Thesis (M.A.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2009. / Full text also available online. Scroll down for electronic link.

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.

The thesis provides a feminist analysis of the Zimbabwean women writer Tsitsi Dangarembga’s novel, Nervous Conditions (1988), reading the novel as a critique of African patriarchy. The thesis examines the different ways in which African patriarchy broadly manifests itself regarding the subaltern position of women. It then analyses a range of feminist theories, extracting from them concepts useful to an understanding of the novel. Finally, the thesis analyses in detail Dangarembga’s novel in the light of an understanding of African patriarchy and feminist theories. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2009.

Includes bibliographical references (leaves 84-91) / My thesis focuses on the representation of marginalized voices and trauma in the selected fiction of Tsitsi Dangarembga and Yvonne Vera. I analyze three novels written by the Yvonne Vera—Without a Name (1994), Under the Tongue(1996) and The Stone Virgins(2002) set during the Zimbabwe liberation struggle period and postcolonial Zimbabwe dissident era respectively and Nervous Conditions(1988) and its sequel, The Book of Not (1996), by Dangarembga set during the 1960s to 1970s colonial Rhodesia period (the colonial name for Zimbabwe) and during the period of white‐minority rule in Rhodesia to the attainment of independence in 1980. I analyze these novels from the feminist/womanist, gender and postcolonial literary models. The rational for grouping these theoretical models in the analysis in this thesis is that they commonly highlight from a gender perspective the complex factors which oppress and marginalize women in the colonial and postcolonial contexts in which the two authors set their writings. These literary paradigms highlight the oppression of women from an African perspective and all acknowledge the need to address all factors which oppress and subordinate women (gender, race, class) if total emancipation for them is to be achieved. I also posit that Vera and Dangarembga offer discourses that challenge the silencing of narratives of oppression and violation in their novels selected for analysis in this thesis. The thesis has five chapters. In Chapter 1, I set out the argument of the thesis and give a brief history of gendered colonialism and the historical period which provides a setting for the fiction of the two authors. Next, I describe the conceptual framework I will use in analyzing the works of the two postcolonial Zimbabwe female writers. Then I will outline the research questions and hypothesis and expose the research methodology and approach that will serve as my vehicle for data collection, analysis and interpretation. In Chapter 2, I will focus on gender, class and race and discuss the ways Dangarembga explores these factors in Nervous Conditions and The Book of Not. I will also discuss innovate ways women explore to champion their freedom and voice in the fiction of Dangarembga. Chapter 3 focuses on the novels of Yvonne Vera— Without a Name, Under the Tongue and The stone Virgins —which articulate narratives of violated subjects and silenced voices. I will discuss the ways Vera explores to show how narratives of violated subjects are silenced by patriarchy, colonialism and masculine narratives of nationalism in these novels. Chapter 4 focuses on narratives of trauma. Using theories of trauma, I will analyze Without a Name, Under the Tongue and The Stone Virgins by Vera and show how these narratives articulate colonial and postcolonial trauma and female child trauma. I will also discuss The Book of Not by Dangarembga and show how the novel articulates colonial and racial trauma. My discussion of the novels of Vera and Dangarembga in this chapter will show that these novels work out traumatic experiences in the colonial and postcolonial eras and will also reveal the challenges of representing tra / English Studies / M.A. (English)

This study examines selected works by four white female Zimbabwean writers: Alexandra Fuller, Lauren Liebenberg, Bryony Rheam and Lauren St John, in light of the controversy over the spate of white memoirs which followed the violent confiscation of white farms in Zimbabwe from 2000 onwards. The controversy hinges on the notion that white memoir writers exploit the perceived victimhood of white Zimbabweans in the international sphere, and nostalgically recall a time of belonging – as children in Rhodesia – which fails to address the fraught colonial history which is directly related to the current political climate of the country. I argue that such critiques are too generalised, and I regard the selected texts as primarily critical of the values and lifestyles of white Rhodesians/Zimbabweans. The texts I have selected include a range of autobiographical and fictional writing, or memoirs and pseudo-memoirs, and I focus on form as a medium enabling an exploration of identity. The ways in which these authors conform to and adapt particular narratives of becoming is examined in each chapter, with a particular focus on the transition from innocence to experience, the autobiography, and the Bildungsroman. Gender is a recurring point of interest: in each case the female selves/protagonists are situated in terms of the family, which, in reflecting social values, is a key site of conflict. In regard to trends in white African writing, I explore the white African (farm) childhood memoir and the confessional mode. Ultimately I maintain that while the texts may be classified as white writing, as they are fundamentally concerned with white identity, and therefore evince certain limitations of perspective and form, including clichéd tendencies, all the writers interrogate white identity and the fictional texts more self-reflexively deconstruct tropes of white writing.

Please read the abstract in the 00front part of this document / Thesis (DLitt (English))--University of Pretoria, 2007. / English / unrestricted

Bibliography: leaves 215-230 / This thesis uses a postcolonial framework to analyse the construction and representation of identities of Shona women in selected black and white Zimbabwean-authored fiction in English published between 1890 and 2015. The study traces meanings associated with Shona women’s identities as ascribed by dominant powers in every epoch to create narratives that reflect the power dynamics. The thesis argues that identities are complex, characterized by various intersections such as race, gender, class and ethnicity. Shona women have to negotiate their identities in various circumstances resulting in shifting multiple identities. The thesis focuses on how such identities are represented in the selected texts. Findings reveal that the colonial project sought to write the Shona women out of existence, and when they appeared negative images of dirt, slothfulness and immorality were ascribed to them. These images continued after independence to justify male dominance of women. However, the lived experience of women shows they have agency and tend to shift identities in relation to specific circumstances. Shona women’s identities are dynamic and multifarious as they aim at relevance in their socioeconomic and political circumstances. Representations of Shona women’s identities are therefore influenced by the aim of the one representing them. All representations are therefore arbitrary and must be interrogated in order to deconstruct meaning and understand the power dynamics at play. The works analysed are Olive Schreiner’s Trooper Peter Halket of Mashonaland (1897), Doris Lessing’s The Grass is Singing (1950), Yvonne Vera’s Nehanda (1993), Cythia Marangwanda’s Shards (2014), Valerie Tagwira’s The Uncertainty of Hope (2006), Violet Masilo’s The African Tea Cosy (2010), Eric Harrison’s Jambanja (2006), Dangarembgwa’s The Book of Not (2006), Christopher Mlalazi’s Running with Mother (2012) and Brian Chikwava’s Harare North (2009). / English Studies / D. Litt. et Phil. (English)

The Rhodesian and Zimbabwean space-time involved the creation and adoption of hegemonic discourses that influenced ways of behavior, thinking, perceiving reality and particular ways of identity construction based on mystifying nationalisms. In raced and politically charged spaces, such grand narratives depended, for their currency, on stereotypes, essentialisms, domination and dichotomization of ‘nation as narration’. The metanarratives of the two spaces functioned as discursive tools for the legitimation of particular forms of exclusions, elisions and distortions. As discursive and polemical literary tools, these discourses always found sustenance and perpetuation in the existence of a different other. In other words, these constructed narratives sought to use difference as a basis for scapegoating and naturalizing racial, economic, political and resource asymmetries in the Rhodesian and Zimbabwean spaces. Power was wielded not in the service of, but against, the majority who are marginalized. This study explores John Eppel’s writings on the constructions of both Rhodesia and Zimbabwe as ideological spaces for the legitimation of power based on class, race and politics. I argue that Eppel’s selected writings are a literary intervention that proffers a satirically dissident critique of the foundational myths, symbols and narratives of Rhodesian and Zimbabwean space-time. The study argues that Eppel offers literary resistance to unproblematized identity compositions predicated on socially constructed but skewed categories that limit the contours of belonging and citizenship. The Rhodesian space is viewed as a palimpsest upon which is overwritten the Zimbabwean patriotic discourse that also authorize racism, marginalization, power abuse and other forms of exclusion. In examining Eppel’s satiric disruption of both spaces, I use certain strands of the Postcolonial Theory that problematize issues of nation, identity, race, tribe and power. Its usefulness lies in its rejection of fixities, of absolutes and in its general counter-hegemonic thrust. I therefore invoke the theorizations of Frantz Fanon, Homi Bhabha, Maria Lara, Paul Gilroy, Mikhail Bakhtin and Benita Parry. These form the theoretical base with which the study confronts Eppel’s writings on Rhodesia and Zimbabwe. The focal texts used are: Absent: The English Teacher (2009), selected short stories in White Man Crawling (2007) and The Caruso of Colleen Bawn (2004), The Holy Innocents (2002), Hatchings (2006), selected poems from Spoils of War (1989), Songs my Country Taught me: Selected Poems 1965-2005(2005) and D.G.G.Berry’s The Great North Road (1992). I conclude by arguing that Eppel creates a fictional life-world where race, origin, politics, class and culture are figured as polarizing identity markers that should be re-negotiated and even transcended in order to materialize a more inclusive multicultural society. To the extent that both the colonial and post-independence eras cross-fertilize each other in terms of occlusions, creating hegemonic narratives, resort to race, violence, silencing and erasure of certain subjectivities, Eppel advocates the ‘hatching’ of a new national, moral and inclusive ethos that supersedes the claustrophobia of both spaces. / English Studies / D. Litt. et Phil.(English)

This study critically explores the numerous strains of “madness” that Zimbabwean authors represent in their postcolonial literature. My focus is on their reflection of “madness” as either an individual state of being, or as symptomatic of the socio-political and economic condition in the country. I have adopted insights from an existential psychoanalytic framework in my literary analysis in order to bring in an innovative dimension to this investigation of the phenomenon. I consider this an appropriate stance for this study as it has enriched my reading of the literary texts under study, as well as played a crucial role in providing me with effective conceptual tools for understanding the manifestations of “madness” in the texts. The literary works that I critique are Shimmer Chinodya’s Chairman of Fools (2009), Mashingaidze Gomo’s A Fine Madness (2010), Brian Chikwava’s Harare North, Petina Gappah’s An Elegy for Easterly (2009), Tsitsi Dangarembga’s The Book of Not (2006) and Yvonne Vera’s Without a Name (1994) and Butterfly Burning (1998). These selected texts offer me an opportunity to analyse the gender dynamics and discourses of “madness”, which I do from a peculiarly indigenous and feminist perspective. My study reveals that these authors’ representations are located in and shaped by very specific temporal and spatial contexts, which, in turn, shed light on the characters’ existential reality, revealing aspects of their relationship with the world around them. It demonstrates that their notions of “madness” denote different markers of identity, such as race, class, gender, and religion, amongst others. Significantly, my literary analysis illustrates the varied permutations of “madness” by exposing how these authors characterise the phenomenon as trauma, as alienation, as depression, as insanity, as subversion, as freedom, and even as a sign of the state of affairs in Zimbabwe. This investigation also reveals that because “madness” in these authors’ fiction is intricately linked to the question of identity, it manifests in situations where the characters’ sense of ontological security is compromised in some way. What emerges is that “madness” can either signify a grapple with identity, a loss of it, or a struggle for its redefinition / English Studies / D.Litt. et Phil. (English)