Agatha Christie set a number of her popular novels in British colonies in the Middle East, Africa and the Caribbean. While there is a lot of research about the portrayal of the colonised in the Middle East, there is only little to be found on those of Africa and the Caribbean. Therefore, this thesis aims to compare the portrayals of the Middle Eastern, African and Caribbean colonised by analysing Christie's The Man in the Brown Suit, Murder in Mesopotamia, Appointment with Deah, and A Caribbean Mystery.

This thesis explores the inherent complexities and contradictions embedded in the radical turn in South African historiography with regards to the decolonisation of the discipline of history in South African universities under apartheid from 1960 to 1991. By choosing to deconstruct radical history in a white liberal university, the study seeks to further demonstrate the limits of intellectual decolonisation and its underlying assumptions in the academic field during apartheid. It interrogates radical history as a form of academic resistance and leads a reflection on the political role of the intellectual in the context of the anti-apartheid struggle, asking more broadly: to what extent can radical academic history be considered “de/colonised knowledge”? Building on the links between ideology and curriculum, this study aimed to measure the coloniality of history using history examination questions as tools to investigate the methodological, theoretical and ideological assumptions of historians. Theoretically, the study relied on the role of the historian as a recontextualising agent of disciplinary knowledge taught and examined within a historically white higher education institution to study its concomitant underlying historiographical silences at the time. Methodologically, it deployed quantitative and qualitative research methods, using interviews and semi-structured questionnaires with a targeted cohort of authentic interlocutors to triangulate the discursive analysis of institutionalised “de/colonised” historical knowledge. This interdisciplinary study was thus inscribed in a critical deconstructionist approach to knowledge which contributed to a finer conceptual and empirical understanding of the coloniality of history as a discipline and its reproduction in the South African higher education context. The study hopes (1) to contribute to understanding the nuanced intersections between the history of intellectual colonisation and decolonisation and how these tensions impacted on history education in the apartheid university, (2) to provide an original interdisciplinary mixed method of analysis of institutionalised “de/colonised knowledge”, and (3) to contribute new critical insights into blind spots in South African radical historiography in higher education during the period 1960 to 1991, which could shed light on the various understandings of the imperative for decolonisation today in the discipline.

This study aims to evaluate the original white colonisers‟ or settlers‟ position and experience in Africa and South Africa during the transitional period between 1998 and 2011, as represented by English white male protagonists who feature in The Lostness of Alice (1998) by John Conyngham, The Good Doctor (2003) by Damon Galgut, and Lost Ground (2011) by Michiel Heyns. The analysis of the selected novels illustrates that the legacy of colonisation and apartheid still influences the settler descendants‟ perception of self and the other. The analysis focuses specifically on the males‟ experience of space and place in the construction of identity, and the awareness that the expansion of space and place through the transgression of physical and psychological boundaries contributes towards a more balanced personality. After the dissolution of apartheid, contemporary white South African men, as exemplified by the three protagonists, have become aware of their minority status and tend to dissociate themselves from the country as home. As borderline figures, they contend with feelings of marginalisation and isolation. Increasingly conscious of their contradictory non-African identity, the protagonists undertake journeys during which they acquire insight into themselves as well as an altered perception of the other. Although the former settlers‟ experience of alienation and ambivalence about colonisation and apartheid has been depicted in various novels, the significance of this experience relating to white South African male identity has not yet been fully explored in a comparative study of Conyngham‟s, Galgut‟s and Heyns‟s works with reference to the authors‟ place within a postcolonial paradigm, their implementation of the detective narrative frame and the role of intertextuality and irony that can be seen to define the novels and suggest other interpretative possibilities. The novels are critically analysed in terms of the concepts of space and place, the presence, transgression and transcendence of boundaries, and the influence of these paradigms on the characters‟ sense of self and their relationship with others and society at large. The novels‟ narrative frame and strategies in relation to the myths of Africa are also investigated. The thesis argues that the apprehension articulated by representatives of European settlers regarding the consequences of colonisation and apartheid has become more prominent during the post-liberation dispensation. The acceptance of responsibility for the past and for others, as well as intense self-appraisal, should enable the three protagonists to achieve a more expansive sense of self and a meaningful existence. / PhD (English), North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2015

This study aims to evaluate the original white colonisers‟ or settlers‟ position and experience in Africa and South Africa during the transitional period between 1998 and 2011, as represented by English white male protagonists who feature in The Lostness of Alice (1998) by John Conyngham, The Good Doctor (2003) by Damon Galgut, and Lost Ground (2011) by Michiel Heyns. The analysis of the selected novels illustrates that the legacy of colonisation and apartheid still influences the settler descendants‟ perception of self and the other. The analysis focuses specifically on the males‟ experience of space and place in the construction of identity, and the awareness that the expansion of space and place through the transgression of physical and psychological boundaries contributes towards a more balanced personality. After the dissolution of apartheid, contemporary white South African men, as exemplified by the three protagonists, have become aware of their minority status and tend to dissociate themselves from the country as home. As borderline figures, they contend with feelings of marginalisation and isolation. Increasingly conscious of their contradictory non-African identity, the protagonists undertake journeys during which they acquire insight into themselves as well as an altered perception of the other. Although the former settlers‟ experience of alienation and ambivalence about colonisation and apartheid has been depicted in various novels, the significance of this experience relating to white South African male identity has not yet been fully explored in a comparative study of Conyngham‟s, Galgut‟s and Heyns‟s works with reference to the authors‟ place within a postcolonial paradigm, their implementation of the detective narrative frame and the role of intertextuality and irony that can be seen to define the novels and suggest other interpretative possibilities. The novels are critically analysed in terms of the concepts of space and place, the presence, transgression and transcendence of boundaries, and the influence of these paradigms on the characters‟ sense of self and their relationship with others and society at large. The novels‟ narrative frame and strategies in relation to the myths of Africa are also investigated. The thesis argues that the apprehension articulated by representatives of European settlers regarding the consequences of colonisation and apartheid has become more prominent during the post-liberation dispensation. The acceptance of responsibility for the past and for others, as well as intense self-appraisal, should enable the three protagonists to achieve a more expansive sense of self and a meaningful existence. / PhD (English), North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2015

The objective of this thesis is to do a comparative analysis of four Romany life-stories in prose from different parts of the world and identify features which may justly be called characteristic of Romany writing. The comparison of Victor Vishnevsky's Memories of a Gypsy, Mikey Walsh's Gypsy Boy and Gypsy Boy on the Run, Andrej Giňa's Paťiv. Ještě víme, co je úcta and Irena Eliášová's Naše osada yields valuable insights into how Romany writers construct their identity and to what extent their current work relates to the existing literary genres. Because of Romany studies' multidisciplinary nature, the extensive introduction lays the theoretical foundations for the analysis. I proceed from the characteristics of Romany studies in general in part 1.2 to the way it was practised during my undergraduate years in Prague as opposed to the Western tradition (part 1.3). Using a case study of the schism Romany studies are currently facing in the Czech Republic, in part 1.4 I attempt to illustrate the more general epistemological challenges the field has been grappling with between essentialist/primordialist and radical constructivist views. As there is a definite scarcity of theoretical literature conceptualising Romany writing, in part 1.5 of the introduction the existing body of work is assessed and found...