Thesis (MA (Afrikaans and Dutch))--University of Stellenbosch, 2010. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This study investigates the representation of the female subject in Marlene van Niekerk’s novel, Agaat (2004). The female subjects, Milla and Agaat, are the focus of this study. Both women are subjected to drastic situations, which not only influence their relationship, but also their respective identities. This turn of events lead up to a power struggle between Milla and Agaat, which eventually gets reversed throughout the course of the narrative. The focus is essentially on the complex structure of the novel, where a prologue and epilogue serve as a framework for the four different story lines, each with its own narrative technique. A number of theoretical approaches will be employed in order to explore the discussion of the female subject. The novel, which is presented throughout by a single narrator, leads the study to concepts such as representation, subjectivity and identity. In an attempt to understand “the other”, the central role of language and mirrors with regard to representation is explored. Van Niekerk’s reinvention and even subversion of the farm novel of the late twentieth century involves ideologies of the Afrikaner such as land and religion, gender, politics and culture. This strategy results in the focus on concepts like subjectivity and identity. Both these processes will be explored in an attempt to gain insight into the characters. Key elements such as displacement, substitution and revenge give momentum to the chain of events in the story and lead up to introspection by both women. It is especially Milla’s terminal illness that induces introspection and preparation, for both Milla and Agaat, towards death. The influence of all these events, Milla and Agaat’s mutual dependence on each other, as well as the way in which they position themselves in the face of death, prompt this study. This study explores the influence of these events on women, the power struggle that developed out of this and the way in which their respective roles are reversed. / AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Hierdie studie ondersoek die representasie van die vroulike subjek in Marlene van Niekerk se roman Agaat (2004). Daar word gefokus op die twee vroue in die verhaal, Milla en Agaat. Beide vroue word aan ingrypende situasies onderwerp, wat ʼn invloed op hulle verhouding sowel as hulle onderskeie identiteite het. Hierdie gebeure lei tot ʼn magspel tussen Milla en Agaat, wat tydens die verloop van die verhaalgebeure volledig omgekeer word. Die fokus val eerstens op die roman se ingewikkelde vertelstruktuur waarin daar sprake is van ʼn pro- en epiloog as raamwerk waarbinne vier verhaallyne, elk met sy eie verteltegniek, gebruik word. ʼn Verskeidenheid teoretiese uitgangspunte word nagegaan ten einde die representasie van die vroulike subjek te ondersoek. Die roman, wat deurentyd uit die perspektief van een verteller aangebied word, lei die studie na ondersoekterreine soos representasie, subjektiwiteit en identiteit. Die sentrale rol van taal en spieëls ten opsigte van representasie en in die poging om die “ander” te kan verstaan, word nagegaan. Van Niekerk se herskrywing van die plaasroman in die laat twintigste eeu betrek op subtiele wyse die ideologieë van die Afrikaner rondom grond en religie, gender, politiek en kultuur. Dit lei tot die fokus op subjektiwiteit en identiteit. Beide hierdie prosesse word in die studie ondersoek ten einde begrip vir die karakters te probeer vind. Elemente soos verplasing, plaasvervangerskap en vergelding gee stukrag aan die verhaalgebeure en lei tot besinning by albei vroue. Dit is veral Milla se terminale siekte wat aanleiding gee tot bestekopname en voorbereiding op die dood. Die invloed van al dié gebeure en hoe twee vroue wat op mekaar aangewese is, hulleself posisioneer ten opsigte van die dood, gee aanleiding tot hierdie studie. Die studie onderneem om ondersoek in te stel na die invloed van gebeure by beide vroue, die magspel wat hieruit ontwikkel en hoe die rolle stelselmatig omruil in die verhaalgebeure.

Thèse numérisée par la Division de la gestion de documents et des archives de l'Université de Montréal.

Thèse numérisée par la Division de la gestion de documents et des archives de l'Université de Montréal

'n Ondersoek na die armoede-diskoers en die uitings patriargie, bloedskande en apartheid in Triomf van Marlene Van Niekerk.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Hong Kong, 2006. / Title proper from title frame. Also available in printed format.

'n Ondersoek na die armoede-diskoers en die uitings patriargie, bloedskande en apartheid in Triomf van Marlene Van Niekerk.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--UCLA, 2010. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 296-303).

Conrad Aiken’s observation that the “landscape and the language are the same, and we ourselves are language and are land,” depicts the material terrain we inhabit as necessarily informing the language we speak. An important corollary to Aiken’s observation is language itself writes the land. I argue that the binary division between culture and nature, as well as the attempts to universalise languages, abstracts discourse from necessary situated knowledges, alienating the land from the language it embodies. The severing of culture and nature as implied by Aiken’s observation is indicative of humanity’s progressive isolation from the land through language, as well as from their embodied natures. Remoteness results in what Marlene van Niekerk’s novel Agaat (2006) terms a “poverty disease” (2006: 251). Michiel Heyns confirms that the character Agaat relates this barrenness of spirit to her “diagnosis of spiritual ills through human dealings with the soil” (2009: 132). I illustrate the novel’s revitalisation of language as an act of ecological recuperation that alleviates dis-eased consciousnesses by potentially recognising, valuing and responding to situated knowledges revealed in land narratives.1 My argument therefore uncovers the challenges that the novel directs at an unreformed and universal Western2 To this end I use critiques of colonialism that reveal culture’s assimilation of the Other, rationalist discourse that continues to appropriate nature as resource for a hierarchical culture. 3 By combining this literary analysis with a wider eco-theoretical enquiry I position my study in an interdisciplinary field of investigation. This is in response to the damaging consequences of the inherited and fragmentary nature of specialisation. In addition, by detailing literary and feminist especially the work of Val Plumwood, Donna Haraway and Nicole Brossard. I use these critiques to analyse self/Other oppositions that Western culture constructs and patrols to maintain a defensive culture of domination. I show how nature and all those feminised and marginalised by Western discourses that hierarchise culture have been consistently overlooked and under-represented by those who purport to ‘control’ the environment and privilege the symbolic language as the carrier of culture. Agaat provides fruitful terrain for the reflection of marginalised voices; voices that confirm the environment and language as necessarily both feminist and social justice issues. 1 My preference for the hyphenated usage of the word ‘dis-ease’ signals the equation between discomfort or unease and disease or sickness. 2 While I am concerned over emphasising words such as Western and Apartheid by capitalising them, I have decided to retain this form so as not to diminish the magnitude of the effect these discourses have had on global and regional communities. 3 When referring to Others I, like Karen J. Warren, capitalise the term. Warren defines Others as all earth Others subjected to “unjustified domination-subordination relationships” (2005: 252). responses to Western patriarchal discourse and its impact on nature, I show the ways in which literature negotiates the possible re-conceptualisation of our collective cultural imagination. Van Niekerk’s novel offers a sustained critique of the oppressive Western conceptual frameworks that have dominated Others through hegemonic constructions. Furthermore, I investigate what this writer might offer as an alternative to systems of social, political and ecological control and the violence it inflicts.

Tod und Trauer sind zentrale Motive der Gegenwartsliteratur des 21. Jahrhunderts. Dass dabei zugleich auch Religion und Glaube häufig eine große Rolle spielen, ist ein Hinweis darauf, dass in einer säkularisierten und industrialisierten Welt Gott und Religiosität im Angesicht von Tod und Vergänglichkeit wieder oder immer noch eine maßgebliche Bedeutung einnehmen. Wie begegnen gegenwärtige Erzähltexte dem Thema »Tod und Trauer«, wie positionieren sie sich gegenüber religiösen Ideen und welche Ansätze der Beschäftigung mit metaphysischen Fragen bieten sie an? Diesen Fragen geht die Untersuchung Von der Endlichkeit des Menschen erzählen. Sterben und Tod in der Gegenwartsliteratur anhand der Erzählungen Der Abend nach dem Begräbnis der besten Freundin. von Marlene Streeruwitz, Alice von Judith Hermann und Aller Tage Abend von Jenny Erpenbeck nach. Die Arbeit zeigt auf, dass sich die deutschsprachige Gegenwartsliteratur in ihrer Auseinandersetzung mit Tod und Trauer kritisch-reflexiv ins Verhältnis zu religiösen Vorstellungen, zur Problematik einer geeigneten Sprache und nicht zuletzt zu sich selbst als adäquates Reflexionsmedium der ›großen‹ Menschheitsfragen setzt.

This M.F.A. thesis in dramaturgy presents the first-ever stage adaptation of South African writer Marlene van Niekerk’s 2004 novel Agaat. Van Niekerk is an internationally acclaimed novelist, short story writer, poet, and dramatist particularly known for her lengthy novelistic excavations of Afriakner identity, in which sexuality, race, and gender collide in compelling but fraught ways. Covering nearly fifty-years of South African history—from the establishment of apartheid in 1948 through the nation’s transition to democracy in 1994—Agaat investigates everyday cycles of abuse and intimacy through the story of white farmer Milla de Wet and her coloured adopted daughter-cum-maid, Agaat Lourier. This thesis foregrounds the interconnections between theory and practice by presenting both the adaptation itself and a prolonged engagement with theories of adaptation and dramaturgy. It is framed, then, around a simple question: How might dramaturgy and adaptation, as cultural and artistic processes and products, encounter one another? Through analysis of current discussions in the fields of Adaptation Studies and dramaturgy, and reflections on the particular challenges and possibilities of adapting van Niekerk’s novel to the stage, the thesis argues that adaption can be understood as a mode of encounter that opens up spaces for connection between people, texts, and cultures. A dramaturgical method of adaptation is concerned not with hierarchy, authority, and fidelity, but rather with viewing adaptation as a conversation between a network of resonances. The thesis begins with an overview of van Niekerk’s work and context, moves to an examination of current conversations in Adaptation Studies and dramaturgy, and concludes with a prolonged reflection on the process of adapting Agaat to the stage.