No abstract available. / Thesis (Ph.D.)-University of Natal, Durban, 1995.

As a conjunctural construct located between politics, society and art, the popular-democratic construes the resistance literature of the 1970s and 1980s as being expressive of an entire social movement to end oppression and transform society. Through the construct of the popular-democratic voices that have been marginalised, fragmented, dislocated, excluded or otherwise silenced can be seen in relation to each other and to the sources of oppression. The introductory chapter addresses the characteristics of the popular-democratic, and the caveats and challenges that attend it. The remaining nine chapters are divided into three sections of three chapters each. The first section examines repression of different types: structural repression, coercive repression/state violence and cultural repression. An important index of the structural oppression of apartheid is the home, which a range of resistance writers addressed in depth when they dealt with city life and the townships, forced removals, homeless people, rural struggles, migrants and hostels, commuting, the "homelands" and exile. The coercive apparatus of the state, the security forces, were used against dissidents in the neighbouring states and within the country. The literature addresses the effects of the cross border raids, assassinations, abductions and bombings. The literature that deals with internal repression examines the effects of the mass detentions, restrictions, listings and bannings as well as the impact of the states of emergency, P.W. Botha's "total strategy", and the actions of the death squads. An examination of the conservative liberal constructions of resistance literature helps to clarify why resistance literature remains inadequately conceptualised ("Soweto poets", "protest literature") although there has been a vibrant and challenging corpus. The way in which the audience of resistance literature is constructed is identified as a key problem. The responses of various resistance writers, in poems, interviews, letters and articles, to conservative liberal prescriptions are contextualised. The middle section of the argument focuses on the organisations that developed to challenge oppression. Through an examination of the literature that was influenced by the activism and the cultural and philosophical production of Black Consciousness, it is apparent that the movement was continuous with the rest of the struggle for liberation. The satirical poems that challenged both the state and the conservative liberals offer powerful displays of verbal wit. The struggles of workers are addressed through texts that deal with their plight and call for worker organisations. The trade union COSA TV paid close attention to the development of worker culture, which proved to be critical when the state cracked down on the resistance organisations. The production values and effects of very different plays about strikes, The Long March and Township Fever receive particular attention. The rise of the United Democratic Front (UDF) is anticipated in literature that celebrates the potential of ordinary South Africans to achieve political significance through unity. Constructed out of substantial ideological pluralism, the UDF arose as an act of political imagination and organisational strategy. The ideological convergence between the UDF and COSATU on the question of bidding for state power constituted a turning-point in a nation built on the intolerance of difference. The last section focuses more closely on the productive responses of the culture of resistance to specific aspects of repression, such as the censorship of the media and the arts, the killings of activists, the struggles around education and the keeping of historical records (which enable an interrogation and reconstruction of discursive and interpretive authority). / Thesis (Ph.D.)-University of Durban-Westville, 1998.

My concern in this thesis is to assess if one can justifiably say that there is a unique black South African feminist perspective. I have chosen to focus on the feminist perspectives of two renowned black female African writers: Bessie Head (1937-1988) and Ellen Kuzwayo (1914-). I have several reasons for selecting these two writers for my investigation. Head and Kuzwayo, though obviously not exact contemporaries chronologically speaking, were contemporaries in the sense that they lived through, and wrote during, the time of apartheid rule in South Africa. Both can be considered as revolutionaries in their own right. Both used the traditional story telling literary device and the autobiographical genre differently but strikingly. They could both be called social feminists because they were both concerned with social justice, equality, racism, personal identity and upliftment of the community. I argue that the works of these writers have shown defmable feminist perspectives that suggest that, indeed, there is a South African Black Women's feminist perspective. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of Durban-Westville, 2003.

In this thesis I set out WB Yeats' s conception of Irish national identity as a non-essentialist, inclusive, and imaginative construct. I do so against the backdrop of Edward Said's construction of Yeats, within the field of postcolonial theory, as a poet of decolonization who stops short of imagining Ireland's full political liberation from colonial rule. I propound that, on the contrary, Yeats does imagine full liberation in proposing his Doctrine of the Mask as a method for the creation of what, I argue, is an emphatically 'postcolonial' national identity. What this identity entails is elucidated by an examination of key issues of 'nation-ness' explored by various theorists, particularly Benedict Anderson; the historical contextualization of Yeats in the Ireland of his times; and a close reading of particularly Yeats's two major 'occult' works: Per Amica Si/entia Lunae and A Vision. Overall, I make several important contributions to 'postcolonial' Yeats scholarship - a far from exhausted field of study. Firstly, I demonstrate that the incorporation of the modernist Yeats's 'occult' dimension - a dimension disparaged and dismissed by Said - into Said's construction of Yeats as a 'postcolonial' figure serves to bolster rather than undermine this construction. Secondly, I demonstrate that, while Said claims Frantz Fanon goes further than Yeats in imagining full liberation in the colonial context, there are in fact striking parallels between Fanon's narrative of liberation in particularly The Wretched a/the Earth and Yeats's 'occult' works, particularly A Vision. The comparison with Fanon, I show, underlines that Yeats does indeed imagine full liberation, especially at the level of Irish national identity. Thirdly, I demonstrate the link, heretofore unnoted by Yeats critics, between Matthew Amold' s defining of the Irish as racially inferior and Yeats's liberationist discourse in Per Amica Silentia Lunae and A Vision. I show that Yeats subversively mobilises Arnold's terms to debunk Amold and buttress a distinctly Yeatsian conception of Irish national identity. Lastly, I highlight the 'Yeatsian' complexion of the contemporary South African context, arguing that the consideration ofYeats's conception of Irish national identity may assist South Africans in forging a nonessentialist, inclusive national identity and national unity. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, 2008.

This thesis is a literary thematic analysis of Mark Behr's novels The Smell of Apples (1996) and Embrace (2000). Through these novels, Behr explores the nature of masculine identities and the ways in which they are developed through a process of adolescent males observing and interacting with their parents and the society in which they live. The development of the two protagonists is traced and white hegemonic attitudes to masculinity in South Africa are exposed. The novels are of importance as these hegemonic attitudes continue to exist within South Africa today. The focus of this analysis is on white adolescent masculinities and the ways in which Behr illustrates the effects of apartheid society on their development. The study makes an in-depth analysis of the plot and themes and the way in which these guide the reader into a critical awareness of socially constructed masculine identities. Each of the four themes - namely, sexuality, race, gender and land - is explored in this thesis and careful consideration is given to the techniques Behr uses in his writing. Of importance to this thesis are the interrelationships between character, themes and the context of the novels. While the novels are not regarded as a case study, this thesis repeatedly demonstrates the socio-political awareness that Behr uses in order to offer his reader insight into the significant realities that have faced adolescent males as they construct their identities. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2007.

Fictional Constructions of Grey Street by Selected South African Indian Writers. This thesis explores the fictional constructions of Grey Street by selected South African Indian writers to establish a deeper understanding of the connection between writers, place and identity in the South African Indian context. The concepts of 'place' and 'space' are of particular importance to this thesis. Michel Foucault's (1980) theories on space and power, Frantz Fanon's (1952) work on the connection between race and spatial politics, and Pierre Bourdieu's (1990) concept of 'habitus' are drawn on in this thesis in order to understand the ramifications of the spatial segregation of different race groups in colonial and apartheid South Africa. The specific kind of place focused on in this thesis is the city. Foucault's (1977, 1980) theorisation of the Panopticon is used to explain the apartheid government's panoptic planning of the South African city. As a counterpoint to this notion of panoptic urban ordering, Jonathan Raban's Soft City (1974), Michel de Certeau's "Walking in the city" (1984) and Walter Benjamin's The Arcades Project (2002) are analysed to explore an alternative way of engaging with city space. These theorists privilege the perspective of the walker in the city, suggesting that the city cannot be governed by top-down urban planning as it is constantly being re-made by the city's pedestrians on the ground. The South African city is an interesting site for a study of this kind as it has, since the colonial era, been an intensely contested space. This dissertation looks primarily at the South African Indian experience of the city of Durban which is a characteristically diasporic one. The theories of diasporic culture by Vijay Mishra (1996) and Avtar Brah (1996) form the foundation for a discussion of the Indian diasporas in the South African colonial and apartheid urban context. Two major Indian diasporic groups are identified: the old Indian diasporas and the new Indian diasporas. Each group experiences the city in different ways which is important in this study which looks at how different Indian diasporic experiences of the city shape the construction of Grey Street in fiction. One of the arenas in which diasporic histories are played out, and thus colonial, nationalist histories are challenged, is the space of fiction, Fiction provides diasporic groups with a textual space in which to record, and thus freeze, their collective memories; memories that are vital in challenging the hegemonic 'nationalist' collective memories often imposed on them. Christopher Shaw and Malcolm Chase's (1989) work on nostalgia is useful in this thesis which proposes that the collective memories of diasporic groups are quintessentially nostalgic. This is significant as the fictional constructions of place in the primary texts selected are remembered and re-membered through a nostalgic lens. The fictional works selected for this thesis include Imraan Coovadia's The Wedding (2001) and Aziz Hassim's The Lotus People (2002). Although other Indian writers have represented Grey Street in their works, including Kesevaloo Goonam in Coolie Doctor (1991), Phyllis Naidoo in Footprints in Grey Street (2002), Mariam Akabor in Flat 9 (2006) and Ravi Govender in Down Memory Lane (2006), the two novels selected respond most fully to the theories raised in this thesis. However, the other texts are referred to in relation to the selected texts in order to get a fuller picture of the Indian South African perspective of Grey Street. The selected primary texts are analysed in this dissertation in their historical context and therefore a brief history of Indians in South Africa is provided. The time period covered ranges from 1886 with the arrival of the first Indian indentured labourers to Natal to present day. Although this thesis focuses largely on the past and present experiences of Indian South Africans in Grey Street, questions are raised regarding future directions in Indian writing in the area. Thus, attention is also given to forthcoming novels by Hassim, Coovadia and Akabor. Research such as I am proposing can contribute to the debate on the cultural representation of urban space in South Africa and hopefully stimulate further studies of Indian literary production centered on writers, place and identity in the country. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, 2007.

This dissertation is a study of women and utterance in contexts of violence in the three selected novels written by the late Yvonne Vera: Nehanda (1993), Without a Name (1994), and The Stone Virgins (2002). A study of the representation of women in particular is appropriate because their role in the making of the history of Zimbabwe has been deliberately undermined or ignored by 'patriotic' historians and politicians alike. This study incorporates a historical and post-colonial feminist analysis of women and their empowerment through utterance in Vera's novels. Their achieving utterance is seen as a way of countering a past tendency to focus on women being victims of patriarchal ideologies with little being done to expose the degree and nature of women's resistance against oppressive, socially constructed gender relations. The kind of violence experienced by Vera's women is both physical (rape and murder) and psychological. Two dimensions of utterance have been explored in this study. Firstly, the study examined what the characters can and cannot say about their conditions of suffering. This entailed an examination of their cultural and contextual limitations as well as their personal difficulties. Secondly, the study investigated how Vera, writing some fifteen years after the events she depicts and with the advantage of hindsight, represents her women characters as agents of their own recovery from the violation perpetrated against them. This involved an analysis of Vera's utterance and her thematic concerns, especially her revisioning of history in breaking the silence of her women characters. Positioned in relation to existing critical works on Vera's novels, this study's contribution to the critical debate has been its demonstration of how Vera, through the use of her narrative technique and unique poetic style was able to challenge the conditions of women in the past in a way that has relevance to present-day Zimbabwe and offers possibilities for the future Zimbabwe. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, 2006.

This dissertation comprises an exploration of the concept of home and its link to propriety as it was imposed on women, focussing specifically on Jane Eyre and Villette by Charlotte Bronte. These novels share a preoccupation with notions of 'home' and what this means to the female protagonists. The process of writing on the part of the author, Charlotte Bronte, and the act of first-person narration on the part of the two female protagonists, Jane Eyre and Lucy Snowe, is significant in that the "muted culture" of women (Showalter 1999: xx) of the nineteenth century was given authorial and authoritative power in their stories. Questions of identity and location developed from Jane Eyre's and Lucy Snowe's being orphans, penniless and without homes. Subsequently issues of ownership and self-sufficiency emerged in their stories, all of which found particular focus in the home. This "muted culture", examined through the theories of marxism and new historicism, is also illuminated by a feminist analysis of Jane Eyre and Villette which reveals that the marginal female figures are entitled to, or deserving of, the privileges of home and selfhood only once they have made some sacrifice for this "unthinkable goal of mature freedom" (Gilbert & Gubar 2000:339). The exploration of 'home' finds resonance in a post-colonial context, as Bronte encompassed marginal figures in her society who remained homeless, bereft of their stories due to the effect of drastically "interrupted experiences" (Ndebele 1996: 28) in the process of identity formation. The situated analysis of the concept of home operates in two contexts in this thesis, that of nineteenth-century Britain and twentieth-century South Africa. Njabulo Ndebele states that South Africans have been marked by the experience of homelessness, "The loss of homes! It is one of the greatest of South African stories yet to be told" (1996: 28-9). By drawing on Bronte to illuminate the concept of home, a South African reader is able to further an understanding of the multi-faceted nature of this concept and to see that the new possibilities claimed for marginal figures at the periphery may have their origins in the representation of an earlier woman writer's "double-edged" (Eagleton 1988: 73) representation of 'home' . / Thesis (M.A.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, 2005.

This dissertation studies understandings, definitions and uses of truth in autobiography, looking specifically at Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Confessions and Dave Eggers' A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. In order for a text to be considered an autobiography some concept of truthfulness is necessary; however, truth is not always objective and verifiable. Concepts of absolute truth, factual truth, personal truth and essential truth impede a simple understanding of the notion of truth. Furthermore, different circumstances and contexts may affect our understanding and application of concepts of truth. In his autobiography Rousseau claims he will tell the truth as best he can while Eggers states that part of his work is exaggerated or fabricated. Nevertheless, both are classified as autobiographical accounts, thus implicitly claiming that they are representing truths. As some concept of truth is necessary in order for a text to be considered autobiographical, readers' expectations of autobiography will include an expectation of how concepts of truth will be deployed. While readers may accept inadvertent inaccuracies due to faulty memory, deliberate misinformation will not be accepted. Readers expect that the information and events chronicled in the autobiography will be those that best depict the person of the autobiographer. In my dissertation I will look at how Rousseau and Eggers deploy the truth of themselves and their experiences and how this deployment of truth seeks to direct the readers' response to the texts. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2008.

When Kate arrives at Heathrow airport, her best friend Jake convinces her to go clubbing with him. And so starts her journey into London's clubbing subculture with Jake as her guide. The novel is structured around Kate's exposure to the ethos of the different clubs she visits. The narration is propelled by the tension set up between the potentially salacious material these experiences provide and the 'flat' account given of it by the narrator. Kate's reserved perspective plays off against the usual expectations one has of the 'confessional' mode. This becomes particularly telling as she recounts Jake's spinning off into increasingly destructive patterns. The reader is left to deal with the cycle of spectacle and experience presented in the work on his or her own terms. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of Natal, Durban, 2003.