Thesis (M.A. (English Studies)) -- University of Limpopo, 2014 / This study discusses African identity as portrayed in Zakes Mda’s The Madonna of Excelsior (2002) and Bessie Head’s Maru (1971). It explores identity and its subcomponents within the South African context as asserted in these novels. Mda employs a retrospective communal voice that blends historical accounts with fiction in order to subvert and satirise apartheid nationalism. Head, on the other hand, constructs a positive image of feminine identity in the world characterised by tribalism, patriarchal system and stereotypical subjugation of women. She dismantles established racial and ethnic prejudice against minority groups and the underprivileged. The study applies a trilogy of theoretical framework to analyse and interpret selected data: Discourse Analysis, Text Analysis and Afrocentricity. It further examines a fluidity of identities in both social and political spheres and demonstrates how suppression of these identities affects individuals and nation states. It reveals that, as a microcosm of Africa, South Africa reflects atrocious injustices of the past, carried out in the form of colonisation and apartheid, bringing about a different kind of identity of the African people. These two novels take us back to the past so that we can understand the present and subsequently build Africa’s identity of the future. KEY CONCEPTS Afrocentricity; Identity; Discrimination; Miscegenation; Otherness; Hybridity; Animalistic Dehumanisation.

Bibliography: leaves 29-340.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, San Diego, 2004. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 151-154).

Texte remanié de : Dissertation : Sprach- und Literaturwissenschaften : Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg : 1989. / Index.

The novels examined in this study -- Manuel Puig’s El beso de la mujer araña (Argentina, 1976), Diamela Eltit’s El cuarto mundo (Chile, 1988), and Hugo Achugar’s Falsas memorias: Blanca Luz Brum (Uruguay, 2000) -- suggest the oppressive character of binary-based identity categories in the contexts of the Southern Cone dictatorships of the 1970s and 1980s and of the neo-liberal regimes that followed them. This study’s queer theoretical perspective draws on performance theory as Sylvia Molloy adapts it in her idea of the pose, which she conceives of as the politically resistant, sustained representation of a culturally unclassifiable identity. Each chapter has a dual focus, involving analyses of political and religious discourses as well as close readings of the ways in which each novel counters the normative ideologies of the discourses that most inform its narrative through representations of forms of gender and sexuality that cannot be categorized in binary terms. The purpose of this study is to contribute a fresh theoretical perspective on El beso de la mujer araña and El cuarto mundo and to fill a gap in criticism through its analysis of the little-studied Falsas memorias: Blanca Luz Brum. The first chapter analyzes Molina, one of the novel’s two protagonists, as a representation of unnamable gender and sexual identities that undermines the ideologies of early Peronism and critiques oppression in the Argentina of the 1970s. Chapter II discusses how Eltit’s novel counters the naturalized gender opposition of political and religious discourses through its characters’ nonnormative identities as it points to the violence of the Pinochet dictatorship and the socio-economic inequities of later neo-liberal regimes. Chapter III analyzes Achugar’s protagonist, the historical figure Blanca Luz Brum, in terms of how she flouts the norms of femininity specific to early twentieth-century discourses in the Southern Cone. The Conclusion addresses the novels’ use of varying strategies to deconstruct normative identity categories, examines the different positions of politically resistant literature in dictatorship and neo-liberal contexts, and analyzes the implications of the texts’ relativism for political, social, and cultural change. / text

No description available.

The vast corpus of testimonial literature that has been produced in Latin America since the 1960s, reaches a peak in the 1970s and continues to the present day. The dissertation investigates this phenomenon in Chile, Argentina and Uruguay, through the examination of a group of literary works that range from personal testimonies to documentary novels. This genre is defined by a pact of truth established with the reader in relation to the experience that is being narrated. The first chapter describes testimony as a collective discourse that responds to a counter-hegemonic cultural project which opposes the doctrine of “National Security” that prevailed in the region during that period. Chapter II presents the guidelines that will frame the dissertation, preparing a synthesis of several existing models based upon diverse criteria: social, semantic, syntactic and functional. In establishing the relationship between narration, history and testimony, the thesis emphasizes that narrative techniques are needed in order to tell any story, even those which were not developed with a literary purpose. Testimony is not an exception, because it transforms experience into stories, applying to remembrances the structure of a plot. The texts are organized accordingly, taking into account the types of narrativization employed, and this taxonomy is connected with the reception theory and the contributions of the social criticism, in order to provide a comprehensive understanding of the genre. Chapters III, IV and V examine various works from the three countries mentioned above, establishing a connection between the historic-social situation, the collective symbols, the artistic production of that period, and testimonies. The conclusion suggests that the return of Latin American literature to its hybrid origins implies transformations such as the democratization of writing and the disappearance of the author as the centre of the literary production. It also claims that this corpus provokes a change in the direction of contemporary writing in those countries, generating a necessary catharsis and a new elaboration of a fragmented collective identity.

Bibliography: leaves 29-340 / 340 leaves ; 30 cm. / Title page, contents and abstract only. The complete thesis in print form is available from the University Library. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Adelaide, 1988

Zugl.: Diss. / Literaturverz. S. 183 - 189.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--UCLA, 2007. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 329-360).