This thesis examines three South African memoirs using M. M. Bakhtin’s theories of the dialogical relationship in language and literature. By offering an alternative to a postmodern or multicultural interpretation of autobiographies, Bakhtin’s precepts, that define a dialogic, help to reframe a way of discussing memoirs and avoiding dead-ends previously arrived at by essayists in James Olney’s 1980 collection. Bakhtin’s ideas discussed here, which include the “once-occurrent moment”, “architectonic contraposition”, ”emotional-volitional tone”, “alibi”, “non-alibi”, and “centripetal” and “centrifugal” force, help to rebuild a discussion based on temporary and evolving self truth rather than fiction, the postmodern interpretation, or confession, the new-age secular spiritualism based on multicultural and politically correct standards. For this, each author’s memoir had to be examined separately and a conclusion was arrived at through inductive analysis. Rather than try to find similar characteristics, I focused on what made each memoir different and unique. Janet Varner Gunn’s Autobiography: Toward A Poetics of Experience (1982) refocused the debate over autobiography on process. The question, what steps did each author take toward writing about himself, led the discussion to an examination of the priorities each author exemplified. Beginning with Fugard who emphasized spatial, concrete, and sensory detail to help him contain his emotional life, the thesis moves on to an examination of Coetzee’s sense of justice. From the physical and intellectual world follows Breytenbach’s spiritual space-making. In each memoir, control of space is evident on different levels of experience. Articulating space inevitably leads to a discussion of boundaries. Here, Charles Taylor’s emphasis on the modern self’s need to articulate a horizon or a framework is helpful in generalizing the effect of the autobiographical process. The conclusion reached is that autobiography is inherently centrifugal: it moves away from the center of cultural thinking because its “truth” bolsters itself on dialogical process which does not depend on a fixed authority but rather on communicative exchange. As an example of exchange, autobiography’s central truth is that it returns to a “unique point of origin”, namely the self, only to reconnect to the other in a potentially eternal exchange of responsiveness moving away from the center.

A dissertation submitted to the Faculty of Arts in fulfilment of the requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of English at the University of Zululand, 2017 / Athol Fugard and Maishe Maponya both used the postdramatic theatre, which was largely anti-elitist, anti-text, experimental and collaborative, at certain point in their literary careers. They rebelled against established conventions, and, in their own ways, produced a type of theatre that suited their context and literary and ideological leanings. The rebellion and transformation of the theatre was not peculiar to them, but was a universal phenomenon at the time this thesis examines. As such, it manifested in works of artists who appropriated the new dramatic techniques to represent their different contexts and emerging socio-political trends. The thesis examines the collaborative process of Fugard, Kani, and Ntshona in view of the critical debates about identity, politics, role play, and Fugard’s claim to primary authorship of Sizwe Bansi is Dead and The Island. Collaboration is not a fixed term or practice. It depends largely on the play, play-making situation, and intention. It also changes even with the same artists involved in the collaboration. The devising process that led to The Coat, for example, differed from that of Sizwe Bansi is Dead and The Island. Even the collaborative process of Sizwe Bansi is Dead and The Island differs despite that the plays were produced around the same time. Fugard’s collaboration with the Circle Players (late 1950s) also differs from his collaboration with the Serpent Players (1960s) and that with Kani and Ntshona (early 1970s). Collaboration meant different things at different times for Fugard. He seems to have ridden on the coattails of black actors, although he successfully toured the plays around the world. Maponya’s idea of collaboration differs from that of Fugard. Although Maponya did not officially collaborate with actors, he used them as conduits into their lived experiences (The Hungry Earth) and professions (Umongikazi). This play-making technique is in many ways collaborative and similar to Fugard’s collaborative pattern during his work with the Circle Players in the production of No-Good Friday and Nongogo. Maponya lifts up the black artist but suffers the consequences. Fugard and Maponya used the actors in different capacities and utilised fairly similar, but different, collaborative techniques. They both utilised experimental, improvisational, and workshop-based methods differently, and at different times. The white South African playwright Fugard prepared the ground for radical experimentation with form and content in South Africa. Fugard enjoys a place of honour in the South African (and more generally African) canon. His reputation as a great writer, creative collaborator and director, and as a person who was able to create a unique theatre that blended African and Western forms of performance, has been acknowledged globally. His work with black actors, notably John Kani and Winston Ntshona, enabled this feat. He adopted a multidimensional approach to art, retained his literary leaning and identity, collaborated, and assisted in training and directing of black actors, and so contributed in his own equally potent way to the struggle against apartheid through the theatre. He promoted a belief in “the personal is political” through plays to be examined herein. The Coat (1966), Sizwe Bansi is Dead (1972) and The Island (1973) are selected because they are Fugard’s most political plays and because they were devised in collaboration with actors. The Hungry Earth (1979), Gangsters (1984) and Jika (1986) also pass the litmus test because they are Maponya’s most radical indictment of the apartheid regime and because they were also devised through experiments with actors who provided material and acting. In contrast to most writing on Fugard and Maponya, which are anchored to either a literary interpretation of the plays or performance discourse, this study offers a literary and performative analysis of the selected plays, demonstrating that this must be done together. This thesis also offers a comparative analysis of the selected plays. Maponya is a black artist and bitter playwright of the Struggle. His works are multifaceted, open to differing interpretations and are fairly universal and timeless because of their concern with general themes such as capitalism, subversion and containment; so also for their relation with more universal works, and their demonstration that the local and immediate experiences can have global legs. His concern with Black Consciousness and resistance however confined his status to a black ideologue. Maponya’s dramas nonetheless resist the accustomed standard of categorisation as plays by a black South African dramatist. The sharp cataloguing between white and black and major and minor playwright begins to fall apart when comparing Fugard and Maponya in terms of theatre practice and experiences. The reception of Maponya’s plays – both at home and abroad – reveals that he was an equally theatrically-aware and successful artist of the struggle, although he cannot be evenly matched with Fugard in terms of literary craft and outreach. This reductionism has also affected Fugard, who many regard as a liberal white writer. His colour was a handicap and a saving grace since it allowed him to work with black actors despite the laws banning interracial relations. The discourse of commitment in the plays to be examined – as well as in the dramatists’ practice of theatre – is centred on the relation between intention, context and text. The study examines the artists’ contribution(s) to the struggle; and how effective that contribution is, considering the complicated context and events they wrote about. To my knowledge, no other work, specifically, examines these two quite different playwrights, particularly in the context of their writing methods, their political reception in South Africa and abroad, and their ideas about play-making. New Historicism is chosen for the analysis of the selected plays because they are produced in history and for the theory’s concern with historical situation; because it is more of a practice than a set of doctrines or theory (Greenblatt 1990); and because it is concerned with intention and choice of genre (Bressler 2000). The theory, or rather practice, is also chosen because it promotes the study of both major and minor authors, thereby blurring the distinction between them (Gallagher and Greenblatt 2000); and because it accords more place for collaborative works (Greenblatt 1989) – which is one of the main concerns of this study.

Without consciousness we become victim instead of actors- even if it is only a question of acting victims. And in the make belief of our lives, the audience is self (Fugard in Frank 2004: 53). The primary concern of this study is the comparison of video interpretations of Athol Fugard with their adaptations as visual texts. It has been argued that 'the playwright's creative labour ends with the completion of the script' (Kidnie 2009: 15).Therefore, amongst other issues this dissertation will explore the politics of production at play during adaptation from printed version to screenplays. My assumption is that a comparison between the printed texts and video versions will add to the understanding of the effectiveness of Fugard's dramatic techniques and comprehension of literary texts; images are easy to decipher by inexperienced interpreters if guided. For the purpose of my presentation I adapt the reader response theoretical position of Stanley Fish based on a comparison that will be explored in terms of my own response to both the written text and visual texts, and in line with other responsed to the play. / English Studies / M.A.

Without consciousness we become victim instead of actors- even if it is only a question of acting victims. And in the make belief of our lives, the audience is self (Fugard in Frank 2004: 53). The primary concern of this study is the comparison of video interpretations of Athol Fugard with their adaptations as visual texts. It has been argued that 'the playwright's creative labour ends with the completion of the script' (Kidnie 2009: 15).Therefore, amongst other issues this dissertation will explore the politics of production at play during adaptation from printed version to screenplays. My assumption is that a comparison between the printed texts and video versions will add to the understanding of the effectiveness of Fugard's dramatic techniques and comprehension of literary texts; images are easy to decipher by inexperienced interpreters if guided. For the purpose of my presentation I adapt the reader response theoretical position of Stanley Fish based on a comparison that will be explored in terms of my own response to both the written text and visual texts, and in line with other responsed to the play. / English Studies / M.A.

It can be argued that critical scholarship has not satisfactorily commented on the portrayal of women in South African theatre by male playwrights. This dissertation will examine the presentation of the female voice in the selected plays of two playwrights, namely Athol Fugard and Zakes Mda, coming from different socio-historical and cultural backgrounds. This comparative study will re-interrogate the selected representative texts from a feminist perspective, and will compare Fugard's subversive distrust of the female voice juxtaposed against Mda's refreshing celebration of the female presence in the selected plays. Fugard and Mda's female characters are generally seen by their readers, audiences and critics such as Andrew Hom, Marcia Blumberg and Dennis Walder as fundamentally vital, irrepressible and certainly more admirable than their male counterparts, as it is ultimately their quest for symbiosis and affirmation of the self which precludes any passive spectatorship on the part of the audience. However, paradoxically and ironically, it is Fugard, writing from a relatively privileged white male position, who consistently places his female characters in positions where their distinct inner strength is continually undermined. Despite their cognitive ability to engage with their situation, they are seldom permitted to triumph over the bleakness of their lives, but in fact are rendered emotionally impotent in the face of insurmountable existential isolation. Always situated within an interdependent relationship absent of hope and love, Fugard's women characters are never allowed to forget the role they are expected to assume in a patriarchal society rife with political and racial overtones. This very impasse in which they are placed by Fugard generally resonates strongly with the audience, who can identify or empathise with the women, but who are not afforded an imaginative escape by Fugard. Mda's female characters are created and portrayed within a similar political and universal system which perpetuates their exclusion from power and keeps them in servitude. However, unlike the ultimately silenced women in Fugard' splays, Mda, writing partly from a historically marginalised position himself, empowers his female characters with the freedom to confront and articulate their emotions and perceptions. His female characters are inscribed in a multiplicity of social positions, within which they most often find a solution to their problems and demand an outcome which is not only determined by outsiders, but by their own inner strength. Although they are less fettered by class and ideological constraints, they are however more naively drawn than Fugard's female characters. Whilst Fugard' s female characters in the selected plays are, without exception, left on the periphery of the play as the ultimate victims of their inescapable circumstances, the female characters created by Mda more often than not dominate the stage by virtue of their indomitable resilience, rather than resignation. This dissertation will also examine Fugard and Mda's presentation of their female characters as wholly a male's construct, set in a political context which subtextually interrogates race and gender. The implied assumption concerning the authority of the male writer over women's narratives will also therefore be questioned. Reference to Fugard and Mda's own personal histories as well as their other non-fictional writing will be seen as relevant in this regard. In conclusion, this dissertation will focus on the artificially imposed passivity of Fugard' s confined and limited female characters, and will compare this to Mda's empowerment of his female characters through critical awareness. The provocative issues of voice and violence as agency in both Fugard and Mda's discourse will be viewed, in particular, from within an apartheid system of governance. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of Durban-Westville, 2002.

This thesis examines the concept of liberalism as it informs, and is expressed in, the work of two of the most prominent South African writers during the apartheid era of 1948-1990: Alan Paton and Athol Fugard. The aim of this study is to come to a precise and objective understanding of liberalism during this time, and to demonstrate how the nature and worth of the literary achievements of these writers can be properly ascertained only through a thorough grasp of their liberal outlook. A dual focus is thus pursued. From one perspective, a fuller understanding is facilitated of the work of two major South African writers in the light of a lucid and coherent comprehension of their liberalism. Obversely, an accurate understanding of their work - as perceptive, sensitive and informed writers, addressing problems of their social and political milieu - in turn serves to illuminate some of the most important dilemmas and responses of liberals in recent South African history. The rationale for this study arises from the fact that much confusion, imprecision and misunderstanding continues to surround the notion of liberalism in South African literary critical, political and historiographical thinking. Such imprecision, moreover, is not limited to the opponents of liberalism, but also characterises the thinking of many liberal-minded scholars in this country. In consequence, the liberal basis of a good deal of South African literature remains either unacknowledged or misconceived, and, accordingly, the actual meaning and significance of a large proportion of literary work in this country, including that of Paton and Fugard, has not been adequately apprehended or appreciated. Given this critical imprecision, it is necessary as a preliminary measure to provide an introduction to the notion of liberalism in general theoretical terms before proceeding to a specific exploration of how the values, principles and beliefs which constitute liberal political philosophy present themselves in the literary work under consideration. The opening chapter explicates such fundamental liberal concepts as individualism, autonomy, liberty and equality, as well as some of the differences in emphasis between the leading liberal political theorists. This chapter also considers the nature of the contemporary liberal democratic state, the development of liberalism within the South African context, and some of the key linkages between liberal political philosophy and liberal literary critical practice. Following this theoretical introduction, the greater part of the thesis involves a detailed critical scrutiny of the creative writing, in turn, of Alan Paton and Athol Fugard. These writers have been chosen, firstly, because they stand out as indisputably the most eminent liberal authors in recent South African literature, indeed, as two of the most acclaimed writers in the contemporary English-speaking world. But their selection also derives from the fact that their writing, taken together effectively spans the entire period of apartheid. Alan Paton's famous first novel, Cry, the Beloved Country, was written immediately prior to the Nationalist Party election victory in 1948, and his writing extends into the 1980s. Athol Fugard's career commences in the 1950s and has continued up to and beyond the ending of apartheid in 1990. In fact, his most recent work to be considered in this study, Playland, is set on the last day of 1989, on the very brink of apartheid's demise. As the critical study of each writer's primary literary texts follows a chronological sequence, their work collectively provides a comprehensive view of the developing conflicts and challenges which confronted liberals throughout the time of apartheid. This is not to suggest that Paton and Fugard were the only liberal writers active against apartheid, and attention is paid to the achievements of other liberal authors during this time. Concomitantly, cognizance is taken of the range of differences between Paton and Fugard, including age, temperament, background, religious convictions, and involvement in formal politics. An advantage of a study dealing with both men is the ability not only to suggest the essential characteristics of liberalism which underlie individual distinctions, but also to reveal how a general liberal orientation manifests itself in particular instances. A study of both Paton and Fugard has benefits also in a generic sense, in that it allows a perspective on the expression of liberal ideas in both a fictive and a dramaturgical mode. For the most part, this thesis concentrates on each writer's favoured genre (Paton's fiction and Fugard's drama), though consideration is given to their other creative work, such as Paton's poetry and drama, and Fugard's fiction and film work. Moreover, both men's non-creative writing (autobiographical, biographical, notebooks, speeches, articles) is taken into account as a potentially valuable source of insight into the evolution of their liberal understanding. The most provocative factor motivating the selection of Paton and Fugard for study remains, however, the fact that neither writer's liberal standpoint has to date received full or proper appraisal. It is the contention of this thesis that each writer's liberalism, far from being a subordinate feature of his work, forms the very core of his political morality and aesthetic and demands a precise understanding. The chief objective of this study, then, is to conduct a reassessment of the work of Paton and Fugard through the filter of a rigorous account of their understanding and expression of the fundamental values and principles of liberalism. / Thesis (Ph.D.)-University of Natal, Durban, 1996.

This thesis examines ways in which identities have been represented in new South African play texts. It begins by exploring various ways in which identity has been described from various philosophical, psychological and anthropological perspectives. In particular, the thesis describes its methodology in terms of Gilles Deleuze's definition of "rhizomatic" structures. The introduction also elaborates ways in which drama is uniquely suited to represent ¨C as well as to effect ¨C transformations of identity. The thesis then moves on to an examination of specific texts in terms of four broad areas of investigation ¨C gender, political affiliation, ethnicity and syncretism. In these chapters a number of play texts are investigated from different points of view. Firstly, in a chapter on gender, the thesis focuses specifically on issues of masculinity and exile in plays by Athol Fugard, Anthony Akerman and Zakes Mda. This chapter explores orientations of the masculine which have become embedded within notions of nationalism and patriotism. In terms of political affiliations, the thesis looks at what Loren Kruger has called "post-anti-apartheid theatre" (2002: 233) and considers the trend away from protest theatre. With reference to the plays of Mike van Graan it also examines new forms of protest theatre. This chapter also explores plays which were inspired by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) and looks in more detail at Ubu and the Truth Commission by Jane Taylor. When considering ethnicities, the thesis reflects on how identity in terms of an ethnic collective is most often premised on laws of exclusion, and on the construction of what Benedict Anderson refers to as an "imagined community" (1991: 15). Representations of ethnic identities are then analysed in Happy Natives by Greig Coetzee. Syncretism seems to present a preferable description of how South African identities can be constructed and the thesis then elaborates attempts to forge a new identity in terms of amalgamation and a creative fusion of cultural resources, with particular reference to the plays of Brett Bailey and Reza de Wet. In the conclusion of this thesis, the thorny issue of racial identities is considered, and in particular the trope of the "rainbow nation", which many writers regard as a problematic blanketing description which cancels out difference. Instead, Ashraf Jamal's "radical syncretism", which does not seek to subsume heterogeneous identities, is suggested as a viable means of approaching definitions of identity. The final chapter also briefly touches on the development of physical theatre in South Africa and describes how the body can be used as a tool for transformation, relying principally on the writings of Mark Fleishman and Eugenio Barba in this regard. Finally, again resorting to a Deleuzian vocabulary which describes identity as constructed in terms of lines operating on particular planes, the thesis considers whether it may not be more beneficial in the post-apartheid context to favour paradoxical processes which relinquish identities, instead of those which attempt to consolidate them. @ 2008 Author Please cite as follows: Krueger, AR 2008, Experiments in freedom : representations of identity in new South African drama : an investigation into identity formations in some post-apartheid play-texts published in English by South African writers, from 1994 - 2007, DLitt thesis, University of Pretoria, Pretoria, viewed yymmdd < http://upetd.up.ac.za/thesis/available/etd-10282008-141823/ > D497/gm / Thesis (DLitt)--University of Pretoria, 2008. / English / unrestricted