Thesis (PhD)--Stellenbosch University, 2013. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: The study explores representations of troubled childhoods in post-1990 African narratives. Defining troubled childhoods as the experiences of children exposed to different forms of violations including physical, psychological, sexual and emotional abuse, the study reflects on depictions of such experiences in a selection of contemporary African fictional texts in English. The study‘s central thesis is that, while particular authors‘ deployment of affective writing techniques offers implicit analysis of troubled childhoods, the knowledge about this reality that such literary texts produce and place in the public sphere resonates with readers because of the narrative textures that both make knowledge concerning such childhoods accessible and create a sense of the urgent plight of such children. They render troubled childhoods grieveable. The study delineates three attributes of the selected texts that explain why such fictions can be considered significant from both social and aesthetic perspectives: namely, their foregrounding of intertwined vectors of violation and/or vulnerability; their skilful use of multi-layered narrative voices and their creation of specific posttraumatic damage and survival tropes. The four main thesis chapters are organised thematically rather than conceptually or theoretically, because representations of troubled childhoods are contextually and experientially entangled. Using Maria Pia Lara‘s notion of ―illocutionary force‖ and specific aspects of trauma and affect theory, the study focuses centrally on how the units of narration construct persuasive and convincing depictions of troubled childhoods while using fiction to convene platforms for reflection on the phenomena of child victims of war violence, abusive parenting, sexual predation and sexual violation. / AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Die studie ondersoek voorstellings van gekwelde kinder-ervaringswêrelde in post-1990 narratiewe deur skrywers van Afrika. Gekwelde kinder-ervaringswêrelde word gedefinieer as die ondervindinge van kinders wat blootgestel is aan verskillende vorms van skending, insluitend fisiese, psigologiese, seksuele en emosionele skending. Met hierdie definisie in gedagte reflekteer die studie op gelselekteerde uitbeeldings van sulke ervarings in hedendaagse Afrika-fiksie in Engels. Die studie se sentrale tesis is dat, terwyl sekere outeurs se ontplooiïng van affektiewe skryftegnieke implisiete analise van gekwelde kinder-ervaringswêrelde bied, resoneer die kennis oor hierdie realiteit wat sulke literêre tekste oplewer en in die publieke sfeer plaas met die leespubliek omdat die struktuur van die narratiewe die verskynsel van kwellende kinder-ervarings onthul en bewustheid van die dringende aard van die verskynsel bemoontlik. Sulke kinderlewens word op hierdie manier treurbaar [grievable] gemaak. Die studie delinieer drie eienskappe van die gekose tekste wat verduidelik waarom hierdie tekste vanuit beide sosiale en estetiese perspektiewe as beduidend beskou kan word, naamlik die verstrengelde vektors van verkragting en kwesbaarheid wat hulle op die voorgrond bring, hul bekwame gebruik van veellagige narratiewe stemme en hul skepping van spesifieke posttraumatiese skade- en oorlewingstrope. Die vier middelste tesis-hoofstukke is tematies in plaas van konsepsueel of teoreties georganiseer, omdat voorstellings van gekwelde kinder-ervaringswêrelde kontekstueel- en ervaringsverstrik is. Met die gebruik van Maria Pia Lara se begrip van illocutionary force en spesifieke aspekte van trauma- en inwerkingsteorie fokus die studie hoofsaaklik op hoe die narratiewe eenhede oorhalende en oortuigende afbeeldings van gekwelde kinder-ervaringswêrelde konstrueer terwyl hulle fiksie gebruik om platforms vir refleksie op die fenomeen van kinderslagoffers van oorlogsgeweld, misbruikende ouerskap en seksuele- predasie en verkragting byeen te bring.

<p>“Spaces of Order” argues that the African novel should be studied as a revolutionary form characterized by aesthetic innovations that are not comprehensible in terms of the novel’s European archive of forms. It does this by mapping an African spatial order that undermines the spatial problematic at the formal and ideological core of the novel—the split between a private, subjective interior, and an abstract, impersonal outside. The project opens with an examination of spatial fragmentation as figured in the “endless forest” of Amos Tutuola’s The Palmwine Drinkard (1952). The second chapter studies Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart (1958) as a fictional world built around a peculiar category of space, the “evil forest,” which constitutes an African principle of order and modality of power. Chapter three returns to Tutuola via Ben Okri’s The Famished Road (1991) and shows how the dispersal of fragmentary spaces of exclusion and terror within the colonial African city helps us conceive of political imaginaries outside the nation and other forms of liberal political communities. The fourth chapter shows Nnedi Okorafor—in her 2014 science-fiction novel Lagoon—rewriting Things Fall Apart as an alien-encounter narrative in which Africa is center-stage of a planetary, multi-species drama. Spaces of Order is a study of the African novel as a new logic of world making altogether.</p> / Dissertation

M.A. (African Languages) / The study looks at the socio-economic milieu, the socio-political milieu, the socio-economic themes and the socio-political themes in the three novels written by Sibusiso L. Nyembezi namely; Ubudoda Abukhulelwa, Mntanami-Mntanami and Inkinsela YaseMgungundlovu. The socio-political milieu and socio-economic milieu are viewed from the perspective of the Marxist Literary Theories. These theories are chosen to form the theoretical framework of this study because they best view man in relation to his sociopolitical circumstances and also in relation to the country's system of economic production. We observed that Nyembezi places his characters in real socioeconomic and socio-political circumstances. These in turn determine the thoughts, words, actions and fate of characters...

<p> My dissertation contends that diaspora, perhaps the most visible spatial paradigm for theorizing black constructions of identity and self, is inherently limited by the historical conditions of its rise as well as the preoccupations with which it has been most closely associated. I propose that we expand our theoretico-spatio terms for constructions of blackness to include the space of the home, the space of the plantation and the space of the prison (what I call the space of justice). These three spaces point to literary themes, characters, and beliefs that the space of diaspora alone does not explain. Each chapter analyzes the work of three or four writers from the United States, Brazil and Mozambique. These writers include: Paulina Chiziane, Concei&ccedil;&atilde;o Evaristo, Octavia E. Butler, Toni Morrison, Zora Neale Hurston, Carolina Maria de Jesus, Bernice McFadden, Wanda Coleman, Ifa Bayeza and Asha Bandele. </p>

Pas de résumé français / Pas de résumé anglais

Student Number : 0515393R - MA research report - School of Literature and Language Studies - Faculty of Humanities / This study examines the effects of diaspora and displacement in characters as presented in Abdulrazak Gurnah’s Paradise, Admiring Silence and By the Sea. It looks at the role played by these effects in the construction of ideas of home and identity in the characters. Displacement is studied here against a backdrop of a long history of movements brought about by trading activities, exile and voluntary migrations. The texts are set in the east African coastal region, the islands and in Western countries such as England. The study relies on theories of postcolonialism and diaspora for its reading. The introduction places Gurnah’s work within the postcolonial archive by looking at his stance against the existing postcolonial discourses. It is also of importance to consider Gurnah’s biography and attempt to relate this to the view he takes as he narrates this geographical space in a postcolonial era. Chapter two looks at ideas of home as posited by different theorists in relation to the displaced and scattered characters he presents in these texts. Chapter three is concerned with how characters construct their identities against the ideas of ‘otherness’. In this chapter, I argue that Gurnah’s ideas of ‘otherness’ operate outside the (post)colonial idea of the same where the other is defined purely by difference in race. In chapter four I examine the significance of the preponderance of violence in the families presented by Gurnah. I investigate the connection between this perpetration of violence in the family and the idea of an elusive ‘paradise’ which runs through all Gurnah’s texts. The conclusion summarizes my major findings about Gurnah’s presentation of diaspora and displacement in the East African coast and the islands, and how he uses different structures like the home, self and the family to do this.

Abstract The period of South Africa’s political transition in the late 1980s and 1990s also saw a number of interesting developments in the field of cultural production, especially within the province of literature. A number of literary scholars, critics of all realms, writers, some enthusiasts and adventurers all showed interest in the direction of literature after the repressive years of apartheid. The dominant academic question at the time centred on the possible transition in the thematic and formalistic dimension of the literature of the new South Africa. Scholars and cultural commentators that include Es’kia Mphahlele, Njabulo Ndebele, Albie Sachs, Guy Butler, Elleke Boehmer, Michael Chapman, Mbulelo Mzamane, Andries Walter Oliphant, amongst others, all contributed immensely in the debates that attempted to define the possible direction of the literature after apartheid. This research is concerned with the developments in the Post-Apartheid South African Novels of English expression. Its focus is on how temporal mobility has impacted on cultural production especially as witnessed in the many transformations in the field of literature, particularly the novel as a genre. Using the tropes of memory, violence, and otherness, it examines the novels of writers as varying as André Brink, J.M. Coetzee, Zakes Mda, Zoë Wicomb, and Jo-Anne Richards. At the level of form, the fantastical and the confessional modes of narration are discussed as significant manifestations of the post-apartheid narratives using the novels of André Brink and Jo-Anne Richards respectively. It suggests that, among other things, the post-apartheid novels of English expression are marked by some interesting thematic blocs that include the fascination with land, the artistic display of remorse through the confessional mode, the rekindling of memory and its representation in narrative, the peculiar interest in violence and alterity, the continuing reportage of the urban space and the implications of urbanity on the ordinary citizenry, the recourse to gangsterism, miscegenation and the dilemma of a humankind confined to the psychological spaces of the interstices. Efforts were made in this research to avoid the ‘intellectual apartheid’ often associated with the hermeneutic engagements of the literati previously devoted to South Africa’s literary scholarship. It is for this reason that a more elaborate introductory chapter highlights aspects of the contributions of novelists and scholars that include Nadine Gordimer, Mongane Wally Serote, Lewis Nkosi, Njabulo Ndebele, and the ‘emergent’ ones such as Phaswane Mpe, K. Sello Duiker, Pamela Jooste, among others. An important dimension to this study is that it situates the Post-Apartheid narratives not only within relevant historical contexts, but also develops its argument by drawing immensely from the intellectual culture dominant in South Africa before, during, and after the notorious era of racial separatism. It concludes on the suggestive note that South African writers and literary scholars should attempt to demonstrate a more rigorous interest in locating the creative points of convergence between the aesthetic and social ideals.

A Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of Arts. University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, in fulfilment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts. / The aim of this dissertation is to offer a close, critical examination of the particular dilemmas and responses of concempocary white English-speaking South Africans as these are reflected in South African English poetry. This aim ought not to be construed as a denial of the legitimate claims of other ethnic groups for attention; nor should it in any way be interpreted as an attempt to reinforce artificial racial categories or to bolster restrictive barriers between communities. The purpose, rather is to help advance mutual understanding and awareness by focussing on the specific problems of a complex and intriguing, yet strangely neglected group of people in this country. By examining the difficulties facing the white English- speaking group as registered and articulated in the work of South African English poets, this dissertation moves beyond a purely sociological account of the group. The dissertation will include both a study of the direct critique by South African English poets of the dilemmas and responses of their white English- speaking countrymen, as well as an investigation of the ways in which the poets themselves, consciously or otherwise, have responded as white English-speaking South Africans in their poetry to these dilemmas. The understanding of the white English-speaking group to be gained in this fashion though differing from that to be derived from a sociological study, need not be any the less authentic or assiduous, In particular the ability to examfne the group from both subjective and objective points of view may enhance illumination. As such, in order to comprehend fully what the poetry reveals about the white English-speaking South Africans, it is necessary to investigate how it does so, and so this dissertation will adopt a primarily literary critical approach to the poetic texts under consideration This dissertation will isolate and examine four of the most important and characteristic dilemmas confronting contemporary white English-speaking South Africans. After an introductory chapter, the second chapter will focus upon the "crisis of identity" experienced by modern-day English-speakers, and will discuss the disturbingly incohesive and vague nature of the English-speaking group, as well as what has been seen as its uncertain and precarious position within the 'wider South African social context. The third chapter will concentrate upon English-speakers "damaged sense of place their feelings of alienation both from the land of their birth and from the European source of much of their cultural heritage, their sense of having no true home. The fourth chapter will be concerned with the feelings of profound dread which seem to have permeated the white English-speaking South African consciousness, both the fearful anticipation of violent political upheaval, as well as a less explicit anxiety about some undefined menace or force which threatens to breach the white South African "laager". Finally, the fifth chapter will examine the attitudes, conduct and political orientation of contemporary white English-speaking South Africans, and will suggest that while a large aggregate of English-speakers may be conservative and apathetic, there exists nonetheless a substantial minority within the group (including most poets) who are enlightened, progressive and activist in outlook and who thus represent a significant "tradition of dissent' in white South African thought. / Andrew Chakane 2018

No description available.

This study explores the silencing of familial spaces in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Purple Hibiscus. It probes into how the familial space is invested with religiosity: how ritual and norm structure and silence familial spaces and how transcendence from these spaces can be achieved through elements of laughter, music and sexuality. The study uses post-colonial theories, concepts of familial ideology and familial theory to read the text. The introductory chapter provides a politico-historical background of the text, then a literary historiography of how the familial trope has been used in African literature with special focus on Achebe. The chapter also outlines the theoretical framework of the study while anticipating the issues to be dealt with. Chapter two focuses on how the familial space is invested with religious rituals and how these silence the familial space. Chapter three examines how augmentation out of the silenced familial spaces works through elements of laughter, sexuality and music. Chapter four investigates the family as a portrait of the state and most significantly how these two institutions are portrayed to be in a complex relationship. The study’s conclusion is that the family can be used as an alternative site for discourses of marginality and can give a nuanced critique of the postcolony.