This study concerns the novel Die Schmerzmacherin. by Marlene Streeruwitz and analyzes the narrative as a story about gender as felt on and through the body. The theoretical framework employed in the analysis includes a look at the gender economy; this is done through a presentation of the different actors involved and their contribution to the dynamic. The gender economy itself is characterized as a phallogocentric forum where the possibilities of participation and effecting change are unequally distributed. The study goes on to argue that disciplinary power is how the actors in the novel are taught to engage with and submit to the rules of the gender economy, and different arenas or spaces of disciplinary power are described through text-based examples. It is further suggested that the power of engaging differently also lies within reach of the actors, and that this is accomplished through attuning to the affectively felt knowledge of the effects of the gender economy. Affective knowledge, the study argues, is gained through aesthetics, by which is meant an overcoming of sensory or affective numbness and a regaining of a sense of bodily reality. As a final note, the study briefly considers the role of art in such acts of re-sensitization. / Diese Studie behandelt den Roman Die Schmerzmacherin. von Marlene Streeruwitz und analysiert die Erzählung als eine Geschichte über Gender so wie es am und durch den Körper erlebt wird. In der Studie wird als Teil des theoretischen Rahmens die Gender-Ökonomie näher betrachtet; die Analyse erfolgt durch eine Darstellung der verschiedenen Akteur*innen und deren Beitrag zur Dynamik. Die Gender-Ökonomie an sich wird als eine phallogozentrische Bühne verstanden, auf welcher Möglichkeiten der Teilnahme und der Veränderung ungleich umgesetzt werden können. Die Studie wird auch zeigen, wie Disziplinarmacht den Akteur*innen die Regeln der Gender-Ökonomie beibringt und diese in verschiedenen Milieus durchsetzt. Es wird nahegelegt, dass die Akteur*innen auch andere Handlungsmöglichkeiten entdecken können, insoweit sie imstande sind, die affektiv erfahrenen Folgen der Gender-Ökonomie wahrzunehmen. In der Studie wird dafür argumentiert, dass ein derartiges Wissen über die körperliche Wirklichkeit auch entwickelt werden kann; anschließend wird die Rolle von Kunst kurz berücksichtigt.

Thesis (MA)--Stellenbosch University, 2012. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: The focus of this study will be on the unique way in which language is used in Marlene van Niekerk‟s collection of short stories, Die sneeuslaper (2010). When reading Die sneeuslaper it is impossible not noticing the number of Dutch words, as well as words and phrases from other foreign languages, as Bargoens, Rotwelsch, German, French, Italian, Hebrew, Greek and Maltese. Some of the characters‟ speech, as well as so called sound poems (or nonsense verses) are characterised by a number of newly invented words. However, the meaning of some of these words or phrases remains unclear. Other themes in the four short stories which will be analysed are the so called political responsibility of the artist, as well as music, rhythm and bird-noises. As a theoretical basis of this study, Deleuze and Guattari‟s Kafka Toward a Minor Literature will be used. In Kafka Toward a Minor Literature Deleuze en Guattari formulate their ideas regarding minor literature. They describe a major language as a language of dominance and power, while a minor language is a language without any power. According to them the three characteristics of minor literature are: the minor deterritorializes the major, minor literature is always political, and minor literature always has a collective function. Deleuze and Guattari‟s, as well as Bogue‟s writing regarding the territorialization and deterritorialization of the refrain, is also explored briefly. Deleuze en Guattari‟s theories regarding minor literature is used in this study to read Die sneeuslaper. In the end it is concluded that the unconventional use of language in this short story collection can be associated with the political nature of some of the stories. The unique usage of language in Die sneeuslaper, the way in which Afrikaans is transformed into a language that stammers, stutters and mumbles, can be seen as a subtle form of political protest. Therefore this collection of short stories can be seen as a form of minor literature. / AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Hierdie studie fokus op die vreemde wyse waarop taal in Marlene van Niekerk se kortverhaalbundel, Die sneeuslaper (2010), aangewend word. Met die lees van Die sneeuslaper is die hoeveelheid Nederlandse woorde, asook enkele woorde en frases uit ander vreemde tale, soos Bargoens, Rotwelsch, Duits, Frans, Italiaans, Hebreeus, Grieks en Maltees, opvallend. Verder is daar in die karakters se spraak, sowel as in klankgedigte (of onsinverse), vele nuutskeppings waarvan die betekenis nie altyd so duidelik blyk nie, teenwoordig. Ander temas wat in die vier verhale figureer en ondersoek sal word is kunstenaarskap, die sogenaamde politieke verantwoordelikheid van die kunstenaar, asook musiek, ritme en voëlgeluide. As teoretiese vertrekpunt vir die studie word Deleuze en Guattari se Kafka Toward a Minor Literature, waarin hul idees oor mineurlettekunde geformuleer word, gebruik. Deleuze en Guattari onderskei tussen ‟n dominante majeurtaal en ‟n mineurtaal wat sonder mag is. Volgens Deleuze en Guattari is daar drie kenmerke van mineurletterkunde, naamlik dat die mineur die majeur deterritorialiseer, dat mineurletterkunde altyd polities is, en laastens dat mineurletterkunde altyd kollektief van aard is. Bykomend word daar ook kortliks gekyk na Deleuze en Guattari, sowel as Bogue, se skrywe oor territorialisering en deterritorialisering in die refrein. Deleuze en Guattari se teorie oor mineurletterkunde word in hierdie studie as ‟n agtergrond gebruik om Die sneeuslaper te lees. Daar word uiteindelik tot die gevolgtrekking gekom dat die onkonvensionele taalgebruik in die kortverhaalbundel wel geassosieer kan word met deterritorialisering en dat dit aansluit by die politieke aard van sommige van die verhale. Die wyse waarop Afrikaans in Die sneeuslaper getransformeer word na ‟n taal wat stamel, stotter en struikel, kan dus as subtiele, politieke protes gesien word en daarom kan dié kortverhaalbundel inderdaad as ‟n vorm van mineurletterkunde beskou word.

This dissertation attempts to develop a counter—memory, a cognitive strategy that provides an alternative to the most prevalent mode of political action by members of minority or subaltern groups: identity politics. It begins with Teresa de Lauretis’ semiotics of subjectivity, which posits the human subject as a shifting series of positions or habits formed through semiotic and cognitive “mapping” of, and being “mapped” by, its environment. De Lauretis maintains that the subject can transform social reality through an “inventive” mode of mapping. The first chapter of this study is a semiotic analysis of the memory system at work in Nicole Brossard’s Picture Theory. It argues that Brossard’s use of holographic technology is an invention that attempts to alter women’s maps of social reality. Quantum physicist David Bohm has also employed the hologram as a theoretical model. By merging Brossard’s holographic memory with Bohm’s theory of a “holomovement,” this study develops an epistemological strategy that alters not only the map of reality, but also the dominant representational mode of cognitive mapping. This enquiry then moves on to other novels written in Canada which have a strong political impetus based on gender, nationality, ethnicity, race and/or class: Margaret Atwood’s Surfacing, Marlene Nourbese Philip’s Looking for Livingstone, Beatrice Culleton’s In Search of April Raintree and Régine Robin’s La Ouébécoite. Through textual analysis, it attempts to establish that although these novels make no mention of holography, each of them employs a memory system that inscribes itself holographically. That holographic memory provides an alternative political strategy to the “identity politics” at work in each of these texts. Each text, in turn, like a fragment of a hologram, adds another structural and political dimension to the hologram. The processual structure of the holographic theory provides a ground for alliances between different political agendas while resisting closure. As an epistemological strategy, it promises to alter both the method and the ground of knowledge.

Thesis (MA)--Stellenbosch University, 2012. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This thesis investigates the ways in which white subjectivity is shaped by colonial and imperial spaces. Jean Rhys’s Voyage in the Dark (1934), Marguerite Duras’s The Sea Wall (1952/1967) and Marlene van Niekerk’s Agaat (2004/2006) are vastly different novels from multifarious literary traditions, yet they join each other through their protagonists: white creole women. In this study, I engage most prominently with white creole female subjectivity, framing my study with theories of the subject proposed by Homi Bhabha and Judith Butler. In order to interrogate creolité, I draw on Bhabha’s concept of “thirdness” – a category signifying a position in-between binary categories of representation – and Butler’s conceptualisation of subjectivity/subjection, through which she highlights the ambivalences of the process of interpellation. I also read through lenses proposed by whiteness studies in the United States and South Africa, approaching creolité not as an indication of racial hybridity, but rather a term connoting cultural and political in-betweenness. As my discussions of the novels illustrate, white creole femininity in the (post)colony is a subject position through which intricate webs of “complicity and resistance” (Whitlock 349) have to be negotiated. Looking at the white creole women as textual constructs embedded in genres which advance a particular set of politics, I explore the ways in which the authors, through their novels and protagonists, navigate various political and cultural ambiguities and inconsistencies. Establishing the theoretical framework in the introductory first chapter, in Chapter 2 I read Rhys’s novel as a modernist text that elicits a particular postcolonial politics. I link the protagonist’s social alienation in London and the Caribbean to the experience of the middle passage; this is followed by an exploration of her sexuality with reference to the figures of the European prostitute and the ‘Hottentot’ Venus. In Chapter 3 I investigate Duras’s novel and trace the ways in which a family of impoverished “Colonial natives” (Duras 138) continually fail to establish themselves as ‘legitimate’ white colonials in (French colonial) Southeast Asia. Lastly, in Chapter 4, I approach Van Niekerk’s novel not only as a feminist re-writing of the plaasroman, but also as a “complicitous critique” (Warnes 121) that reflects nostalgically – yet critically – on Afrikaner nationalism. I show how the novel registers a vision of the quotidian that is uncomfortable and unhomely. Together, the three novels speak in highly comparable and complex ways about how white creole women experience (un)homeliness in the (post)colony. This thesis probes the extent to which the novels negotiate ‘home’ (or the lack thereof): displaced, alienated and often expressing forms of nostalgia, the protagonists struggle to establish forms of belonging in spaces within which they oscillate between opposed cultures, ideologies and politics. Ultimately, my study is crucially underscored by the question of displacement and estrangement (in various guises), and the way in which they inflect the establishment and performance of femininity. / AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Hierdie tesis ondersoek die wyses waarop koloniale en imperiale ruimtes wit subjektiwiteit beïnvloed. Jean Rhys se Voyage in the Dark (1934), Marguerite Duras se The Sea Wall (1952/1967) en Marlene van Niekerk se Agaat (2004/2006) is uiteenlopende romans uit verskeie literêre tradisies: nietemin sluit hulle by mekaar aan deur hul hoofkarakters – wit kreoolse vroue. ‘n Bespreking van wit kreoolse vroulike subjektiwiteit vorm die grondslag van my studie, en ek struktureer dit rondom Homi Bhabha en Judith Butler se teorieë van subjektiwiteit. Ek benader kreoolsheid deur middel van Bhabha se konsep van “thirdness” – a kategorie wat ‘n plek tussen binêre opposisies aandui – asook Butler se teorie van “subjectivity/subjection” waarin sy the ambivalente proses van interpellasie belig. Verder lees ek die tekste met behulp van benaderings soos uiteengelê deur blankheid studies in die Verenigde State en Suid-Afrika. Ek beskou (wit) kreoolsheid dus nie as ‘n aanduiding van ras-hibrideit nie, maar eerder kulturele en politieke ambivalensie. My bespreking van die drie romans illustreer postkoloniale wit kreoolse vroulikheid as ‘n subjek-kategorie wat verwikkeld is in vorms van medepligtigheid én opstandigheid (Whitlock 349). Ek beskou die karakters as literêre konstrukte wat ingebed is in genres met spesifieke politieke standpunte. As sodanig, dink ek ook na oor die wyses waarop the outeurs, deur middel van hul romans en hoofkarakters, uiteenlopende politieke en kulturele teenstrydighede uitbeeld. In Hoofstuk 1 lê ek ‘n teoretiese raamwerk uiteen, en in Hoofstuk 2 beskou ek Rhys se roman as ‘n modernistiese teks wat terselfdertyd opvallende postkoloniale politieke temas bevat. Ek vergelyk die hoofkarakter se posisie as sosiale verstoteling in Londen en die Karibiese Eilande met die ervaring van die “middle passage”; daarna vergelyk ek haar seksualiteit met dié van die wit Europese prostituut en die ‘Hottentot’ Venus. In Hoofstuk 3 bespreek ek Duras se roman, en verken die wyses waarop ‘n gesin van “Koloniale inboorlinge” (Duras 138) in Suidoos Asië deurentyd misluk om rykdom en sosiale aansien te bekom. Laastens, in Hoofstuk 4, interpreteer ek Van Niekerk se roman nie net as ‘n feministiese herskrywing van die plaasroman nie, maar ook as ‘n “complicitous critique” (Warnes 121) wat nostalgies, maar ook op ‘n kritiese wyse, oor Afrikaner-nasionalisme nadink. Ek argumenteer verder dat die teks ‘n ongemaklike beeld van die alledaagse, asook die identifisering met die eie, skets. Wanneer die drie romans tesame beskou word, is dit duidelik dat hulle op hoogs vergelykbare en komplekse maniere nadink oor hoe wit kreoolse vroue hul sosiale en politieke posisies in (post)koloniale ruimtes ervaar. Hierdie tesis ondersoek die wyses waarop die romans tuisheid (of die gebrek daaraan) te bowe kom: die hoofkarakters is dikwels misplaas, vervreem en nostalgies, en is dikwels verwikkeld in ‘n stryd om te behoort, midde-in teenoorgestelde kulture, ideologieë en politieke standpunte. Ek baseer my tesis op die groter oorkoepelende problematiek van ontheemdheid en verveemding (in verskeie gedaantes), en hoe dit vorm gee aan die vestiging en beoefening van vroulike subjektiwiteit.

This dissertation attempts to develop a counter—memory, a cognitive strategy that provides an alternative to the most prevalent mode of political action by members of minority or subaltern groups: identity politics. It begins with Teresa de Lauretis’ semiotics of subjectivity, which posits the human subject as a shifting series of positions or habits formed through semiotic and cognitive “mapping” of, and being “mapped” by, its environment. De Lauretis maintains that the subject can transform social reality through an “inventive” mode of mapping. The first chapter of this study is a semiotic analysis of the memory system at work in Nicole Brossard’s Picture Theory. It argues that Brossard’s use of holographic technology is an invention that attempts to alter women’s maps of social reality. Quantum physicist David Bohm has also employed the hologram as a theoretical model. By merging Brossard’s holographic memory with Bohm’s theory of a “holomovement,” this study develops an epistemological strategy that alters not only the map of reality, but also the dominant representational mode of cognitive mapping. This enquiry then moves on to other novels written in Canada which have a strong political impetus based on gender, nationality, ethnicity, race and/or class: Margaret Atwood’s Surfacing, Marlene Nourbese Philip’s Looking for Livingstone, Beatrice Culleton’s In Search of April Raintree and Régine Robin’s La Ouébécoite. Through textual analysis, it attempts to establish that although these novels make no mention of holography, each of them employs a memory system that inscribes itself holographically. That holographic memory provides an alternative political strategy to the “identity politics” at work in each of these texts. Each text, in turn, like a fragment of a hologram, adds another structural and political dimension to the hologram. The processual structure of the holographic theory provides a ground for alliances between different political agendas while resisting closure. As an epistemological strategy, it promises to alter both the method and the ground of knowledge. / Arts, Faculty of / English, Department of / Graduate

This study explores the theme of spatiality as based on a reading of the novel Flammenwand. Roman mit Anmerkungen. by Marlene Streeruwitz, and takes as its focus points the notion of atopias/non-places, the disciplining nature of spaces, the necropolitics of division, and the idea of chronotope to discover how the story is situated. The study further considers how idyllic interpretations of the space of origin are treated as utopic in the novel. Relying as well on Jurij M. Lotman’s thoughts on the structure and limits of the text/work of art, the study aims to suggest how the theme of boundaries and transgressing them also is shown in the form of the novel.

The Eudaimonic turn: Well-being in Literary Studies (2013), a study by Pawelski et al, sheds light on a recent turn in literary studies. The eudaimonic approach entails that texts are examined with the help of a hermeneutic of affirmation rather than the sceptical, suspicious methods of the deconstruction and post-structuralism. Pawelski et al’s text is drawn upon in this study because it corresponds to the way in which Marlene van Niekerk utilises themes such as relationships, friendship and loss in Die sneeuslaper (2009). The eudaimonic turn focusses on the way in which complex interpersonal connections are able to add to an individual’s well-being through positive as well as negative processes. Die sneeuslaper is mainly a reflection on what it means to be an author. However, it also raises important questions about the nature of being. The four short stories provide different perspectives on friendship, on how friendship can sometimes be problematic and even a nuisance, but also how relations with others repeatedly prove to be beneficial to a person’s well-being. In my study, the relational theme of friendship in Die sneeuslaper is studied from a eudaimonic point of view. Kaja Silverman’s text, Flesh of my Flesh (2009), is referred to in order to shed light on the term relationality. The relational themes of finitude (or mortality) and interpersonal connection are clearly present in Van Niekerk’s text. Although the death of a beloved friend causes trauma in Die sneeuslaper, the trauma proves to have positive effects in the form of posttraumatic growth, comfort and acceptance as time goes by. Comfort is also construed through the creation and appreciation of a work of art like Die sneeuslaper. Cognitive narratology is referenced to show how Marlene van Niekerk overthrows and plays with fixed ideas regarding relationality and friendship, causing the reader to converse with the text. Views on friendship held by thinkers such as Aristotle, Montaigne, Lacan, Kierkegaard and Derrida are referenced to give Van Niekerk’s use of the theme in Die sneeuslaper a certain context. This context represents the fixed frames of thinking generally applicable with regard to friendship. When a reader is willing to critically interpret these as well as personal frames of reference, it provides him or her the opportunity to contemplate reality from new perspectives. In Die sneeuslaper the reader is continually challenged to question existing frames of reference by means of never ending methods (resembling a Möbius-strip) and strange notions. This study concludes with the notion that it is necessary for artists (like the writers in Die sneeuslaper) to reflect differently on reality, so that readers may be inspired to also view reality in a different light. This will result in a broader view of reality, which in turn will have a more defining influence on personal well-being. / MA (Afrikaans and Dutch), North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2014

The Eudaimonic turn: Well-being in Literary Studies (2013), a study by Pawelski et al, sheds light on a recent turn in literary studies. The eudaimonic approach entails that texts are examined with the help of a hermeneutic of affirmation rather than the sceptical, suspicious methods of the deconstruction and post-structuralism. Pawelski et al’s text is drawn upon in this study because it corresponds to the way in which Marlene van Niekerk utilises themes such as relationships, friendship and loss in Die sneeuslaper (2009). The eudaimonic turn focusses on the way in which complex interpersonal connections are able to add to an individual’s well-being through positive as well as negative processes. Die sneeuslaper is mainly a reflection on what it means to be an author. However, it also raises important questions about the nature of being. The four short stories provide different perspectives on friendship, on how friendship can sometimes be problematic and even a nuisance, but also how relations with others repeatedly prove to be beneficial to a person’s well-being. In my study, the relational theme of friendship in Die sneeuslaper is studied from a eudaimonic point of view. Kaja Silverman’s text, Flesh of my Flesh (2009), is referred to in order to shed light on the term relationality. The relational themes of finitude (or mortality) and interpersonal connection are clearly present in Van Niekerk’s text. Although the death of a beloved friend causes trauma in Die sneeuslaper, the trauma proves to have positive effects in the form of posttraumatic growth, comfort and acceptance as time goes by. Comfort is also construed through the creation and appreciation of a work of art like Die sneeuslaper. Cognitive narratology is referenced to show how Marlene van Niekerk overthrows and plays with fixed ideas regarding relationality and friendship, causing the reader to converse with the text. Views on friendship held by thinkers such as Aristotle, Montaigne, Lacan, Kierkegaard and Derrida are referenced to give Van Niekerk’s use of the theme in Die sneeuslaper a certain context. This context represents the fixed frames of thinking generally applicable with regard to friendship. When a reader is willing to critically interpret these as well as personal frames of reference, it provides him or her the opportunity to contemplate reality from new perspectives. In Die sneeuslaper the reader is continually challenged to question existing frames of reference by means of never ending methods (resembling a Möbius-strip) and strange notions. This study concludes with the notion that it is necessary for artists (like the writers in Die sneeuslaper) to reflect differently on reality, so that readers may be inspired to also view reality in a different light. This will result in a broader view of reality, which in turn will have a more defining influence on personal well-being. / MA (Afrikaans and Dutch), North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2014