complex, rapidly shifting blend of Kiswahili, English, and other local languages&mdashto negotiate between the global hunger for English and their country's complex cultural, political, and linguistic demands. The dissertation builds on a growing body of scholarship in literary criticism, linguistics, and cultural studies to document sheng's emergence as a literary idiom within Kenya, as well as the way it evolved as it traveled beyond the country's borders via inclusion in primarily English-language texts such as Uwem Akpan's short story collection Say You're One of Them.

This thesis traces the forms and contexts of hunger strikes as they are represented in contemporary postcolonial fiction. I look specifically at three postcolonial novels: Kiran Desai’s The Inheritance of Loss (2006), J.M. Coetzee’s Life and Times of Michael K (1983), and Tsitsi Dangarembga’s Nervous Conditions (1988). The final work examined in this piece is a selection of prison writings by Bobby Sands, a non-fictional figure who underwent a hunger strike in 1981 in Long Kesh (otherwise known as the Maze Prison) in Northern Ireland.The historical and regional scope of this investigation is broad. The works presented are framed by very different socio-cultural backgrounds. The common thread that runs throughout the pieces is an engagement with the themes, motifs, and concerns of postcoloniality. The hunger strike is figured as a response to the pressures associated with the fractured form of postcolonial identity. This identity is informed by contemporary and historical engagements with colonial ideology. I utilise historical and sociological material in order to outline and trace an inherited legacy of this colonial ideology – specifically through a frame of hunger and deprivation as associated with imperial domination.The four chapters of this thesis examine one hunger-strike scenario apiece. In each instance, the bodily protest performed takes on a common form. The logic of the hunger strike relies on a division between mind and body. Using the four individuals analysed in this thesis I examine how the form of the hunger strike seeks to separate the realm of representation, which is associated with the mind, from the realm of the material, which is related to the body. The failure of each hunger strike is reflected in the indivisible relationship between representation and the material contexts they construct.Using this basic dichotomy, I consider how each text comments on, reacts to, and contains the categories of representation and the material. Through the lens of this oppositional binary I examine the relationship between historical colonial narratives and the texts and subjects that they produce, and are in turn produced by.

This study engages with select disease narratives of the Anglophone Caribbean through the lens of post/colonial theory, cultural criticism and the social history of medicine. Focusing on the biological image and metaphor of infection, as opposed to its more popular associations with hybridity and creolization in post/colonial theory, I argue that disease discourses facilitate more complex iterations of identity than the less dynamic, more static categories of ‘race’ (black versus white), cultural affiliation (British, Indian, African or West Indian) or political identity (coloniser versus colonised) and propose a theory of infectious entanglements, by which I demonstrate and interrogate complex and transphenomenal representations of West Indian identity across ‘racial’, cultural and political boundaries. Primary texts include eighteenth- and nineteenth-century medical tracts on leprosy and tropical fevers; contemporary medical and cultural texts on HIV/AIDS; and works of fiction by writers such as Harold Sonny Ladoo (Trinidad/Canada), Frieda Cassin (Britain/Antigua) Lawrence Scott (Trinidad/Britain) and Jamaica Kincaid (Antigua/United States). My literary, cultural and historical analyses of biological representations of leprosy, tropical fever and HIV/AIDS suggest that each disease facilitated the construction of multiple cordons sanitaires, whose conceptual boundaries intersected and overlapped in different ways. These points of entanglement, I demonstrate, are useful sites for interrogating post/colonial constructions of identity in light of the relative fluidity of some boundaries (such as changing ideas about who is infectious and who can become infected, as with HIV/AIDS and leprosy) and the hardening lines of others (such as intersecting ideas about tropical fever, pathogenic environments and the emergence of medical cartography). More importantly, such intersections sometimes revealed the entanglement of medicine and other organs of post/colonial authority in past and ongoing othering projects and their legitimising roles in the articulation of essential difference. This dissertation is divided into three parts, each focusing on a particular disease that is iconic in post/colonial narratives about the Caribbean. Part 1 focuses on leprosy, Part 2 on tropical fever and Part 3, framed as a conclusion to this study, focuses on contemporary narratives of HIV/AIDS in the context of earlier narratives of leprosy and tropical fevers. / Thesis (Ph.D, English) -- Queen's University, 2010-11-24 21:35:20.277

Using a postcolonial ethnographic study, this thesis explores the tensions of why Indonesian nurses both desired and rejected western expertise and compliance with international standards for nursing education and practice. The dominant understanding of such ambivalence is that while all nurses accept the need for universal competencies for the contemporary, internationally mobile nurse, non-western nurses are prevented from achieving some of these competencies by virtue of inherent cultural differences from their western nursing counterparts. Drawing on postcolonial theory, this thesis deconstructs such notions of culture and difference as colonial constructions and identifies the hegemonic nature of western nursing. It deconstructs the image of the contemporary, internationally mobile nurse as historically situated and discursively constructed. It unsettles the dominant understanding of what nursing is, what nursing should be, and questions the exclusive conditions of entry into nursing as a globalized profession. / Based on the need to escape dominant understandings, ethnographic techniques of observation, individual and group interviews, documentary analysis, and reflective journaling were used to explore how both local and global influences on nursing impacted on achieving international standards within everyday circumstances. Data were analyzed using key postcolonial themes including orientalism, subalterneity, ambivalence, mimicry and hybridity. Assumptions of difference influenced perceptions and judgments about the quality of Indonesian nursing education and practice. Incongruence existed between what is said and documented about nursing and actual nursing practices in Indonesia. This finding represented both passive and powerful subaltern resistance to western models. Partial resistance to western models of nursing, practice and education helped to open up hybrid spaces in which cultural differences could operate. / Western models of nursing practice and education underpinning the agenda for global consistency of nursing are not universally applicable. Instead, it is a colonial assumption that all nurses should be the same regardless of the context in which they practice. This thesis shows that despite the apparent necessity for western colonization of Indonesian nursing, the acceptance of western models of nursing and transferability of western expertise are determined by the degree to which globally and locally situated definitions of best practice coincide. / The findings suggest that ambivalence arises when being ‘internationally recognized’ means accepting the dominant western hegemony of nursing but rejecting locally situated meanings and practices. I propose that this ambivalence creates a hybrid space to improve Indonesian nursing and challenge the universality of western standards for nursing education and practice. I also propose that ambivalence creates a space for reconceptualizing the role of western experts in non-western settings. In this re-conceptualized role, expertise is not defined by its western foundations. Instead, expertise is defined by an ability to facilitate content knowledge that can be accepted, rejected, or incorporated into hybrid solutions.

My dissertation interrogates Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s representation of African women in her literary oeuvre. I argue that her female characters bear witness to intersecting oppressions of African women portraying them as being extremely marginalized at home and lacking achievable alternate homes. This study also interrogates Adichie’s feminist philosophy and posits that she typically agitates for equality for all regardless of sex, gender, race, and/or other defining identities. Lastly, I argue that Adichie uses the practice of the African novel to rewrite the character of African women in African literature where her uniqueness hinges on her interrogation of the place of Africans in contemporary world culture, in turn, uses the novel to critique society’s hierarchies of privilege and oppression and of stereotypical representation of Africa and Africans in the world arena.

There is a fundamental shift in the way people are living on the planet. Over half of the world's population now lives in cities, yet many of these cities continue to struggle to provide basic services, infrastructure and food security for the billions of people who live in cities. Despite decades of intervention by international and national development agencies, cities in regions such as Sub-Saharan Africa are increasingly framed in apocalyptic and dystopian terms, serving as a warning of the dangers of overurbanization while being criticized for their lack of urban development. This contradictory framing poses the question of how a city and the people who live there actually survive. Building on emerging work in critical urban studies, this research examines how narrow definitions of what counts as urban hinder the understanding of cities in different regional contexts and limit our imaginations of how people survive and thrive in the face of the challenges that cities provide. To examine the idea of what is urban in the context of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, I use the lens of urban open space farms, large lots of land in the built-up environment of the city used for farming, to explore what makes farming urban, how the practice of farming contributes to and is embedded within urban systems, and how farms and farmers can illuminate the material practices and ephemeral experiences that constitute the reality of people's daily life in cities. I employ a methodology based on interviews, photo voice, mental mapping, and observation over time to explore the dynamics of farms as spaces and farmers as agents in constructing these spaces over time. The purpose is to contribute to a definition of the urban that moves past associations with capitalism and industrialization as the defining processes of the city towards one more inclusive of the way people experience these spaces, how they remake them to fit the city, and what this means for interventions that focus on the marginalization of people and the ways that cities fail, rather than how they actually work.

This is a multidisciplinary and comparative study of the recurrent representations of bandits in Latin American literature from the second half of the 19th Century to the early 20th Century. After the wars of independence in the Americas, the founding of postcolonial nation-states or Creole Republics (Repúblicas Criollas) marginalized entire rural populations, composed of indigenous people but also of multiracial, mixed populations such as the gauchos, llaneros, and other people who were branded as “bandits” as they were not part of the idealized westernized nation. This complex conflict can also be read as a last struggle between two competing colonizing models in the Americas: the receding Hispanic Catholic rural/feudal model and the liberal “free-trade” capitalist model emerging from the Industrial Revolution and the Enlightenment, represented by the United States in the hemisphere. Both socio-cultural models generated new mappings and diverse political narratives throughout the Americas: Hispanic and Hispanicized bandits created postcolonial cultural symbols of resistance to modernity capable of crossing borders. Joaquín Murrieta and Billy the Kid are extraordinary examples of the complex processes by which mythified and vilified bandits become multicultural transnational symbols. These phenomena are thoroughly studied here through the textual and contextual analysis of Facundo: Civilization and Barbarism (1845); El Zarco (1869); Martín Fierro (1872); Doña Bárbara (1929); The Life and Adventures of Joaquín Murieta, the Celebrated California Bandit (1854); Vida y aventuras del más célebre bandido sonorense Joaquín Murrieta: sus grandes proezas en California (1904); Fulgor y muerte de Joaquín Murieta (1967); The Authentic Life of Billy, the Kid (1882) and El bandido adolescente (1965). The peripheral individuals inhabiting these cultural and political borderlines raise important issues of nation, race, state and social identities and allow us to interrogate better the complex processes of Latin American and US national formation. This incursion into the cultural histories of these heterogeneous social conflicts in the Americas during a period of national expansion and construction also seeks to put in conversation diverse intellectual perspectives from the Global North and South.