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”.

Cette thèse présente une analyse comparée des œuvres de deux écrivains contemporains, John Maxwell Coetzee (1940-), originaire d’Afrique du Sud, et Wu Ming-yi (1971-), de Taïwan, que l’on associe au genre de la « littérature écologique postcoloniale ». À partir de leurs travaux, cette thèse propose une étude interdisciplinaire couvrant trois dimensions de leurs travaux : la théorie, la politique et le littéraire. Les textes choisis pour l’analyse sont ceux qui cherchent à la fois à fournir une image dystopique de l’exploitation des environnements naturels et des êtres non-humains et à représenter l’oppression coloniale des peuples colonisés et de l’exploitation des ressources naturelles dans différentes parties du monde. En ce qui concerne la dimension théorique, la thèse aborde le questionnement suivant : comment la philosophie occidentale contemporaine prend en compte les animaux et les êtres écologiques (êtres non-humains et non-animaux), afin de reconsidérer la question plus générale de l’altérité. Quant à la dimension politique, la thèse adopte une posture philosophique afin de questionner les contextes historiques des pays postcoloniaux, notamment ceux de l’Afrique du Sud et de Taïwan. Enfin, la dimension littéraire examine les écrits de Coetzee et de Wu afin de montrer comment leurs textes décrivent l’« autre écologique » (ecological other) en tant que moyen pour lutter contre l’identité politique postcoloniale. / This thesis presents the literary works of two contemporary writers—John Maxwell Coetzee (1940-), originally from South Africa, and Wu Ming-yi (1971-) from Taiwan—whom it analyses as key exponents of postcolonial eco-literature. The thesis offers an interdisciplinary study of their works in their theoretical, political and literary aspects. The texts selected for analysis are those that seek to present a dystopian image of the exploited natural environment or nonhuman entities, while, at the same time, associating and articulating these representations with the suppressions and exploitations carried out within colonial frameworks in different parts of the world. As regards the theoretical perspective of the thesis, it addresses the subject of how contemporary continental philosophy takes nonhuman animals and other kinds of ecological beings into account and rethinks the philosophical question of the other. With respect to politics, it contextualises this philosophical questioning by looking at the history of various postcolonial countries, notably South Africa and Taiwan. Lastly, as far as literature is concerned, it examines the writings of Coetzee and Wu in order to show how their texts depict the ecological other as a way of contesting postcolonial identity politics.

Ancrée dans les réalités du monde océanien contemporain et prenant comme thématique centrale les questions de la représentation de la terre et du lien à la terre, cette recherche doctorale consiste en une analyse comparative et écocritique des textes et contextes formant le champ particulier des littératures autochtones produites en Polynésie, tant en français qu’en anglais. Les problématiques environnementales et la question de l’attachement à la terre sont au cœur des œuvres littéraires polynésiennes contemporaines, tant francophones qu’anglophones, dont elles permettent de questionner la parenté. Le choix d’une approche critique novatrice et originale, basée sur les "postcolonial ecologies", permet de faire dialoguer « texte » et « monde » et d’ainsi toucher à l’universel. En s’attachant à certaines problématiques humanitaires et écologiques cruciales, dont l’urgence se fait de plus en plus pressante en cette ère où le réchauffement climatique et les pollutions multiples mettent en péril la survie de nombreuses cultures et écosystèmes, ce travail doctoral dépasse le domaine purement littéraire et réaffirme avec force le pouvoir de l’imagination poétique dans la réinvention d’un autre rapport au monde, plus juste socialement et écologiquement.<p>Par le choix de son objet autant que par celui de sa méthode, où le dialogue interdisciplinaire et interculturel occupe une place essentielle, cette étude se veut doublement novatrice. Elle embrasse plusieurs objectifs. Premièrement, faire connaître une production littéraire francophone largement méconnue, issue d’une aire géographique et culturelle spécifique (la Polynésie). Deuxièmement, renforcer le dialogue trans-océanique grâce à la confrontation des productions francophones et anglophones, et s’inscrire ainsi pleinement dans l’actualité de la recherche sur les littératures océaniennes. Troisièmement, usant des apports de ce dialogue et des outils proposés par l’analyse écocritique, poser la question de l’existence ou non d’un univers littéraire trans-linguistique et océanien. Quatrièmement, contribuer à enrichir et éclairer les théories littéraires écocritiques grâce aux spécificités et aux problématiques soulevées par les littératures polynésiennes. Œuvres littéraires et méthode critique s’inscrivent donc dans un processus d’échanges et de retours constant et dynamique, s’éclairant réciproquement afin de parvenir à une compréhension mutuelle plus profonde et féconde de nouvelles possibilités.<p> / Doctorat en Langues et lettres / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

This study examines a range of South African speculative novels which situate their narratives in futuristic or ‘alternative’ milieus, exploring how these narratives not only address identity formation in a deeply divided and rapidly changing society, but also the ways in which human beings place themselves in relation to Nature and form notions of ‘ecological’ belonging. It offers close readings of these speculative narratives in order to investigate the ways in which they evince concerns which are rooted in the natural, social and political landscapes which inform them. Specific attention is paid to the texts’ treatment of the intertwined issues of identity, belonging and ecological crisis. This dissertation draws on the fields of Ecocriticism, Postcolonial Studies and Science Fiction Studies, and assumes a culturally specific approach to primary texts while investigating possible cross-cultural commonalities between Afrikaans and English speculative narratives, as well as the cross-fertilisation of global SF/speculative features. It is suggested that South African speculative fiction presents a socio-historically situated, rhizomatic approach to ecology – one that is attuned to the tension between humanistic- and ecological concerns.

Ce travail de recherche propose une étude de l’œuvre intégrale, en vers et en prose, de Fred D'Aguiar, à travers le prisme du mythe, de la métaphore et de la mémoire, et dans le cadre d'une définition large, inclusive et interculturelle de la littérature caraïbe. A partir de la mise en lumière de la relation hypomnésique de la métaphore à la mythologie et à la métaphysique occidentale, l'argumentation s'étend sur des questions telles que celle du lien entre référent et monde et élabore une vision à la fois interculturelle et géographique de la métaphore en tant que tropicalité. La tropicalité donne, à son tour, son élan à l'argumentation, en permettant, pour la première moitié de ce travail de recherche, la production d'une lecture singulière de la poésie de Fred D'Aguiar, qui s'avère aussi liée à un vaste corpus littéraire, s'étendant de l'Antiquité romaine au réalisme magique américain et caraïbe, du romantisme britannique à la philosophie de Jacques Derrida. La deuxième moitié de ce travail explore la prose de Fred D'Aguiar à travers le thème de l'orphelinat, car tous les protagonistes de ses romans sont des orphelins – et, qui plus est, parce-que le roman est aussi, par définition, le genre qui nie toute filiation. Divisée en deux chapitres, cette deuxième partie de l'étude commence par une problématisation des liens qui opèrent entre textualité et orphelinat ainsi qu'entre orphelinat et esclavage, mais aussi entre esclavage et illettrisme, afin d'étudier la représentation de l'esclavage dans les romans de Fred D'Aguiar. Cette deuxième moitié progresse ensuite vers une réflexion sur les qualités surnaturelles, voire orphiques des orphelins de la prose d'aguiarienne, ainsi que sur leur relation, tout autant orphique, à l'environnement. En conséquence, le présent travail de recherche se clôt sur deux questions : celle de la tradition orphique qui sous-tend l'histoire de la littérature, de l'antiquité jusqu'à présent, et celle de la dimension écocritique de la littérature contemporaine, que l'on proposera de défendre pour certains cas, en tant qu'environnementalisme vatique. / The present dissertation proposes a study of Fred D'Aguiar's complete verse and prose works, through the triple lens of myth, metaphor and memory, and from within a broad, inclusive, and cross-cultural understanding of Caribbean literature. Beginning with an exacerbation of metaphor's hypomnesic relationship to mythology and Western metaphysics, the argument expands to address issues such as that of the relationship between word and world, and elaborates a cross-cultural, and geographically-based understanding of metaphor as tropicality. Tropicality in turn gives the argument its thrust, as it allows, in the first half of the dissertation, for a singular reading of Fred D'Aguiar's entire verse corpus, which is also shown, in the process, to intersect with a vast body of literature, ranging from Roman antiquity to American-Caribbean magic(al) realism and from British romanticism to the philosophy of Jacques Derrida. The second half of this research work explores D'Aguiar's novels in terms of orphanhood, as all the protagonists of his six novels – itself a genre which, presenting itself as newness, denies filiation – are orphans. Divided in two chapters, the second half of this dissertation begins with a problematization of the links that relate textuality to orphanhood and orphanhood to slavery, but also slavery to literacy, in order to study Fred D'Aguiar's novelistic accounts of slavery. It then proposes a reflection on the supernatural, Orphic qualities of D'Aguiar's orphan characters, and of their relation to the environment, which leads, in turn, to reflections on the Orphic traditions pervading literary history, and opens up onto the ecocritical dimensions of contemporary literature, through the tentative coinage of the notion of vatic environmentalism.

The following essay investigates the artificial magic environment in two fairy tales with similar tropes and themes, to find out if the magic is necessary for the growth of the characters. The ecocritical movement constitutes the essay’s theoretical background in order to shine a light on the physical nature that has been slightly neglected when it comes to discerning the inner nature of the heroines in these stories. By employing theoretical concepts from animal studies, the essay also examines the relationship between animals and humans for the purpose of including the portrayal of animals in an expanded view on nature. The major conclusion of the essay is that magic can both help and hinder the protagonist’s journey to maturity. Furthermore, these fairy tales portray different methods of downgrading animals, but they also challenge an anthropocentric view of the world.

One spring afternoon in 1631, the Norwich Society of Florists held a feast to celebrate and display its exquisite flowers. The celebration included an entertainment written just for the occasion—Ralph Knevet's quirky play about a war among flowers. Early modern florists were not the sort of people who sold cut flowers in shops; rather, they were experts in floriculture who applied this knowledge to cultivate new flowers. Norwich was already renowned for its gardens, but flowers soon became even more significant. Rhodon and Iris was performed just before tulipomania, a frenzy of tulip cultivation lasting from c.1634 – 1637. During this period, florists grew elaborate multi-coloured flower bulbs that sold for extremely high prices. In other words, the florists' feast and Knevet's play emerged when flowers were important to the economy and identity of Norwich. My thesis presents an open-access, digital critical edition of Rhodon and Iris encoded in TEI-P5. This edition offers an old-spelling transcription of the 1631 playbook, a modernized text with annotations, and a critical introduction. Responding to the need for more editions of non-canonical early modern plays, my research widens the otherwise Shakespeare-centric canon and helps make more early modern drama accessible to student readers. Rhodon and Iris also merits critical attention on its own grounds: an example of Caroline occasional drama, the play experiments with convention and offers a rare glimpse into the Society of Florists. My thesis approaches the play with special interest in editorial praxis, ecotheory, and the history of floriculture. The florists' feast delighted audiences and participated in a tradition of floral celebrations—one reaching, at least, from the ancient Roman ludi Florales to the modern Netflix series The Big Flower Fight. / Graduate / 2021-06-26

This thesis investigated the representation of horses in the video games Star Stable 1: Autumn Riders and Dragon Age: Inquisition from an ecocritical lens. It applies the method of close reading to the game research field to analyse the representation of horses in video games and how that representation can be objectifying. The study finds that by framing horseback riding as the primary aspect of the horses the game design in these two games prioritises an anthropocentric view, where horses are modelled after their value to humans. This game design perspective can be seen in the lack of non-riding related behaviours, lack of non-rideable horses and in the interfaces and language use found in the games, as well as the extradiegetic horse call mechanic used in Dragon Age: Inquisition. Star Stable 1: Autumn Riders includes some game design choices that portray a greater feeling of subjectivity in horses. Some ways it does this is by modelling autonomy in horses by avoiding perfect obedience in riding mechanics or including player affordances related to the care of horses. The conclusion points to that by representing horses as subjects rather than objects game designers can encourage a game feeling of respect and cooperation in players, as well as the potential for future research of horses in games to study emotional game design. / Denna studie har undersökt representationen av hästar i spelen Star Stable 1: Autumn Riders och Dragon Age: Inquisition genom ett ekokritiskt perspektiv med hjälp av närläsning, samt hur representationen av hästar kan vara objektifierande. Genom att framställa ridning som det primära med hästar så prioriterar speldesignen en antropocentrisk vinkel där hästens värde kopplas till vad de kan göra för människan. Detta perspektiv kan ses i bristen på beteenden hos hästen som inte kan kopplas till ridning, bristen på icke ridbara hästar samt i spelens gränssnitt och språkbruk. I Dragon Age: Inquisition kan det även ses i spelets extradiegetiska “call mechanic”. Star Stable 1: Autumn Riders inkluderar viss speldesign som representerar subjektivitet i hästar, till exempel porträtterar spelets hästars autonomi genom att inte låta hästarna lyda spelaren till fullo samt att inkludera alternativ för spelaren angående hästomsorg. Studiens slutsats poängterar att genom att representera hästar som subjekt snarare än objekt så kan speldesigners skapa en spelkänsla av respekt och samarbete hos spelaren och att det finns utrymme för framtida studier av hästar i spel att forska om emotionell design.

This thesis examines nonhuman phenomenological experiences, communication, and sensory perception in Barbara Gowdy’s The White Bone. Drawing on literary and pedagogical theories by Roman Bartosch, Monika Fludernik, Marco Caracciolo, David Herman, and Judith Langer, the thesis argues that Gowdy’s novel employs narrative strategies and devices that involve nonhuman experientiality evoked from sensorial configurations, narration, and textual cognitive and embodied experiences. These represented experiences disrupt human primacy by establishing a disorientation that challenges the anthropocentric bias in the novel and decenters the human reader. Moreover, the thesis offers suggestions for using the novel in conjunction with envisionment building to discuss animal alterity and anthropocentrism in the Swedish EFL classroom.

This thesis investigates three contemporary Canadian texts— Ruth Ozeki’s A Tale for the Time Being, Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake, and Rita Wong’s forage—that treat information as an object that can be wasted and recuperated. Using information theory and a new sub-field of critical waste theory called “Discard Studies,” I explore how the authors studied in this thesis place these two lines of thought alongside one another to examine how the concept of recycling information challenges the material, cultural, and ideological structures that distance humans from their waste. Specifically, I read the event of recycling as an interruptive act that triggers a reassessment of the (im)material connections that tether humans to their waste, vast (inter)national networks of exchange, and environmental crises related to our garbage.