This dissertation looks at the way in which the shifting configurations of nation, gender and future in Micah might affect readers' positioning as subjects---that is their positioning as agents of speech and action---in a way that might engender resistance to oppression. It is suggested that if readers of Micah identify with the ambiguous and shifting national and gendered identities, within the context of the book's visions for the future, they are urged to recognize contradictions within their own subjectivity. This has the possible effect of shifting the reader's pre-formed subject position, or at least interrogating it, a process which may allow for resistance to oppression. The theoretical problematic for this approach originates within recent discussions of textual determinacy in biblical and literary criticism: "is it the text or the reader that controls meaning?" The work of theorist Homi K. Bhabha on the negotiation of cultural difference in colonial and post-colonial contexts is used to engage the position---common to much contemporary literary and cultural criticism---that the reader comes to the text already formed as a subject within ideology, and that this will necessarily affect or control the way she reads the text. Zizek's reading of Althusser through Lacan is taken as a starting point for an understanding of "subject formation" thus conceived. This position, which tends toward the fixity of the subject, can be seen as analogous to Bhabha's discussion of the role of "pedagogical objects and discourses" (cultural icons, stereotypes, formative events) within the construction of national identity. By way of contrast, Bhabha's key concepts---hybridity, third space, outside the sentence, liminal identification, time-lag, agency in indeterminacy; in short performative practice---envision an identification with difference in a way that allows for the subject to be repositioned and for meaning to be reinscribed. Bhabha's notions of pedagogical object and

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In this thesis, I expand considerations of diaspora as not only a migration of people and cultures but a migration of thought. Specifically, I demonstrate that literary representations of diaspora produce what I consider to be an epistemological migration, challenging the idea that race and culture are stable and impermeable and offering instead racial and cultural fluidity. I assert that this causal relationship is best exemplified by narratives of racial passing written by diasporic writers. Using Homi Bhabha’s concepts of mimicry, hybridity, and ambivalence, I analyze Helen Oyeyemi’s Boy, Snow, Bird and Zoë Wicomb’s Playing in the Light, arguing that Boy, Snow, Bird’s narrative form is a form of mimicry that repeats European and African literary traditions and subverts Eurocentrism, while Playing in the Light is a “Third Space” in which to accept notions of the non-categorical fluidity of race. Through this analysis, I draw particular attention to Oyeyemi’s and Wicomb’s unique abilities to refract notions of race, rather than presumably reflect a system of strict categories, and, ultimately, I argue that these novels transcend the realm of literature, existing as empowering calls for society’s modifications of its racial perceptions.

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The protagonist Martha in Doris Lessing’s Martha Quest is born to white British settler parents and grows up in a British colony in southern Africa in the 1930s. Although officially the coloniser rather than the colonised, Martha tries to reject this role mentally, verbally, and physically. This essay aims to show that a postcolonial reading of Martha in relation to the colonial context helps in understanding her double consciousness and, more specifically, her inability to find a real or lasting sense of home. Using Homi Bhabha’s concept of unhomeliness, the essay argues that Martha does not truly feel at home anywhere, because the “unhomely” always disturbs the “homely.” Through close reading of the text, it shows how Martha tries to find a sense of home in four areas of her life: her physical home, nature, her body, and her mind. This essay finds that despite Martha’s efforts in moving from her family home to rented accommodation, from the bush to the city, from girlhood to womanhood, and from her individual thoughts to the solidarity of others, she still does not feel at home anywhere. Whenever she starts to feel comfortable in a place or situation, unhomely moments, such as reminders of her nationality, race, or class, always disturb the homely feelings of belonging. Ultimately, Martha cannot escape her unhomeliness. / Huvudpersonen Martha i Doris Lessings Martha Quest är dotter till vita brittiska bosättare och växer upp i en brittisk koloni i södra Afrika på 1930-talet. Trots att hon formellt sett är kolonisatören snarare än den koloniserade, försöker Martha att avvisa denna roll mentalt, verbalt och fysiskt. Denna uppsats syftar till att visa att en postkolonial tolkning av Martha i förhållande till det koloniala sammanhanget bidrar till en förståelse av hennes dubbla medvetande och mer specifikt hennes oförmåga att hitta en verklig, eller bestående, känsla av hemma. Med hjälp av Homi Bhabhas koncept gällande o-hemlikhet argumenterar uppsatsen för att Martha inte känner sig riktigt hemma någonstans, eftersom det ”o-hemlika” alltid stör det ”hemlika.” Genom en noggrann läsning av texten visar den hur Martha försöker hitta känslan av ett hem inom fyra områden av sitt liv: sitt fysiska hem, naturen, sin kropp och sitt sinne. Denna uppsats konstaterar att trots Marthas ansträngningar att flytta från sitt familjehem till ett hyresrum, från land till stad, från ung flicka till kvinna och från sina individuella tankar till solidaritet med andra, känner hon sig fortfarande inte hemma någonstans. När hon börjar känna sig bekväm på ett ställe eller i ett läge, stör o-hemlika ögonblick i form av påminnelser om hennes nationalitet, ras eller klass alltid hennes hemlika känslor av tillhörighet. I slutändan kan Martha inte undgå sin o-hemlikhet.

Submitted by Renata Lopes (renatasil82@gmail.com) on 2017-02-20T12:18:55Z No. of bitstreams: 1 tatianadasilvafalcaocosta.pdf: 666906 bytes, checksum: 4e3c3b9e2476393dca49dc15ee9f2665 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Adriana Oliveira (adriana.oliveira@ufjf.edu.br) on 2017-02-20T17:59:33Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 tatianadasilvafalcaocosta.pdf: 666906 bytes, checksum: 4e3c3b9e2476393dca49dc15ee9f2665 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Adriana Oliveira (adriana.oliveira@ufjf.edu.br) on 2017-02-20T18:08:19Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 tatianadasilvafalcaocosta.pdf: 666906 bytes, checksum: 4e3c3b9e2476393dca49dc15ee9f2665 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2017-02-20T18:08:19Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 tatianadasilvafalcaocosta.pdf: 666906 bytes, checksum: 4e3c3b9e2476393dca49dc15ee9f2665 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2008-12-08 / Esta pesquisa procura compreender como se dá a percepção do mundo sob a perspectiva contemporânea. A via de acesso a esta percepção é a poesia do mineiro de Pirapetinga, Fernando Fábio Fiorese Furtado. Pretendemos i) ampliar nossos questionamentos sobre a atuação da poesia contemporânea na elaboração identitária individual (a priori) e a coletiva (a posteriori), ii) traçar um perfil da percepção contemporânea do mundo através desta poética do enconto. Para nós a construção identitária se dá sempre em relação. / This research looks for getting a better comprehension about a contemporary perception of the world through Fernando Fiorese’s poetry. He is a contemporary Brazilian poet from Pirapetinga, Minas Gerais. We intend i) to enlarge the possibilities of questions related to contemporary poetry performance in working out both individual identity (a priori) and colletive one (a posteriori); ii) to outline a contemporary perception of the world through this meeting poetry. We believe that the identity construction happens always in relation.

Uppsatsen undersöker och jämför den tematiska och språkliga gestaltningen av den instabila identiteten i Johannes Anyurus roman En storm kom från paradiset och Sami Saids roman Väldigt sällan fin. De frågeställningar som behandlas är: Hur gestaltas den postkoloniala identitetens problematik i de båda romanerna? Hur tematiseras den instabila identiteten? Hur kan språket synliggöra en instabil identitet? För att undersöka den tematiska gestaltningen av det instabila subjektet utgår analysen från postkoloniala teorier vars grund finns i den poststrukturalistiska synen på verkligheten som en konstruktion styrd av makt och språk. Flera postkoloniala teoretiker utgår också från psykoanalytikern Jacques Lacans spegelteori i analysen av hur identiteten skapas i ett postkolonialt sammanhang. I diskussionen av det instabila subjektets språkliga gestaltning utgår uppsatsen från psykoanalytikern och litteraturvetaren Julia Kristevas teori om utanförskap som det poetiska språkets grund samt dess uttryck i vår tids skönlitteratur.

This study intends to investigate British artist Anish Kapoor’s stylistic formation in relationship to globalization, positing its history as a multiplicity, comprised of several competing localisms, including: minimalism; the traditions of modern painting; and the artist’s own personal diasporic narrative. It will demonstrate how Kapoor is a transgressive global artist, concerned not only with rethinking the longstanding question of artistic form, but also with the enduring process central to the cultural formation of subjects. Overall, this thesis will propose that Kapoor’s art in particular can be comprehended by the special liminal position it occupies between such polarities as modern and postmodern art, painting and sculpture, East and West, national and trans-national, and local and global. By transgressing the borders that demarcate these discourses, Kapoor’s art enters an in-between state; through both formal and thematic strategies, his sculptural forms orchestrate viewers so they are able to move beyond distinct, fixed, and stabile meanings and view the works as eminently open to the different perspectives and radically diverse discourses they engage, making them truly global works of art.

This essay explores and investigates post-colonial identity in Ireland in Hugo Hamilton’s The Speckled People: A Memoir of a Half-Irish Childhood (2003) and The Sailor in the Wardrobe (2006). Relying primarily on Homi K. Bhabha’s postcolonial criticism, which draws on some ideas from psychoanalysis, this essay argues that the autobiographies resonate well with the ideas of culture as a strategy of survival and of the post-colonial child as an analyst of Western modernity. Thus, three chosen concepts; ‘the Uncanny’, ‘Third Space’ and ‘Hybridity’ work together to reveal a recurring theme of split and duplicity in reference to the colonial past throughout. Furthermore they also reveal that the actual writing of the autobiographies in itself must be regarded as a way of responding to and negotiating that very same split and duplicity in reference to Ireland’s past.

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