Student Number : 0418258G - MA dissertation - School of Literature and Language Studies - Faculty of Humanities / I chose Bessie Head’s work not only because her life is poignantly expressed in her writing, but also to endeavour as far as possible to fill the lacunae in her novella The Cardinals. Much of my inspiration is derived from the semi-autobiographical elements in her narrative and the way it culminates in the characters Johnny, Ruby and Mouse. Exploration of this unusual triumvirate provides many challenges and I will strive to do it justice. Writing a sequel to The Cardinals is also my personal contribution towards a process of postcolonial healing and a tribute to the literary legacy so generously left to us by a woman who rose from her adverse origins to become a legend in her own time. In my view Bessie Head invents the protagonist Johnny in The Cardinals in representation of the father she never knew. In writing the sequel I give this mythical man a pedigree and political recognition. By recreating the male protagonist in the sequel, I pay special tribute to Bessie Head as a fiction writer and as a courageous woman who battled with demons throughout her life. Adversity did not sway her from her determination to write. She was alienated by her mother’s family who failed to offer her moral support, let alone anything else. The sequel explores the inner and outer dimensions of the lives of the protagonists and recollects the injustices from South Africa’s political past. It is impossible for any story based in that time not to be political, or as political as I am able to make it within the limitations of my personal observations and experience. I give Johnny a family name. I chose the name of De Meillon to provide him with an authentic history. In researching family names of early Cape settlers I came across a Henry De Meillon, who lived in the Cape from 1823 where he farmed, and where, in his leisure time he produced memorable works of art, which are on display in a Cape gallery. I thought he would be an ideal ancestor for the fictional character, Johnny. The original Henry De Meillon married a Dutch woman called Johanna and in the text I suggest that Johnny’s given name is derived from this source. To limit the sequel to eight chapters I do not make mention of the slave families who toiled in the De Meillon vineyards to cultivate selected vines and perhaps interbred with the De Meillons and took the name as their own, some of them possibly entitled to it as direct De Meillon descendents, and some not. Although they are excluded from the text, I submit a family tree to help assemble a family history that is entirely fictional except for the original De Meillon couple. Any events thereafter are invented and bear no truth to any De Meillon descendants that may be alive at this time. The sequel’s main focus is on a child secretly born of mixed parentage in a colour conscious South Africa of the late 1930s, coinciding with Bessie Head’s own birth. The sequel expands on the communist phobia that gripped an apartheid society of the 1960s, borrowing from the communist family in The Cardinals who befriended Charlotte Smith and accepted her into their home. It provided her with opportunities to expand her knowledge and develop a social conscience (Head 1993: p 11). The story is about Coloured people, but I prefer to write about them as people and not as members of a specific race group. The notion that Ruby was white is subverted by the following sentence that appears in The Cardinals: “He looked at the two dark wings of her eyebrows and the smooth stillness of her dark brown face, ‘Where did you grow up?’ he asked” (Head 1993: p 52). She said she grew up on a farm and Johnny tells her that he grew up in a slum. Ruby’s frantic plea when she encounters Johnny on the lonely stretch of beach is: “Love me! Love me! Love me!” (Head 1993: p 52). I interpret this as Bessie Head’s plea for love and acceptance and the desire for family. I see it as a feverish search for a true identity. I also see it as her intense wish for the insecurities of her life to be swept away by a black knight on a white horse, the black knight being ‘Johnny’ who represents not only the father, but the white/black in juxtaposition with Bessie Head’s own hybrid heritage. In writing a sequel to the novella, I give the characters the recognition and the social status that Bessie Head herself deserved. She died too soon and in her short lifetime she was deprived of the benefits her writing started generating towards the end of her life. I hope to give insight into that era of the novella from the perspective of someone born of mixed parentage and the poverty and hardships suffered in the ‘African’ context. I also want the characters to transcend Africa and move abroad into an environment other than South Africa to escape the persecution of the apartheid conditioning. I would like to ensure that they enjoy the sense of freedom that was their birthright in the country of their forebears. I regard the writing of the sequel as bringing finality to a story that seems incomplete. There is scope for setting the protagonists on the path to fulfilling what I see as Bessie Head’s secret dreams of a life she perhaps wanted for herself and her son. Eilersen and MacKenzie’s biographies of her hint that she preferred a simple uncomplicated rural life. It could be that she wanted everything and settled for nothing, the primitive conditions of her home in Botswana being evidence of this. She lived simply without modern conveniences, placing herself on an equal footing with the living conditions of thousands of families who live in Africa. In writing a sequel to her novella, I hope to peel away the surface layers of a woman whose written words went beyond the ordinary and to reveal within the unfathomable depths of her psyche the clever, loving, seething, beautiful, frightened, but angered human being whose hatred could be fierce and whose love overwhelming. In the sequel these aspects emerge in certain characteristics present in Johnny and Mouse. It culminates in their incestuously-spawned daughter, the Ruby doppelganger: Jewel. Margaret Daymond in her introduction to The Cardinals argues that the novella “is not only expressive of complex fears and angers” but that there is a haunting beauty in its many love stories; in addition there is treachery and deception in Mouse’s orders to find a wheel chair for an old lady in desperate need of one (1993: p xiv). It projects newspaper reporting of noble deeds as deception that promotes the newspaper’s image through a fabricated tale. In her role as a reporter Bessie Head may have come face to face with contrived acts of compassion that were falsely represented. In view of the semiautobiographical nature of The Cardinals it is quite possible that Bessie Head herself experienced this kind of false reporting. The subject of incest in the novella could be a representation of Bessie Head’s disregard for the laws of a rigid Calvinist government. The possibility of forbidden love may have haunted her throughout her life, but especially so at the age of twenty-five when she wrote The Cardinals. Daymond maintains that Bessie Head gives the impression that her protagonists, although they were unwittingly blood-related, had a right to pursue their love. The boundaries of a blood-tie relationship was so deeply embedded in Bessie Head’s instincts that they emerged in her writing of The Cardinals in the intimacies of an older man and a young girl in representation of Bessie Head herself. She could have become entangled in a relationship with someone who was actually her father, and she would not have known. There is much speculation in literary circles as to who her father may have been. The assumption that he was a race-horse stable hand has not been proven. I am convinced that Bessie Head researchers will eventually uncover all the hidden facts of her life.

This dissertation explains how international disputes over the legal foundations of United States imperial expansion became sites of unanticipated struggle over the legitimacy of the American justice system. Between the mid nineteenth century and the early twentieth, the United States submitted to a series of international tribunals designed to award monetary compensation for loss of life and property resulting from the wave of territorial acquisitions that transformed the nation into a global empire. These claims commissions depoliticized the dispossession that resulted from annexation by characterizing it as a form of exchange that could be retroactively settled through arbitration. The model of justifying expansion through claims settlement came into crisis when foreign nationals from Panama, the West Indies, and Mexico who were living in United States territories turned to these tribunals to argue that the US government authorized forms of state violence and labor coercion in violation of the international norms known as the “standard of civilization.” By demonstrating how claimants used seemingly technical calculations of market value compensation to question the government’s ability to protect life and property within its borders, the dissertation uncovers a forgotten moment of struggle over the limits and possibilities of international law to address structural injustices within the American legal system.

À l’ère d’une économie numérique sans précédent, ce mémoire tente de comprendre la relation entre les usagers du milieu virtuel et les entreprises technologiques au pouvoir. Afin de comprendre les conséquences du marché, seront à l’étude des concepts tels que les injustices numériques et injustices numériques raciales. Essentiellement, l’objectif de ce travail sera de qualifier la place des classes subalternes dans l’écosystème numérique. Une réflexion pluridisciplinaire s’impose, avec une attention particulière portée sur le topo du racisme en relation avec la technologie. Conséquemment, le cadre normatif régulant le marché économique actuel sera mis en lumière de sorte à contester l’enjeu éthique entourant l’usage de la technologie. / In the age of an unprecedented numérique economy, this thesis attempts to understand the relationship between users of the virtual environment and the technology companies in power. In order to understand the consequences of the market, concepts such as digital injustice and digital racial injustice will be studied. Essentially, the aim of this work will be to qualify the place of the subaltern classes in the digital ecosystem. Multidisciplinary reflection is required, with particular attention paid to the topo of racism in relation to technology. Consequently, the normative framework regulating the current economic market will be brought to light, so as to challenge the ethical stakes surrounding the use of technology.

No description available.

Notre étude aborde les représentations autochtones des transgressions liées à l’environnement et celles de la justice environnementale au Canada à travers l’analyse de documentaires réalisés par des Autochtones et produits par Wapikoni mobile. Grâce à l’utilisation d’une méthodologie qualitative, nous visons à mettre les points de vue autochtones au premier plan de notre étude et ainsi présenter les expériences de transgressions et d’injustices environnementales telles qu’elles sont vécues et représentées par les réalisateurs et par les intervenants qui sont intégrés dans les documentaires. L’étude des documentaires nous donne aussi un accès privilégié aux représentations de la nature et du territoire, ainsi qu’aux rapports avec les Allochtones et l’État canadien. Les résultats de notre analyse des documentaires viennent souligner la place fondamentale de la nature et du territoire dans les représentations autochtones, et exposent la gravité extrême des atteintes à l’environnement pour ces communautés. Les documentaires indiquent que les injustices et les transgressions environnementales ont des conséquences incommensurables pour les peuples autochtones. Notre analyse révèle aussi la place de l’État canadien, la structure coloniale et les valeurs capitalistes dans ces actes. Ces éléments sont mis en lumière à travers les représentations autochtones d’une responsabilité accrue des acteurs gouvernementaux et organisationnels accompagnée de rapports antagonistes avec les Allochtones, qui engendrent plusieurs réactions autochtones aux injustices et aux transgressions. Finalement, notre analyse dégage des documentaires un lot de revendications essentielles afin de parvenir à une justice environnementale autochtone. / Our study addresses Indigenous representations of environmental transgressions and environmental justice in Canada through the analysis of Indigenous documentary short-films produced by Wapikoni Mobile. Through the use of qualitative methodology, we aim to bring Indigenous perspectives to the forefront of our study and thus present the experiences of environmental transgressions and injustices as represented by the documentary filmmakers, as well as their participants. The study of documentaries also gives us privileged access to representations of nature and land, as well as to relations with non-Natives and the Canadian state. The results of our analysis highlight the fundamental place of nature and land in Indigenous representations present in the short-films, and expose the extreme severity of environmental damage to these Indigenous communities. The documentaries indicate that environmental injustices and transgressions have immeasurable consequences for Indigenous peoples. Our analysis also reveals the place of the Canadian state, the colonial structure and capitalist values in these acts. These elements are highlighted through Indigenous representations of increased responsibility by state and corporate actors accompanied by antagonistic relationships with Non-Indigenous people, which generate multiple Indigenous reactions to injustices and transgressions. Finally, our analysis identifies from these documentaries a set of claims essential to achieving Indigenous environmental justice.

<p>History is regrettably replete with wars and dictatorial regimes that claimed the lives of millions of people. Most of the time the planners were not held accountable for their misdeeds. Fortunately in recent years the idea of people being prosecuted for mass atrocities was launched and debated. The purpose of this study was to propose avenues for promoting respect for victims rights. It examined the rationale of the victims reparation, its evolution, its denial and its rebirth. It canvass victims rights in domestic law especially in the civil law in comparison with international law. It proposed means whereby the international community may better address the issue of victims rights.</p>

<p>History is regrettably replete with wars and dictatorial regimes that claimed the lives of millions of people. Most of the time the planners were not held accountable for their misdeeds. Fortunately in recent years the idea of people being prosecuted for mass atrocities was launched and debated. The purpose of this study was to propose avenues for promoting respect for victims rights. It examined the rationale of the victims reparation, its evolution, its denial and its rebirth. It canvass victims rights in domestic law especially in the civil law in comparison with international law. It proposed means whereby the international community may better address the issue of victims rights.</p>

Thesis (doctoral), Universität, Düsseldorf, 2006. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 245-257).

Thesis (doctoral), Universität, Düsseldorf, 2006. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 245-257).

Comment rendre intelligibles les injustices de genre dans toute leur extension ? Cette démarche de philosophie politique appliquée conduit à en tenter l’approche par les violences sexuelles comprises comme extrémisation de ces injustices. Dans une première partie, les limites de l’apport des théories de la justice sont mises en lumière à travers le féminisme libéral complexe de Susan Okin, qui centre sur les injustices de genre dans le travail et dans la famille. L’examen des évolutions de son questionnement y fait apparaître l’intuition de certaines exigences pour penser les violences sexuelles comme injustices, laissées par elle inexplorées. La deuxième partie, centrée sur des études contextuelles, est consacrée à des phénoménalisations de ces violences dans la société contemporaine. À partir de la théorisation du genre par Catherine MacKinnon comme domination sexualisée, et à l’aide des données fournies par des travaux d’anthropologie, se trouvent investiguées les violences hétérosexuelles entre adultes et les violences sexuelles intrafamiliales. De ce moment d’expérimentation la domination genrée ressort comme fonction dynamique des violences sexuelles. Une ultime étape explore des remédiations. Deux pratiques collectives de réparation et de prévention ouvrent sur une éthique féministe de la reconstruction dont la portée politique fait surgir les violences comme injustices structurelles. Des travaux d’Iris M. Young sont dégagées les exigences d’une prise en charge sociale de telles injustices. Le geste est amorcé enfin d’une reconstruction normative traçant les contours d’une justice non seulement distributive et réparatrice, mais aussi transformative. / How can one think of gender injustice in all its extension ? This research in applied political philosophy seeks to shed light on this problem by focusing on sexual violence as a social and structural phenomenon.In a first part, the limits of « theory of justice approach » are highlighted through an examination of one of its fullest attempts regarding gender, that is Susan Okin’s feminist liberalism. Evolutions in her works allow me to bring out some intuitions regarding the political implications of what would be an account of sexual violence taken as social injustice, yet such intuitions remained unexplored. Taking these limits seriously, the second part of this research sets to examine sexual violence as phenomenonalized in contemporary society. With MacKinnon’s theory of gender as sexualised domination as a critical background given by Okin herself for my investigation, I tackle heterosexual violence between adults as well as intrafamilial sexual violence. This experimental gesture leads me to elaborate gendered domination as a dynamic function of sexual violence. A last moment explores the remedies implied by such comprehension. Two forms of collective and feminist praxis as reparative and preventive, are analysed so as to bring out the normative foundations of what appears as a feminist ethics of reconstruction. Its political dimension leads to an apprehension of sexual violence as structural injustice. Iris Young’s work is discussed in the respect, so as to highlight the conditions of a full apprehension of sexual violence as injustice. A normative reconstruction that leads to envisage justice not only as distributive or reparative, but also as transformative.