Thesis (MA (English))--University of Stellenbosch, 2010. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This thesis explores masculinity and sexuality, hegemonic and “deviant” in the nation state of the old apartheid South Africa, by addressing aspects of fatherhood, boyhood and motherhood in white, predominantly Afrikaans family narratives. In doing this, I explore the ways in which the young boys in texts such as The Smell of Apples (1995), by Mark Behr, and moffie (2006), by André Carl van der Merwe, are systematically groomed to become the ideal stereotype of masculinity at the time: rugged, intelligent, successful and heterosexual. The main focus of this thesis is to explore the ideologies inherent in constructing the white, Afrikaner man, his woman and their family. This will be done with specific reference to the time frame between the early 1970s to the fall of the apartheid regime in the early 1990s, focussing on the young white boys who are sent to do military training and oftentimes, a stint on the border between Angola and the then South-West Africa, in order to keep the so-called threat of communism at bay. I explore what happens when this white-centred patriarchal hegemony is broken down, threatened or resisted when “deviance” in the form of homosexuality occurs. A second focus of this thesis is that of “deviance” in the army. I analyse “deviance” in three novels, moffie (2006) by André Carl van der Merwe, The Beautiful Screaming of Pigs (1991) by Damon Galgut and Kings of the Water (2009) by Mark Behr. These novels foreground “deviance” and I make use of them in exploring the punishment, or “consequences” of being homosexual or “deviant” in the highly masculine environs of the South African National Defence Force (SANDF) army. I also examine the muted yet, I argue, resistant voices of female characters in these novels. This thesis concludes by briefly noting the aftermath of this war, the after-effects of a white, hegemonic, conservative ruling party at the helm of a divided, war-faring country on its soldiers, who are now middle-aged men. / AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Hierdie tesis ondersoek manlikheid en seksualiteit, hegemonie en “afwykings” in die staat van ou apartheid Suid-Afrika deur te verwys na aspekte van vaderskap, seunwees en moederskap in blanke, oorwegend Afrikaanse gesinsvertellings. Eerstens sal daar ondersoek ingestel word na die wyses waarop jong seuns in tekste soos The Smell of Apples (1995) deur Mark Behr en moffie (2006) deur André Carl van der Merwe stelselmatig gekweek word tot die ideale stereotipe van manlikheid in die era: ongetem, intelligent, suksesvol en heteroseksueel. Die hoofklem van hierdie tesis is om die denkwyses onderliggend aan die konstruksie van die blanke Afrikaner man, sy vrou en hulle gesin, te verken. Dit sal bewerkstellig word deur na die tydperk vanaf die vroeë 1970s tot en met die ondergang van die apartheidsbewind in die vroeë 1990s te verwys, met spesifieke klem op jeugdige blanke seuns wat gestuur is vir militêre opleiding en dikwels ook diensplig aan die grens tussen Angola en destydse Suid-Wes Afrika om die oënskynlike kommunistiese aanslag af te weer. Daar word verken wat plaasvind wanneer hierdie blank-gesentreerde, patriargale oorwig afgebreek, bedreig of teengestaan word deur “afwykings” soos die voorkoms van homoseksualiteit. ‘n Tweede fokuspunt van hierdie tesis is die “afwykings” in die weermag. Die volgende drie “afwykingsromans” word ontleed: moffie (2006), The Beautiful Screaming of Pigs (1991) deur Damon Galgut en Kings of the Water (2009) deur Mark Behr. Hierdie romans ondervang die idee van “afwykings” en word gebruik in die ondersoek na die straf of gevolge van homoseksueel of “afwykend” wees in die uitsluitlik manlike omgewing geskep deur die SANW-opleiding. Daar word ook ondersoek ingestel na die stilgemaakte; dog, soos aangetoon word, versettende stemme van vroulike karakters in die romans. Hierdie tesis sluit af deur vlugtig te verwys na die nasleep van die oorlog en die gevolge van ’n blanke, heersende, konserwatiewe party aan die stuur van ’n verdeelde, oorlogvoerende land op sy soldate wat tans middeljarige mans is.

Thesis (MA)--Stellenbosch University, 2012. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Seeking to navigate and explore diasporic identity, as reflected in and by transatlantic narrative spaces, this thesis looks to three very different novels birthed out of the Atlantic context (at different points of the Atlantic triangle and at different moments in history): Our Sister Killjoy or Reflections from a Black-eyed Squint (1977) by Ama Ata Aidoo, The Chosen Place, The Timeless People (1969) by Paule Marshall and Crossing the River (1993) by Caryl Phillips. Recognising the weight of location – cultural, geographic, temporal – on the literary construction of transatlantic identity, this thesis traces the way in which Aidoo, Marshall and Phillips use fictional texts as tools for grappling with ideas of home and belonging in a world of displacement, fracture and (ex)change. Uncovering the impact of roots, as well as routes (rupta via) on the realisation of identity for the diasporic subject, this study reveals and wrestles with various narrative portrayals of the diasporic condition (a profoundly human condition). Our Sister Killjoy presents identity as inherently imbricated with nationalism and pan-Africanism, whereas The Chosen Place presents identity as tidalectic, caught in the interstices between western and African subjectivities. In Crossing the River on the other hand, diasporic identification is constructed as transnational, fractal and perpetually in-process. This study argues that in the absence of an established sense of terra firma the respective authors actively construct home through narrative, resulting in what Erica L. Johnson has described as terragraphica. In this way, each novel is perceived and explored as a particular terragraphica as well as a fictional lieux de mémoire (to borrow Pierre Nora’s conception of “sites of memory”). Using the memories of transatlantic characters as (broken) windows through which to view history, as well as filters through which the present can be understood (or refracted), are techniques that Aidoo, Marshall and Phillips employ (although, Aidoo’s use of memory is less obvious). Tapping into various sites of memory in the lives of the fictional characters, the novels themselves become mediums of remembering, not as a means of storing facts about the past, but for the ambivalent purpose of understanding the impact of the past on the present. / AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: In ’n poging om diasporiese identiteit te karteer en te ondersoek, betrek hierdie verhandeling drie uiteenlopende romans wat in die Atlantiese konteks, naamlik vanuit die verskillende hoeke van die Atlantiese driehoek en verskillende geskiedkundige Atlantiese momente, ontstaan het. Die drie romans sluit in: Our Sister Killjoy or Reflections from a Black-eyed Squint (1977) deur Ama Ata Aidoo, The Chosen Place, The Timeless People (1969) deur Paule Marshall en Crossing the River (1993) deur Caryl Phillips. Deur die belangrikheid van plek – kultureel, geografies en temporeel – in die literêre konstruksie van transatlantiese identiteit, te beklemtoon, spoor hierdie verhandeling die manier waarop Aidoo, Marshall en Phillips fiktiewe tekste aanwend na om sin te maak van idees oor tuiste en geborgenheid in ’n wêreld van verdringing, skeuring en (ver)wisseling. Deur die impak van die oorsprong op, asook die weg (rupta via) na, die verwesenliking van identiteit vir die diasporiese subjek te toon, onthul en worstel hierdie tesis met verskeie narratiewe uitbeeldings van die diasporiese toestand (’n toestand eie aan die mens). Our Sister Killjoy stel identiteit as inherent vermeng met nasionalisme en pan-Afrikanisme voor, terwyl The Chosen Place identiteit as tidalekties uitbeeld – vasgevang tussen westerse en Afrika-subjektiwiteite. In Crossing the River word diasporiese identifisering egter gekonstrueer as transnasionaal, fraktaal en ewigdurend in ’n proses van ontwikkeling. Hierdie studie voer verder aan dat die onderskeie skrywers tuiste aktief deur narratief konstrueer in die afwesigheid van ’n gevestigde bewustheid van terra firma, of onbekende land of plek. Die gevolg is ’n voortvloeiing van wat deur Erica L. Johnson beskryf word as terragraphica. Vervolgens word elk van die romans gesien en verken as ’n spesifieke terragraphica asook ’n fiktiewe lieux de mémoire, gegrond in Pierre Nora se konsep “sites of memory”. Die benutting van transatlantiese karakters se herhinneringe as (gebreekte) vensters waardeur die geskiedenis bespeur kan word en filters waardeur die hede verstaan (of gerefrakteer) kan word, is die tegnieke wat Aidoo, Marshall en Phillips aanwend – alhoewel Aidoo se gebruik van geheue minder ooglopend is. Deur verskeie terreine van geheue in die lewens van die fiktiewe karakters te betrek, ontwikkel die romans tot mediums van onthou, nie in die sin van feite van die verlede wat gestoor word nie, maar met die dubbelsinnige doel om die impak van die verlede op die hede te verstaan.

Thesis (MA)-- Stellenbosch University, 2014. / AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Hierdie tesis ondersoek die verhouding tussen die verlede en die hede soos uitgebeeld in Jamal Mahjoub se The Carrier (1998) en Amitav Ghosh se In an Antique Land (1992). Hierdie tekste herverbeel die geskiedenis met die doel om 'n ander toekoms te dink. Hulle vertel alternatiewe geskiedenisse en lewer sodoende kritiek op die Westerse historiografie en die uitbeelding van die Ooste en die Suide daarin. Hierdie tesis sal uit Edward Said se Orientalism (1978) put as 'n manier om die dominante Westerse houdings teenoor die Ooste sowel as die Suide, verteenwoordig deur Afrika, te konseptualiseer soos die liminale karakters in Mahjoub en Ghosh se tekste oor die Indiese Oseaan- en Mediterreense wêrelde beweeg. Beide Mahjoub en Ghosh versplinter hulle verhale in 'n historiese en 'n kontemporêre draad, en verweef hierdie fragmente om sodoende kommentaar te lewer op die dinamiese verhouding tussen die verlede en die hede. Hierdie verhouding sal gekonseptualiseer word deur te put uit Walter Benjamin se konsep van 'n konstellasie verbindingspunte in tyd. Die kartering van verbindings word moontlik gemaak deur die skrywer se verkenning van 'n geskiedenis van verbindings tussen diverse mense in hierdie gebiede. Die alternatiewe geskiedenisse wat hier voorgestel word, onthul pre-koloniale Mediterreense en Indiese Oseaan-handelsnetwerke gebou op uitruiling, wat gelei het tot kosmopolitiese samelewings waarin die klem op verbindings eerder as geopolitiese binêre geval het. Gesprekke tussen verskillende kulture, gelowe en denkskole dryf hierdie verbindings in die historiese verhaallyne. Deur hierdie vergange wêreld en 'n meer vyandige twintigste-eeuse wêreld naas mekaar te stel, wil Mahjoub en Ghosh bevraagteken of die herkonseptualisering van die verlede die herverbeelding van die hede en toekoms moontlik maak, in terme van hoe mense in staat is om oor verskilgrense heen met mekaar te verbind. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This thesis interrogates the relationship between the past and the present, as represented in Jamal Mahjoub's The Carrier (1998) and Amitav Ghosh's In an Antique Land (1992). These texts re-imagine history in order to think a different future. They narrate alternative histories and in the process critique Western historiography and its representation of the East and South. This thesis will draw on Edward Said’s Orientalism (1978) as a way of conceptualising dominant Western attitudes towards the East, as well as the South, represented by Africa, as the liminal characters in Mahjoub and Ghosh's texts move across the Indian Ocean and Mediterranean worlds. Mahjoub and Ghosh both fracture their narratives into a historical and a contemporary thread, interweaving these fragments in order to comment on the dynamic relationship between the past and the present. This relationship will be conceptualised drawing on Walter Benjamin's notion of a constellation connecting points in time. The mapping of connection is enabled by the authors’ exploration of a history of connection between diverse people in these regions. The alternative histories proposed reveal precolonial Mediterranean and Indian Ocean trading networks built on exchange, resulting in cosmopolitan societies emphasising connection rather than geopolitical binaries. Conversations across differences — of culture, religion, and schools of thought — drive these connections in the historical plotlines. By juxtaposing this past world with a more hostile twentieth century world, Mahjoub and Ghosh seek to question whether reconceptualising the past enables the re-imagining of the present and future, in terms of how people are able to connect across boundaries of difference.

Thesis (MA)--Stellenbosch University, 2014. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This thesis is in interested in the potential of (New) Queer Cinema, with its often cited subversive qualities, as a means to delineate the historical and discursive dimensions of an ongoing relationship between the politics of nature and sexual politics, and to articulate the complex array of ideas that result from this relationship. In this thesis, I investigate how a selection of films actively reproduce, question, deconstruct, or reinforce particular constructions of nature and/or epistemologies of (homo)sexuality, often demonstrating such ideas through particular expressive modes, such as nostalgia, mourning, melancholia, and postmodern play, and by referencing certain literary forms, such as the pastoral, georgic and elegy. To facilitate the analysis I outline above, I have chosen to investigate three films which enable me to move from national to transnational and postcolonial cinematic contexts. I read these films alongside a selection of literary/historical texts that I feel inform or preface each filmic text. The first film is James Ivory’s adaptation (1987) of E.M. Forster’s novel, Maurice. The second is Derek Jarman’s elegiac film, The Garden (1990), which I read alongside the English filmmaker’s journal, Modern Nature (1991). And finally for my third chapter I turn to the work of Canadian filmmaker, John Greyson; specifically Proteus (2003), his recent collaboration with South African activist/filmmaker, Jack Lewis. This final filmic text prompts questions of postcoloniality and Eurocentric modes of knowledge production. I provide context for my argument by outlining recent developments in the history of Queer Cinema and by introducing two distinct but related areas of recent academic enquiry – firstly the notion of Queer Ecology (alongside related studies on the “gay pastoral”) and, secondly, the field of Green Film Criticism or Ecocinema. / AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Hierdie tesis handel oor die potensiaal van (Nuwe) “Queer Cinema”, met sy bekende ondermynende eienskappe, om die historiese en diskursiewe dimensies van ’n voortgesette verhouding tussen die politiek van die natuur en van seksualiteit af te beeld, en om die komplekse verskeidenheid van idees wat volg uit hierdie verhouding, te verwoord. In hierdie tesis doen ek ondersoek na die wyse waarop ’n versameling films sekere konstruksies van ‘natuur’ en/of epistemologieë van ‘(homo)seksualiteit’ aktief herproduseer, bevraagteken, dekonstrueer of versterk. Hierdie idees word dikwels uitgebeeld deur middel van sekere ekspressiewe modusse soos nostalgie, rou, melankolie of postmoderne speelsheid, en deur verwysing na sekere literêre vorme of genres soos die pastorale of landelike gedig en die elegie. Die bostaande analise is gebaseer op drie films wat my in staat stel om te beweeg tussen nasionale, transnasionale en postkoloniale kontekste. Ek beskou elk van hierdie films in die lig van ’n gepaardgaande versameling literêre/historiese tekste wat volgens my sentraal staan tot die volle verstaan van die filmiese tekste. Die eerste film is James Ivory se aanpassing (1987) van E.M. Forster se roman, Maurice. Die tweede is Derek Jarman se elegiese film, The Garden (1990), wat ek tesame met hierdie Engelse filmmaker se joernaal, Modern Nature (1991), beskou. Laastens kyk ek na die werk van die Kanadese filmmaker John Greyson, met spesifieke fokus op sy onlangse samewerking met die Suid-Afrikaanse aktivis en filmmaker, Jack Lewis, in die verfilming van Proteus (2003). Hierdie finale filmiese teks vra vrae oor postkolonialiteit en Eurosentriese vorme van kennisproduksie. Ek kontekstualiseer my argument deur ʼn beskrywing te bied van die onlangse verwikkelinge in die geskiedenis van “Queer Cinema” en van twee afsonderlike, maar verwante akademiese gebiede wat onlangs aandag geniet, naamlik die idee van “Queer” Ekologie (en die nou-geassosieerde ‘gay pastorale’) en Groen Film Kritiek of “Ecocinema”.

Thesis (DLitt (English))--University of Stellenbosch, 2008. / This study attempts a re-reading and re-evaluation of the work of black South African short story writers from R.R.R. Dhlomo (circa 1930) to Zoë Wicomb (at the end of the 1980s). The short story, along with the autobiography, was the dominant genre of black writing during this period, and the reasons for this are examined, as well as the ways in which black writers adapt or transform this familiar literary genre. The title – “Writing Black” – alludes to well-known works by Richard Rive (Writing Black) and J.M. Coetzee (White Writing), and foregrounds the issue of race and racialised identities. While one would not want to neglect other factors (class, gender), it is hardly possible to underestimate the impact of racial classification during the apartheid era. However, the difficulty of asserting the unproblematic existence of a homogeneous “black” identity also becomes evident. The approach adopted here reflects the need to recognise both the singularity of particular texts (their “literariness”) as well as their embeddedness in their particular place and time (their “worldliness” or their “circumstantiality”). Literary texts are complex verbal artefacts of an unusual kind, but they cannot be separated from their contexts of production and reception; black writing in this country would be largely incomprehensible if this were not taken into account. Close attention is given to the obvious spatial, temporal and ideological shifts in South African cultural production during this period, and to the two major phases of black writing (the Sophiatown and District Six writers of the 50s, and the Staffrider writers of the 70s and 80s). The work of these writers is not, however, subsumed into a political meta-narrative. In particular, this study resists the tendency to lump the work of black writers into one large, undifferentiated category (“protest writing” or “spectacular” representation). This approach has had the effect of flattening out or homogenising a body of work that is much more varied and interesting than many critical accounts would suggest. Finally, the contribution of three writers of the “interregnum” (Ndebele, Matlou, Wicomb) is explored. What is of particular interest is their break from established conventions of representation: their work reveals a willingness to resist over-simplification, to experiment, and to explore issues of identity and gender. By examining these texts from the vantage point of the post-apartheid present, one is able to arrive at an enhanced understanding of the form that black writing took under apartheid, and the pressures to which it was responding.

Thesis (PhD)--University of Stellenbosch, 2001. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This dissertation is an interdisciplinary study of various historical novels which dealt to a greater or lesser degree with the Great Trek and were written between the 1840s and the 1930s in Dutch, Afrikaans and English but with particular emphasis on H.P. Lamont's War, Wine and Women and Stuart Cloete's Turning Wheels (1937). The analysis of all these fictional reconstructions focuses on the portrayal of the Voortrekkers found in them. Much attention is also paid to the historical contexts in which the two principal works in question were written and the great controversies which they occasioned because both of their authors had had the temerity to challenge the long-established myth of the heroic Voortrekkers, one of the holiest of the iconic cows in the barns of their Afrikaner descendants. Chapter I, "Introduction", is a statement of the purpose of the study, its place in the context of analyses of the history of Afrikaner nationalism, its structure and the sources on which it is based. Chapter II, "The Unfolding of the Myth of the Heroic Voortrekkers", traces its evolution from the 1830s to the 1930s and explores how both English-speaking South Africans and Afrikaners, especially Gustav PrelIer, purposefully contributed to it. Also highlighted in this chapter is the significance of the Great Trek Centenary and the events leading up to it in the middle and late 1930s in intensifying Afrikaner nationalism. Chapter III, "The Heroic Myth in Early Dutch and Afrikaans Novels about the Great Trek", considers especially how these works were used as vehicles for placing before Afrikaners the historic virtues of their ancestors both to provide models for emulation and to stimulate their ethnic pride. Chapter IV, "Sympathetic English Reconstructions of the Great Trek", deals with two novels, Eugenie de Kalb's Far Enough and Francis Brett Young's They Seek a Country, both of which reproduced the heroic myth to some extent. Chapter V, "Rendezvous with Disaster? The South Africa in Which Lamont Wrote War, Wine and Women" establishes the context of intensifying Afrikaner nationalism which this immigrant from the United Kingdom encountered in the late 1920s when he accepted a lectureship at the University of Pretoria and why this context was hostile to a novel which was critical of Afrikanerdom. Chapter VI, "Wa1~ Wine and Women: Its General Context and Commentary on South Africa" explores how this work, conceived as a "war book" dealing with the 1914-1918 conflict in Europe, depicted both Englishmen and Afrikaners negatively. Chapter VII, "Academic Freedom vs. Afrikaner Nationalism: The Consequential Strife over War, Wine and Women" deals with the hostile reception of Lamont's pseudonymously published novel, the physical assault on him and his dismissal from his lectureship at the University of Pretoria. Chapter VIII, "The Rhetoric of Revenge in Lamont's Halcyon Days in Africa", explores how the author, after relurning lo England, used his pen as a weapon for striking back al his Afrikaans foes in South Africa. Chapter IX, "Stuart Cloete's Portrayal of the Voortrekkers in Turning U'heels", focuses on the portrayal of various ethnic types in his gallery of characters. Chapter X, "The Con troversy over Turning U'heels", handles the hostile and apparently orchestrated reaction to Cloete's book and how it was eventually banned. Chapter XI, "Conclusion: Quod Eral Demonstrandum", summarises several thematic findings which a detailed examination of the novels in their historical context yields. / AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Hierdie verhandeling is 'n interdissiplinêre studie van verskeie historiese romans waarin daar in 'n mindere ofmeerdere mate op die Groot Trek gefokus word en wat geskryfis tussen die 1840's en die 1930's in Nederlands, Afrikaans en Engels, maar met die klem op H. P. Lamont se War, Wine and Wamen en Stuart Cloete se Turning Wheels (1937) in die besonder. Die analise van al hierdie fiktiewe rekonstruksies fokus op die uitbeelding van die Voortrekkers daarin. Daar word ook in die besonder aandag gegee aan die historiese kontekste waarbinne hierdie twee hoofwerke geskryfis en die groot polemiek daarrondom, omdat beide outeurs die vermetelheid gehad het om die lank reeds gevestigde mite van die heldhaftige Voortrekkers, een van die heiligste ikoniese koeie in die skure van die Afrikanernageslagte, uit te daag. Hoofstuk I, "Introduction", stel die doel van die studie, waar dit staan in die konteks van analises van die geskiedenis van Afrikanernasionalisme, die skruktuur en die bronne waarop dit gebaseer is. Hoofstuk II, "The Unfolding of the Myth of the Herioc Voortrekkers", volg die evolusie van Afrikanernasionalisme van die 1830's tot die 1930's en ondersoek op beide Engelssprekende Suid-Afrikaners en Afrikaners, veral Gustav Preller, doelgerig hiertoe bygedra het. In hierdie hoofstuk word daar ook beklemtoon hoe betekenisvol die honderdjarige herdenking van die Groot Trek en die gebeure wat daartoe aanleiding gegee het gedurende die middel- en laat 1930's, bygedra het tot die versterking van Afrikanernasionalisme. Hoofstuk III, "The Heroic Myth in Early Dutch and Afrikaans Novels about the Great Trek", bespreek veral hoe hierdie werke gebruik is om aan Afrikaners die historiese deugsaamheid van hulle voorvaders voor te hou en wat as voorbeelde moet dien wat nagestreef moet word en om hulle etniese trots te stimuleer. Hoofstuk IV, "Sympathetic English Reconstructions of the Great Trek", bespreek twee romans, Far Enough van Eugenie de Kalb en TheySeek a Country van Francis Brett Young, wat altwee die heroïse mite in 'n sekere mate herproduseer. Hoofstuk V, "Rendezvous with Disaster? The South Africa in Which Lamont Wrote War, Wine and Women" vestig die konteks van groeiende Afrikanernasionalisme wat hierdie immigrant van die Verenigde Koninkryk in die laat 1920's teëgekom het toe hy 'n lektoraat aan die Universiteit van Pretoria aanvaar het, en hoekom hierdie konteks vyandiggesind was teenoor 'n roman wat krities was teenoor die Afrikanerdom. Hoofstuk VI, "Wa1~ Wine and Women: Its General Context and Commentary on South Africa" ondersoek hoe hierdie werk, beskou as 'n "oorlogsboek" wat handeloor die 1914-1918 konflik in Europa, beide die Engelse en die Afrikaners in 'n negatiewe lig gestel het. Hoofstuk VII, "Academic Freedom vs. Afrikaner Nationalism: The Consequential Strife over War, Wine and Women" skenk aandag aan die vyandige ontvangs van Lamont se roman (gepubliseer onder 'n skuilnaam), die fisieke aanval op hom en sy ontslag as lektor van die Universiteit van Pretoria. Hoofstuk VIII, "The Rhetoric of Revenge in Lamont's Halcyon Days inAfrica", ondersoekhoe die outeur, na hy na Engeland teruggekeer het, sy pen as wapen gebruik het in 'n teenaanval op sy Afrikaanse vyande in Suid-Afrika. Hoofstuk IX, "Stuart Cloete's Portrayal of the Voortrekkers in Turning Wheels", fokus op die uitbeelding van verskeie etniese tipes in sy gallery karakters. Hoofstuk X, "The Controversy over Tumng Wheels", bespreek die vyandige en klaarblyklike georkestreerde reaksie op Cloete se boek, en hoe dit uiteindelik verban is. Hoofstuk XI, "Conclusion: Quod Era! Demonstrandum", bied 'n opsomming van verskei tematiese bevindinge aan, wat deur 'n gedetaileerde ondersoek van die romans opgelewer is.

Using the theoretical idea of ‘writing between’ to describe the condition of the travelling subject, this study attempts to chart some of the literary, intellectual and cultural connections that exist(ed) between black South African intellectuals and writers, and the experiences of their African- American counterparts in their common movements towards civil liberty, enfranchisement and valorised consciousness. The years 1913-1936 saw important historical events taking place in the United States, South Africa and the world – and their effects on the peoples of the African diaspora were signficant. Such events elicited unified black diasporic responses to colonial hegemony. Using theories of transatlantic/transnational cultural negotiation as a starting point, conceptualisations that map out, and give context to, the connections between transcontinental black experiences of slavery and subjugation, this study seeks to re-envisage such black South African and African-American intellectual discourses through reading them anew. These texts have been re-covered and re-situated, are both published and unpublished, and engage the notion of travel and the instability of transatlantic voyaging in the liminal state of ‘writing between’. With my particular regional focus, I explore the cultural and intellectual politics of these diasporic interrelations in the form of case studies of texts from several genres, including fiction and autobiography. They are: the travel writings of Xhosa intellectual, DDT Jabavu, with a focus on his 1913 journey to the United States; an analysis of Ethelreda Lewis’s novel, Wild Deer (1933), which imagines the visit of an African-American musician, Paul Robeson-like figure to South Africa; and Eslanda Goode Robeson’s representation of her African Journey (1945) to the country in 1936, and the traveller’s gaze as expressed through the ethnographic imagination, or the anthropological ‘eye’ in the text. / Thesis (Ph.D.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2008.

This thesis discovers the spiritual and aesthetic vision of poet-journalist Robert Grendon (c. 1867–1949), a man of Irish-Herero parentage. It situates him in the wider Swedenborgian discourse regarding African ‘regeneration’. While preserving the overall diachronic continuity of a literary biography, it treats his principal thematic preoccupations synchronically. The objective has been to show the imaginative ways in which he employs his rich and diverse religio-philosophical background to account for South Africa’s social problems, to pass judgement upon the principal players, and to point out an alternative path to a brighter future. Chapter 1 looks at Emanuel Swedenborg’s mystical revelations on the heightened spiritual proclivity of the ‘celestial’ African, and the consequences of New Jerusalem’s descent over the heart of Africa, which Swedenborg believed to be taking place, undetected by Europeans, around 1770. It also examines how those pronouncements were received in Europe, America, and—most particularly—in Africa. Chapter 2 examines the circumstances surrounding Grendon’s birth and childhood in what is today Namibia. It takes note of a family tradition that Joseph Grendon married a daughter of Maharero, a prominent Herero chief, and it looks at Robert Grendon’s views on ‘miscegenation’. Chapter 3 deals with Grendon’s schooling at Zonnebloem College, Cape Town. Chapter 4 describes his cultural, sporting, and political activities in Kimberley and Uitenhage in the 1890s, bringing to light his editorship of Coloured South African in 1899. It also considers his conception of ‘progress’. Chapter 5 looks at some early poems, including the domestic verse-drama, ‘Melia and Pietro’ (1897–98). It also contextualizes a single, surviving editorial from Coloured South African. Chapter 6 treats Grendon’s tour de force, the epic poem, Paul Kruger’s Dream (1902), as well as his personal involvement in the South African War, and his spiritualized account of the ‘Struggle for Supremacy’ in South Africa. Chapter 7 relates to Grendon’s fruitful Natal period, 1900–05: his headmastership of the Edendale Training Institute and of Ohlange College, and his editorship of Ilanga’s English columns during the foreign absence of the editor-in-chief, John L. Dube, from February 1904 to May 1905. Chapter 8 analyzes some of the shorter and medium-length poems written in Natal, 1901–04. Chapter 9 is a close examination of the poem, ‘Pro Aliis Damnati’, showing its Swedenborgian basis, and how it dramatizes Swedenborg’s concept of ‘scortatory’ love. Chapter 10 describes Grendon’s early years in Swaziland from 1905. Chapter 11 deals with his period as editor of Abantu-Batho in Johannesburg, 1915–16. Chapter 12 describes his last years in Swaziland, and his relationship with the Swazi royal family. / Thesis (Ph.D.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2007.

Autobiographical writing acquired increasing importance during the apartheid period, with greater numbers of autobiographical texts being published by a more representative range of South Africans across race, class and gender categories. This thesis analyzes the implications of shifts in autobiographical production, in English, during the years 1948-1994 through the examination of selected texts. The readings are informed by poststructuralism, modified by information about indigenous black South African cultural practices, as well as by input supplied by some of the autobiographical texts themselves. This theoretical approach may be referred to as a "pratique de metissage" (Glissant). The texts selected for close reading are from a field of over 120 autobiographical texts. They were chosen for their ability to illustrate important trends in South African autobiographical writing, specifically with regard to the three constituent parts of autobiography: autos, bios, and graphe. The chapter dealing with the depiction of self interrogates the hierarchized discourses of male-biased humanism in Roy Campbell's Light on a Dark Horse (1951). In Ellen Kuzwayo's Call Me Woman (1985) I analyze the melding of the conceptual frameworks of indigenous black cultures and Western individualism by which the autobiographical subject is defined. Breyten Breytenbach's The True Confessions of an Albino Terrorist (1984) is read as an exploration of the postmodernist decentred self. In the chapter focusing on the portrayal of life experiences, I examine the ways in which the narrator of Albert Luthuli's Let My People Go (1962) seeks to secure the reader's approval of his version of recent South African history; while the analysis of the sub-genre referred to here as worker autobiography is principally concerned with the politics of life-writing. In Chapter 5, I look at how Godfrey Moloi's My Life: Volume One (1987) uses the discourses of popular American movies of the 40s and 50s in order to validate a self victimized by racism, and also at the ways in which Lyndall Gordon's Shared Lives (1992) probes the limits and possibilities of biography through autobiographical speculation. In general, apartheid autobiography moves away from individualism to contribute, through various means, to social and political change. / Thesis (Ph.D.)-University of Natal, Durban, 1994.

This research provides an analytical reading of four contemporary novels, in a transcultural study of magical realism and dreams. Two of the novels, Ben Okri's The Famished Road and its sequel Songs of Enchantment, examine dreams through magical realism in postcolonial African literature. The third novel, Toni Morrison's Beloved, is used to depict the use of memory within an African-American magical realist novel. And the fourth narrative is Irvine Welsh's Marabou Stork Nightmares, which focuses on the use of hallucination within what can be seen as a magical realist mode. The analysis of these novels examines certain aspects of magical realism, including the use of the subconscious, focusing primarily on dream, memory and hallucination. In examining this topic, I aim to suggest that the use of the subconscious, within this literature, allows the writer to comment on a particular society. As can be seen in previous studies of magical realism, the writer is able to express his or her dissatisfaction with society by destabilising conventionally accepted truths. A writer can therefore convey a sense that the surface of a particular culture or society is a facade, disguising certain hidden truths, which require a more in depth examination, in order to more fully understand the workings behind that society. The subconscious works to reveal these hidden realities, and is therefore a mode of resistance in that it allows the writers an avenue through which to express their dissatisfaction with their particular society. This is achieved through the exploring and deconstruction of certain boundaries within the novels which, along with several other factors, essentially concords the magical realism inherent in these texts. It is additionally enhanced through the use of the device of the subconscious, which allows the writers to transgress borders, and further explore their particular cultures. Through the use of novels from various contemporary societies, I hope to establish the fact that the subconscious, and therefore magical realism, is a transcultural technique, in that it traverses a multitude of cultures, without being specific to any one in particular. While the use of dreams requires a culture specific interpretation, the use of the subconscious in this literature can be seen as a global technique of expressing dissatisfaction within these societies. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2005.