Philosophiae Doctor - PhD / In this study I focus on how Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o’s fiction portrays his socio-political vision through the prevalence of the intimate relationships it displays. The study critically analyses the significant role romantic love and friendship play in the novels The River Between (1965), Weep Not, Child (1964), A Grain of Wheat (1967), Petals of Blood (1977), Devil on the Cross (1982), Matigari (1987) and Wizard of the Crow (2006) against the backdrop of Ngũgĩ’s other fiction, plays and non-fiction. Ngũgĩ identifies himself as a Marxist, anti-colonialist/imperialist, and anti-capitalist writer, for whom there is no contradiction between aesthetic and political missions. The aesthetic and political projects take form through the representation, very importantly, of romantic love in his fiction. The significance of eros, which is clear in the fiction, is not, however, present in Ngũgĩ’s theoretical reflections on his writing as formulated in his essays. In Ngũgĩ’s early novels, we see love attempting to break the boundaries of religion and class in the creation of a modern nation-state. But there are obstacles to these attempts at national unity through love, the only relationship apart from friendship that is self-made, and not determined by kinship relations. In the fiction from the middle of Ngũgĩ’s career, we see romantic love consummated in marriage. The achievement of unity is, however, undercut by betrayal, which is a repeated theme in all the novels. The “betrayal” of the ideal of romantic love by materialism is the most significant threat to love. Friendship emerges in one of the later novels as a kind of “excursus” to romantic love that foregrounds, by default, the ways in which Ngũgĩ’s political vision seeks be consolidated through the personal relationship of romantic love. In Ngũgĩ’s final novel, we see his personal and political visions coming together in a utopian erotic union for first time. Because of the nature of the exploration, which aims at opening up the wider significance of eros, the study is not framed by a dominant theory, most of which would lead to understanding eros through gender and power relations. Instead, the study has been framed through concepts and debates on romantic love that emerge in sociology, anthropology, philosophy and literary history.

<p>Uloga žena u postkolonijalnoj književnosti<br />prilično je složena: svojim delima one dovode u<br />pitanje kako imperijalni tako i patrijarhalni<br />sistem vrednosti i viziju sveta. Kako je iskustvo<br />žena u patrijarhatu umnogome nalik iskustvu<br />kolonizovanog subjekta, i postkolonijalna i<br />feministička teorija bave se sličnim pitanjima,<br />pre svega razobličavanjem mehanizama kojima<br />se žena i kolonizovani konstrui&scaron;u kao inferiorni<br />Drugi. Obe teorije bave se pitanjem<br />reprezentacije kao ključnog fenomena u<br />formiranju identiteta, kao i idejom vraćanja<br />glasa marginalizovanima i ućutkanima. Cilj ove<br />studije je da ukaže na način na koji su<br />književnice poreklom iz biv&scaron;ih kolonija<br />doživele lik žene u književnosti XIX i XX veka,<br />kao i na ulogu književnosti, posebno evropskih<br />klasika, u formiranju ženskog subjektiviteta. Od<br />posebnog značaja je i razmatranje iskustva<br />dvostruke kolonizacije žena koje u<br />postkolonijalnom svetu postaju žrtve kako<br />kolonijalne, tako i rodne represije. Džin Ris,<br />Doris Lesing, Džamejka Kinkejd, Arundati Roj,<br />Ivon Vera i Đampa Lahiri razbijaju mitove o<br />ženskom identitetu i progovaraju o ropskom<br />karakteru nametnutih stereotipa o majčinstvu,<br />ženskom telu i seksualnosti, o polu, rasnoj i<br />klasnoj pripadnosti, kao i o značajnim<br />aspektima dru&scaron;tveno-političke realnosti<br />postkolonijalnog sveta. Razlike u njihovoj<br />nacionalnoj, klasnoj i rasnoj pripadnosti<br />omogućavaju &scaron;iroku analizu dru&scaron;tvenopolitičkog<br />miljea postkolonijalnih dru&scaron;tava i<br />uloge koju ta dru&scaron;tva namenjuju ženi.</p> / <p>Uloga žena u postkolonijalnoj književnosti<br />prilično je složena: svojim delima one dovode u<br />pitanje kako imperijalni tako i patrijarhalni<br />sistem vrednosti i viziju sveta. Kako je iskustvo<br />žena u patrijarhatu umnogome nalik iskustvu<br />kolonizovanog subjekta, i postkolonijalna i<br />feministička teorija bave se sličnim pitanjima,<br />pre svega razobličavanjem mehanizama kojima<br />se žena i kolonizovani konstrui&scaron;u kao inferiorni<br />Drugi. Obe teorije bave se pitanjem<br />reprezentacije kao ključnog fenomena u<br />formiranju identiteta, kao i idejom vraćanja<br />glasa marginalizovanima i ućutkanima. Cilj ove<br />studije je da ukaže na način na koji su<br />književnice poreklom iz biv&scaron;ih kolonija<br />doživele lik žene u književnosti XIX i XX veka,<br />kao i na ulogu književnosti, posebno evropskih<br />klasika, u formiranju ženskog subjektiviteta. Od<br />posebnog značaja je i razmatranje iskustva<br />dvostruke kolonizacije žena koje u<br />postkolonijalnom svetu postaju žrtve kako<br />kolonijalne, tako i rodne represije. Džin Ris,<br />Doris Lesing, Džamejka Kinkejd, Arundati Roj,<br />Ivon Vera i Đampa Lahiri razbijaju mitove o<br />ženskom identitetu i progovaraju o ropskom<br />karakteru nametnutih stereotipa o majčinstvu,<br />ženskom telu i seksualnosti, o polu, rasnoj i<br />klasnoj pripadnosti, kao i o značajnim<br />aspektima dru&scaron;tveno-političke realnosti<br />postkolonijalnog sveta. Razlike u njihovoj<br />nacionalnoj, klasnoj i rasnoj pripadnosti<br />omogućavaju &scaron;iroku analizu dru&scaron;tvenopolitičkog<br />milјea postkolonijalnih dru&scaron;tava i<br />uloge koju ta dru&scaron;tva namenjuju ženi.</p>

En el presente estudio aplicamos la perspectiva poscolonial a dos novelas peruanas de temática afroperuana: Matalaché (1928) de Enrique López Albújar y Malambo (2001) de Lucía Charún-Illescas con el fin de aportar conocimientos sobre ellas. Dentro del marco de nuestro análisis queremos identificar cómo las caracterizaciones de los personajes, y la influencia de algunos factores determinantes relacionados a ellos, se diferencian según el grupo al que pertenecen dentro de la jerarquía colonial. Partimos de la premisa de que la literatura poscolonial tiene diferentes etapas de distanciamiento de la colonialidad y que las novelas escogidas pertenecen a dos etapas distintas. Consecuentemente, el análisis busca revelar las diversas formas en las que las caracterizaciones de los personajes, la influencia de los factores determinantes y la imagen de la jerarquía colonial, se distinguen entre las dos obras. El análisis señala que los personajes pueden ser caracterizados a base del tipo de personaje retratado, del nombre del personaje, del uso de títulos y el trato personal, del lenguaje, y a través de la influencia de los factores determinantes religión, raza, clase, economía y trabajo, y género. A base de los resultados encontrados en el análisis concluimos que las caracterizaciones y la influencia de los factores determinantes en las imágenes de los personajes en las novelas manifiestan una valoración que define a qué grupo social pertenecen estos personajes. Además, identificamos una valoración de los grupos de personajes que influye en el posicionamiento de los mismos en la jerarquía colonial. Finalmente concluimos que las caracterizaciones en Matalaché (1928) se acercan más a la estructura colonial que las caracterizaciones en Malambo (2001), lo que, por consiguiente, indica que ambas novelas sí pertenecen a diferentes etapas de distanciamiento de la colonialidad dentro de la literatura poscolonial peruana de temática afroperuana. / In this investigation, we apply a postcolonial perspective on two novels with afro-peruvian thematics: Matalaché (1928) by Enrique López Albújar and Malambo (2001) by Lucía Charún-Illescas, aiming to contribute to an increased understanding of these novels. Within the framework of our analysis we try to identify how the characterizations of the characters, and the influence of some determining factors relating to these, vary depending on the group they belong to within the colonial hierarchy. As a starting point, we assume that the postcolonial literature has different stages in which it distances itself from its colonial past, and that the chosen novels belong to two different stages. The analysis tries to reveal the different forms in which the characterizations of the characters, the influence of the determining factors and the image of the colonial hierarchy differs between the two novels. The analysis shows that characters can be characterized through the way they are depicted, the name of the characters, the use of titles and the way they are addressed, and through their language, also through the influence of the determining factors religion, race, class, economy and labor, and gender. Considering the results encountered in the analysis we conclude that the characterizations and the influence of the determining factors in the images of the characters in the texts shows a valuation that defines in which social group these characters belong. We also identify a valuation of the character groups that influences the positioning of said groups in the colonial hierarchy. Finally, we conclude that the characterizations in Matalaché (1928) more closely resembles those of the colonial structure than the characterizations in Malambo (2001). This indicates that the novels do belong to different stages of distance to colonialism within the peruvian postcolonial literature with afro-peruvian thematics.

Through the filters of postcolonial theory, environmental humanities, and digital humanities, this project considers the capabilities and limitations of novels to galvanize action in response to environmental crises. My findings suggest that novels are well equipped to engage in environmental education, although some of the form’s conventions must be disrupted to fully capitalize upon its strengths. The modern novel is conventionally limited in scope, often resorts to apocalyptic narratives that can breed hopelessness, is dedicated to a form of realism that belies the dramatic weather events exacerbated by climate change, defers authority to a single voice, and is logocentric. By supplementing conventional novels with a variety of paratexts, including digital tools, scientific findings, non-fiction accounts of past, present, and future activism, and authorial biography, it is my contention that the novel’s potency as a pedagogical tool increases. After addressing this project’s stakes and contexts in my Introduction, Chapter II assesses three South Asian novels in English that are concerned with sustainable development: Bhabani Bhattacharya’s Shadow from Ladakh, Bharati Mukherjee’s Jasmine, and Aravind Adiga’s The White Tiger. I conclude by considering how StoryMaps might further disrupt pro-sustainable development propaganda alongside more traditional novels. Chapter III examines how explicitly activist South Asian novelists construct authorial personae that propose additional solutions to the environmental problems identified in their novels, focusing on Amitav Ghosh’s The Hungry Tide and Indra Sinha’s Animal’s People. Chapter IV coins the term “locus-colonial novel,” a novel that decenters the human, situating place at the fulcrum of a work of historical fiction, using Hari Kunzru’s Gods without Men as one exemplar. I examine Kunzru’s novel alongside promotional materials for planned Mars missions to consider how narratives of colonialism on Earth might lead to a more socially and environmentally sustainable colonial model for Mars. Chapter V introduces the concept of a digital locus-colonial novel that allows users to develop informed, environmentally focused scenarios for colonial Mars. Through these chapters, this dissertation identifies specific rhetorical techniques that allow conscientious novels to create imaginative spaces where readers might explore solutions to the social, economic, and increasingly environmental problems facing human populations worldwide.

Né à Calcutta en 1952, Vikram Seth occupe une place éminemment originale sur la scène littéraire postcoloniale. Manifestement animée par une force centrifuge, l’œuvre de Vikram Seth semble se renouveler perpétuellement : du récit de voyage au recueil de poésie, entre vers et prose, Seth revendique le droit à la métamorphose et épouse tour à tour une myriade de genres. Cette constellation générique manifeste l’aversion profonde de l’auteur pour l’uniformité et son rejet du cloisonnement. L’œuvre de Seth ne peut en effet être fixée ni génériquement, ni contextuellement : les ancrages successifs de l’auteur dans des décors poétiques radicalement différents laissent en effet transparaître la pluralité irréductible de ses amarres culturelles. Riche d’une multiplicité d’enracinements, cette œuvre polymorphe défie toute catégorisation. L’hétérogénéité de cette production littéraire masque cependant une pratique organisée du pastiche. Celle-ci s’impose comme une véritable dynamique de création : les œuvres de Seth puisent en effet leur "matière première" dans les textes canoniques de la littérature européenne, affichant une volonté souvent jugée démodée de retour à la tradition. Pourquoi Vikram Seth a-t-il aussi ostensiblement recours au pastiche, pratique traditionnellement dépréciée en Occident ? Si certains critiques dénoncent le caractère en apparence apolitique de cette écriture, le pastiche ne saurait se réduire ici à une reprise mécanique ou nostalgique de textes toujours déjà écrits, mais acquiert au contraire une dimension critique à travers la notion de "mimicry". Toute l’œuvre de Vikram met en relief le caractère radicalement énonciatif de la textualité, soulignant avec force l’historicité du langage. / Born in Calcutta in 1952, Vikram Seth occupies a highly original place on the postcolonial literary scene, owing to the dazzling variety of his work. Indeed, his career has been one of restless reinvention: skipping from economist to poet, to travel writer, to novelist-in-verse, to librettist, to translator and to children’s writer, Vikram Seth even tried his hand at biography in Two Lives (2005). His writing displays a deep-seated abhorrence of uniformity: every new book by Seth creates a fresh departure in genre and theme, and moves seamlessly from one geographical and cultural location to another, revealing a distinct cosmopolitan sensibility that makes Seth’s affiliations and cultural moorings all but impossible to fathom. Seth’s protean opus thus proves miraculously immune to any definitive categorization. In fact, however, the generic heterogeneity of Seth’s work masks a hidden unity, which lies in a deliberate use of pastiche: Vikram Seth treats Western canonical texts as raw material, in an ostensibly unfashionable attempt to go back to earlier models of literary tradition. Why does Seth strive to preserve the European literary legacy so ostentatiously through the use of pastiche, a practice that is traditionally belittled in the West? Although current critiques of Vikram Seth’s writing berate him for evading the politics of his own cultural, historical and political location, I will argue that pastiche acquires a critical dimension in Seth’s work through the notion of "mimicry". Vikram Seth’s work sheds light on the radically enunciative quality of textuality, throwing into sharp relief the historicity of language.

21st-century Neo-anticolonial Literature and the Struggle for a New Global Order explores the twenty-first-century fiction of five writers and investigates the ways in which their works engage the legacy and evolution of empire, and, in particular, the expansion of global capitalism to the detriment of already-subjugated communities. Taking up a recent call by Postcolonial scholars seeking to address the contemporary challenges of the postcolonial condition, this project traces out three distinct forms of engagement that function as a resistance in the texts. The dissertation introduces these concepts via a mode of analysis I have called Neo-anticolonialism, a counter-hegemonic approach which, I argue, is unique to the twenty-first century but rooted in the anticolonial work of Aimé Césaire and Frantz Fanon. Building on a foundation laid by those activist scholars, this project argues that Neo-anticolonialism necessitates the bridging of discourse and activism; thus, the dissertation delineates the utility of Neo-anticolonialism in both literary scholarship and practical application. Through a close analysis of the fiction of the Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Jamaican Michelle Cliff, Amitav Ghosh, a South Asian writer, African American writer Edward P. Jones, and Black British writer Caryl Phillips, the project offers a Neo-anticolonial reading of several twenty-first-century texts. In doing so, I explain the depiction of these instances of resistance as Neo-anticolonial Refractions, literary devices which function as prisms that cast images thus exposing the perpetuation of inequality in the twenty-first century and its direct link to the past epoch. Moreover, each chapter, through an explication of the refractions, reveals how resistance occurs in the face of the brutal reality of oppression and how this cadre of writers engages with the history of empire as well as with its contemporary permutations.

21st-century Neo-anticolonial Literature and the Struggle for a New Global Order explores the twenty-first-century fiction of five writers and investigates the ways in which their works engage the legacy and evolution of empire, and, in particular, the expansion of global capitalism to the detriment of already-subjugated communities. Taking up a recent call by Postcolonial scholars seeking to address the contemporary challenges of the postcolonial condition, this project traces out three distinct forms of engagement that function as a resistance in the texts. The dissertation introduces these concepts via a mode of analysis I have called Neo-anticolonialism, a counter-hegemonic approach which, I argue, is unique to the twenty-first century but rooted in the anticolonial work of Aimé Césaire and Frantz Fanon. Building on a foundation laid by those activist scholars, this project argues that Neo-anticolonialism necessitates the bridging of discourse and activism; thus, the dissertation delineates the utility of Neo-anticolonialism in both literary scholarship and practical application. Through a close analysis of the fiction of the Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Jamaican Michelle Cliff, Amitav Ghosh, a South Asian writer, African American writer Edward P. Jones, and Black British writer Caryl Phillips, the project offers a Neo-anticolonial reading of several twenty-first-century texts. In doing so, I explain the depiction of these instances of resistance as Neo-anticolonial Refractions, literary devices which function as prisms that cast images thus exposing the perpetuation of inequality in the twenty-first century and its direct link to the past epoch. Moreover, each chapter, through an explication of the refractions, reveals how resistance occurs in the face of the brutal reality of oppression and how this cadre of writers engages with the history of empire as well as with its contemporary permutations.

This dissertation explores postcolonial fiction that reflects the structural situation of a genocidal number of third-world women who are being trafficked for sexual purposes from postcolonial countries into the global north—invariably, gender, class and race play a crucial role in their exploitation. Above all, these women share a systemic disposability and invisibility, as the business relies on the victim’s illegality and criminality to generate maximum revenues. My research suggests that the presence of these abject women is not only recognized by ideological and repressive state apparatuses on every side of the trafficking scheme (in the form of governments, military establishments, juridical systems, transnational corporations, etc.) but is also understood as necessary for the current neoliberal model to thrive undisturbed by ethical imperatives. Beginning with the turn of the twentieth century, then, I analyze sexual slavery transnationally by looking at James Joyce’s “Eveline,” Therese Park’s A Gift of the Emperor, Mahasweta Devi’s “Douloti the Bountiful,” Amma Darko’s Beyond the Horizon, Chris Abani’s Becoming Abigail, and Roberto Bolaño’s 2666, concentrating on the political, economic, and social discourses in which the narratives are immersed through the lens of Marxist, feminist, and postcolonial theory. By interrogating these postcolonial narratives, my project reexamines the sex slave-trafficker-consumer triad in order to determine the effect of each party’s presence or absence from the text and the implications in terms of the discourses their representations may tacitly legitimize. At the same time, this work investigates the type of postcolonial stories the West privileges and the reasons, and the subjective role postcolonial theory plays in overcoming subaltern women’s exploitation within the current neocolonial context. Overall, I interrogate the role postcolonial literature plays as a means of achieving (or not) social change, analyze the purpose of artists in representing exploitative situations, identify the type of engagement readers have with these characters, and seek to understand audiences’ response to such literature. I look at authors who have attempted to discover fruitful avenues of expression for third-world women, who, despite increasingly constituting the bulk of the work force worldwide, continue to be exploited and, in the case of sex trafficking, brutally violated.

The aim of this dissertation is to trace the function of parody in the context of Salman Rushdie&rsquo / s magical realistic fiction. The magical realism of Rushdie&rsquo / s fiction presents a complex Third World experience which constitutes an alternative to, and challenges the Eurocentrism of western culture. The form and content of Rushdie&rsquo / s novels are so intense and rich that the whole body of his work comes to the fore, not as an outcome of the two clashing civilisations, that is East and West, but rather as an immense medley of the two cultures. While &ldquo / writing back to the empire&rdquo / , Rushdie draws on innumerable sources ranging from such grand narratives as Genesis, Iliad, Ramayana, A Thousand and One Nights, Hindu, Persian, Greek, and Norse mythologies, and local cultural traditions, to modern politics mingling fiction and reality in a broad historical perspective, so that his work becomes a synthesis of East and West, an international aesthetic plane where diversities express themselves freely. The dissertation focuses particularly on Rushdie&rsquo / s Midnight&rsquo / s Children, The Moor&rsquo / s Last Sigh,and Shalimar The Clown. / it contains an introductory chapter, a theory chapter, including two subchapters, a development chapter with three subchapters which analyse the above mentioned three novels, and a conclusion chapter. The introductory chapter presents an overview of the issues to be investigated in the subsequent chapters. The theory chapter deals with the concepts of colonialism, nationalism, and the past and the present of postcolonial literary theory with reference to its leading theorists, such as M. Foucault, E. Said, H. Bhabha, and other recent critics / this chapter also introduces magical realism by reference to a number of current definitions and approaches. The following three subchapters, which focus on the analyses of the three novels, explore how parody functions both thematically and structurally in relation to Rushdie&rsquo / s magical realism. The concluding chapter demonstrates that Rushdie&rsquo / s work creates an unrestrained plane of an international culture where multiple visions and diversities can find a room to assert themselves.

Assia Djebar’s Far from Madina retells the stories of the women who appear on the margins of the earliest sources of Islamic history from a contemporary Muslim feminist’s perspective. Djebar uses formal elements of early Islamic historiography and relies upon classical Sunni sources. These techniques place her novel in conversation with classical Islamic tradition and bring legitimacy to her subversive project which aims to shift the boundaries of that canon. Though crafted in relation to classical sources, Djebar’s critique of gender identity is also addressed to the discourses and institutions of Islamic authority that evolved over the centuries and that continue to delineate narrow roles for women, up to and including contemporary regimes. In chapter one I argue that by grounding her critique of circulating discourses on Muslim women within a project that appropriates canonical Sunni historiography, Djebar refuses the disjunction between feminism and Islam, critiquing normative Islamic discourse on women in contemporary Algeria without framing the conflict in terms of an East/West or a religious/secular binary. Chapter two examines Djebar’s treatment of Fatima in particular. I consider Djebar’s selection of classical sources and compare the earliest canonical Sunni renderings of Fatima and those found in the novel. I argue that the vision of empowered women in the first Muslim community posited in Far from Madina destabilizes the ideal of gender identity constructed in early Islamic historiography. Far from Madina focuses on the moment after the death of Muhammad when Muslims were left to interpret their scripture and recall their Prophet’s words and deeds. Djebar constructs the novel around the question of what role Muslim women would play in this process, a move which foregrounds her own choice to write the novel and embrace her role as witness and transmitter of the stories of these early women. Chapter three examines the reflexive character of Far from Madina and considers how Djebar’s narrative strategies and hermeneutical approach facilitate the articulation of identity through difference. I argue that the narrative is Djebar’s performance of contemporary Muslim identity and an example of “lived Islam.” / text