In this study I propose to examine some of the roots and implications of discrimination as illustrated in a novel by a contemporary Australian novelist, David Malouf, titled Remembering Babylon (1993). My choice of Malouf's novel is grounded in the fact that, in a narrative set in mid 19th century Australia dealing with an encounter between Scottish settlers and the Aboriginal people, the novel embodies various kinds of thought systems of a discriminatory Cartesian nature. The issues in the novel are against a background of a long history of discrimination dating from antiquity which reached probably its highest point with Anglo-Saxon imperialism. It is a well known fact that the contact between European colonisers and their so-called Others has been dogged by confrontation, discrimination, exploitation and domination. The latter's responses to these phenomena have been varied. But, as JanMohamed notes in his Manichean Aesthetics: The Politics of Literature in Colonial Africa(1985) these responses have been characterised by crisis - both conscious and unconscious, material and metaphysical. And ever since this contact/reunion both groups have existed in this state of crisis and conflict -at both the manifest and latent levels. The causes of this crisis are both exo- and endogenous in origin: endogenous in the sense of the majority of these peoples' incapacity to hold their ground and 'properly' analyse/synthesise the substance of their 'new' existence and defme themselves pushed to the wall as they are by exogenous factors of European imperial and neo-imperial agendas. Most of the behaviors of the colonised, even the most 'bizarre' of them, are expressive of this existential crisis and their tenacious will to survive and approximate to a bearable life in an extremely oppressive and confusing environment. Especially in the African context, this inability to 'properly' analyse phenomena may have been brought about by a psychotic disjuncture engendered by an exogenous (European) chimerical metaphysics that parcels out existence into rigid, airtight, dualistic compartments in religion and philosophy. In these worldviews existence is described in specular, dominating and oppositional rather than in inter-subjective, co-operational and synthesizing terms. One result is that, speaking generally, Europeans are seen to exist at variance with themselves, with one another, with their environment and with non-European groups of people. Existence is defmed not as 'in' and 'with' but as 'apart from' and 'against'. Even where 'cooperation' is engaged in among them, it is for purposes of discrimination, exploitation and domination. This is not only a skewed ontology even in all demonstrable rational circles, it is also a highly escapist, confrontational, unscrupulously competitive/exploitative, and brutally pessimistic one. Philosophically, perhaps the earliest signs of European pessimistic and disjunctive construction of reality can be seen in Plato's escapist theory of reality which parcels out existence into two rigidly distinct, yet somehow causally related, worlds: one of forms/ideas and another world of material phenomena. Aristotle, Plato's own pupil, disagreed with his master on this by arguing instead that forms or ideas arise from and subsist in the world of material phenomena and not apart from and independent of the latter. One notices that all subsequent debates on the origin, nature, and relations of ideas (self-consciousness) and material phenomena, have been variations and expansions on these two diametrically opposed positions. But the most favoured school for the dualistic ontologies is idealism/rationalism, especially that of Descartes who is regarded as the highest point of the Enlightenment. These seem to fmd resonance in the subsequent theorising of Darwin, Spencer, and the social philosophy of Nietzsche among others. In spite of dissenting voices even from within their own ranks challenging such a metaphysics, the general trend among Europeans has been to hold tenaciously onto these pessimistic and escapist illusions mainly for egoistic, exploitative and supremacist purposes. Malouf does question discrimination based on binary assumptions of natural superiority and inferiority by juxtaposing notions of the human and non-human, progress and degeneration, modernity and pre-modernity (Science/Culture) in the 'Cartesian' sense as well as in the social and racial Darwinian sense. It is the approach he adopts in this project inter alia which I seek to examine in my study. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2003.

One of the most pressing debates in South Africa concerns the need of writers to address the complex sociopolitical demands of the present day situation. In this paper I examine J M Coetzee's use of Postmodernism forms as an attempt to develop a language and structure of consciousness which offers a telling critique of authority and power in South Africa. My purpose is not primarily to offer an aesthetic appreciation of Coetzee's works, but rather to assess the efficacy of the Postmodernist approach in a world of material forces. The central problem which I explore is whether Coetzee's experimental fiction speaks to a world of "total politics". In the Introduction I consider the way that Coetzee himself establishes the terms for a debate of his texts, a debate which juxtaposes his rejection of realism, mimesis and the dictates of history, (a strategy necessitated by his Postmodernist and Poststructuralist understandings) with his call for a language adequate and sufficient to Africa. Section I explores the claim s of those critics who view Postmodernism as a Eurocentric and highly recondite form of elitist exclusion which retards the development of a vital post-colonial expression while extending the ideology of capitalism. Thus Postmodernism is seen to lack a cogency adequate to address a South Africa dominated by a politics of oppression. Section II discusses the implications of Postmodernism as an interventionist strategy which deconstructs hegemonic notions of reality, replacing them with a radicalised doubt and scepticism. This doubt is seen as having an informative role to play in the constitution of a consciousness both subjective and political which is capable of providing a counter to the politics of hegemony, and the'monism of a one dimensional state, either of the left or right. In Conclusion I contend that J M Coetzee's texts pose a linguistic and fictional significance within the context of South African polity and literature. / Thesis (M.A.) - University of Natal, Durban, 1988.

Abstract not available. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2004.

Lauretta Ngcobo’s And They Didn’t Die depicts the lives of rural African women who lived under apartheid rule in KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa in the 1950s and 1960s. The dissertation examines Ngcobo’s representation of African women’s participation and their agency in the resistance struggles against colonialism, settler colonialism (apartheid), racial supremacy, African patriarchy, and literary and the dominant language systems. The primary method of analysis involves an examination of the novel which is located in the political context of the resistance struggles, the social context of patriarchy and the theoretical context of postcolonial African feminist criticism. By drawing on a range of feminist theories, the dissertation examines the specificity of African women’s lives in terms of race, class and gender roles. The dissertation will also examine the different strategies that women have used to survive and to resist race, class and gender oppressions. Ngcobo’s novel provides an apposite framework to explore women’s experiences of subordination and how they challenged and even overcame the political and social forces that worked against them. Women’s agency in the liberation struggle has been largely ignored and undocumented in literary and even in many feminist projects, which leaves an under-researched gap in African literary studies. The dissertation examines Ngcobo’s work as a literary activist articulating the challenges of representation and voice. Representation is understood to mean speaking or acting for oneself and/or others, while voice is the capacity to speak. It is the key issue reflecting empowerment and agency. These concepts form the basis for analysis and the construction of arguments. It is used to examine the challenges faced by women who have been marginalized in literary discourse, as women and writers. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2008.

The dissertation focuses on lM. Coetzee's novel The Master of Petersburg, read as a confessional text and discussed in the light of theories of the western tradition of confession. By way of introduction some of the themes and features of Coetzee's novels that have been the subject of criticism and debate and are pertinent to this discussion are highlighted. Alluding to the politics, aesthetics and ethics of writing in South Africa, the introduction is not intended to provide a comprehensive overview ofthe criticism Coetzee's work has generated. In the second chapter, taking into account aspects of Coetzee's essay "Confession and Double Thoughts: Tolstoy, Rousseau and Dostoevsky", an essay he characterises as a dialogue between cynicism and grace, problems of truth, particularly "how to tell the truth in autobiography", self-knowledge and self-deception are discussed, drawing also on observations made by Dennis A. Foster in his book Confession and Complicity in Narrative and with reference to Jeremy Tambling's book Confession: Sexuality, Sin, the Subject. An important focus is the idea that the concept of sin serves to marginalise the subject who is inscribed in the discourse of confession. The third chapter focuses on the novel The Master of Petersburg and the main protagonist - a fictionalised Dostoevsky - who displays the hyper-self-consciousness of the confessant, and his actions and disclosures which he characterises, in the vocabulary of confession, as being sinful. Notions oftruth, self-knowledge, the nature of writing, the role ofthe reader, as well as critical responses to the novel itself, are examined in the light of theories of confession. In the final chapter, themes ofbetrayal, self-alienation and falling from grace are considered in the context of confession and the question "how are we to be ethical in a secular context?" emerges. How grace manifests itself in a secular world leads to the key question as to whether or not there is an ethical imperative in the process and practice of writing. / Thesis (M.A. ( English)) - University of Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2000.

No abstract available. / Thesis (Ph.D.)-University of Natal, Durban, 1973.

No abstract available. / Thesis (Ph.D.)-University of Natal, Durban, 1978.

The aim of this study is to suggest, by selective example, a method of interpreting Gordimer's fiction from a 'post-Apartheid' perspective. My hypothesis is that Gordimer's own comments in her key lecture of 1982, "Living in the Interregnum", reflect not only her practice in the years of struggle politics, but suggest a yearning for a time beyond struggle, when the civil imaginary might again become a major subject. She claims that she has continually felt a tension in her practice as writer between her responsibility to 'national' testimony, her "necessary gesture" to the history of which she was indelibly a part, and her responsibility to the integrity of the individual experience, her "essential gesture" to novelistic truth. In arguing for a modification of what has almost become the standard political evaluation of Gordimer, my study returns the emphasis to a revindicated humanism, a critical approach that, by implication, questions the continuing appropriateness of anti-humanist ideology critique at a time in South Africa that requires reconstitutions of people's lives. The shift in reading for which I argue, in consequence, validates the 'individual' above the 'typical', the 'meditative' above the ideologically-detennined 'statement', 'showing' above 'telling'. I do not wish to deny the value of a previous decade's readings of the novels as conditioned by their specific historical context. The philosophical concept of social psychology and the stylistic accent on neo-thematism employed in this thesis are not meant to separate the personal conviction from the public demand. Rather, I intend to return attention to a contemplative field of human process and choice that, I shall suggest, has remained a constant feature of Gordimer's achievement. My return to the text does not attempt to establish textual autonomy; the act of interpretation acknowledges that meaning changes in different conditions of critical reception. My study is not a comprehensive survey of Gordimer' s oeuvre. It focuses on certain works as illustrative of the overall argument. After an Introduction of general principles, Chapter One focuses on two novels from politically ' overdetermined' times to show that even in the 'years of emergency', Gordimer's commitment to personal lives and destinies had significantly informed her national narratives. Chapter Two turns to two novels from less 'determined' times as further evidence of Gordimer' s abiding interest in the inner landscapes behind social terrains. Having proposed a critical return to the 'ordinary' concerns of the 'civil imaginary', the study concludes by suggesting that the times in the 1990s are ready for a new look at the most intensely lyrical aspects of Gordimer' s art: her short stories. The specific examples culminate, at the end of each chapter, in brief observations as to how the reading strategy might apply to other works in Gordimer's achievement, as well as to an 'interior' as opposed to an 'exterior' accent in South African fiction as a whole. / Thesis (Ph.D.)-University of Natal, Durban, 1997.

In this thesis I explore three key debates within postcolonial theory. I argue for the efficacy of deploying deconstructive readings in postcolonial contexts. I closely analyse the debates in order to identify a number of important questions for the theorisation of postcoloniality. My discussion of the first debate between Gayatri Spivak and Benita Parry focuses on the problematics of representation, through an analysis of the questions of subalternity, native agency/resistance/insurgency, and, crucially, the question of the political positionality of the postcolonial intellectual as investigating subject. Jacques Derrida's debate on apartheid with Anne McClintock and Robert Nixon, although not expressed in the terms of postcolonial theory, raises questions of context, the necessity of ethics in intellectual discussion and the politics and ethics of deconstructive engagements with material situations. In the debate between Homi K. Bhabha and Benita Parry, I examine the question of the most apposite way to read the contribution of Frantz Fanon's work. I argue the latter debate offers a politico-theoretical insight or strategy that would be important for the development of postcolonial theory. Finally, I demonstrate how the South African appropriation of postcolonial theory (and the subsequent critique) rehearses some of the preoccupations of the previous debates. I argue that the particular version that South African advocates of postcolonial theory sought to install into the literarycultural agenda in the early 1990s, highlights an inattentiveness to the theory which it is concerned to appropriate. My thesis is concerned to argue that the debates need to be reread given some of the (mis)taken arguments I identify. The urgent, difficult and complex questions in contemporary South Africa are what postcolonial critics need to think through. I argue the urgency and difficulty of the South African case can be fruitfully interrogated by a deconstructive postcolonial theory. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2007.

This study investigates the problem of defining Mary Benson as a person and a writer. Her writing spans a range of generic classifications - biography, history, plays, a novel and an autobiography. Yet, all are centred on her preoccupation with the struggle for freedom in South Africa. All reveal, moreover, a great deal about Benson's own values and commitment, prompting us to question the validity, in her case, of such strict generic categories as useful defining properties in her literary career. Starting with her most recent publication, the autobiography A Far Cry. I shall look at the way she presents herself in a traditionally introspective genre. It soon becomes apparent that Benson views herself within a perspective of South African social reality, and that her sense of self is inextricably linked to her political involvement. Her personal needs and desires, to a large extent, remain unobtrusive as she foregrounds her public interactions and her concern with humanitarian and racial issues. A study of Benson, therefore, needs to address a selection of her work in an attempt to fully appreciate her sense of her own identity. In consequence, I go on to discuss her biography Nelson Mandela and her novel At the Still Point. .Both works confirm the portrait in A Far Cry of Benson as a responsible South African who has selflessly and consistently devoted herself to her role as a witness of racial oppression in South Africa. In her biography, Nelson Mandela, for example, the ANC leader emerges as an exemplary figure in the public world while his values and ideals are allowed to parallel Benson's own 'autobiographical' ideals. In At the Still Point, Anne Dawson, Benson's fictional protagonist, I shall argue, gives her author the opportunity to express her own feelings about private life in relation to sociopolitical action. These 'personal ' feelings seem to be avoided in the more direct opportunities of the autobiographical form. In exploring Benson's sense of self, therefore, this study suggests that for Benson 'commitment' overrides her sense of herself as a literary figure, and that this has consequences for the weight we give to content and form in the reading of her work. My conclusion is that we are looking not so much at the challenges of genre as at a large autobiographical project, in which the 'self is defined substantially in its meetings with other people in political circumstances / Thesis (M.A.)-University of Natal, Durban, 1991.