In most nationstates the construction and making of a national identity is a historic phenomenon as the process started hundreds of years ago. In Namibia however, the construction of a nation and a national identity has just been instigated. Namibia, as one of the last colonies in Africa, did not gain independence until 1990. For a long time, Namibia was subjected to German as well as South African colonial and apartheid rule. Our aim with this essay was to examine the Namibian construction of a national identity, with reference to Namibia's historical postcolonial and postapartheid background. The focus is on how people from two ethnic backgrounds, the Owambo and the San, experience their situation as Namibians in one of the youngest countries in Africa. Hence, we have made 22 interviews in northern Namibia during the fall of 2004. The purpose with this essay has been to comprehend and present a process of nation-building and national identity in the making. We have found that 'ethnicity' still is an important mean of identification in Namibia. Moreover, the fact that Namibia is a postcolonial and postapartheid state, strongly affects the Namibian nation-building and the construction of a Namibian identity. Ethnic categories are still ingrained in people; the distinctions signify difference, and are used as means of identification. Alhough simultaneously, the segregation forced by the colonisers has now made ethnic categories less distinct since such divisions relate to apartheid and repression. The Owambo group tend to be more aware of their position as Namibians in the Namibian nation than the San groups, and their culture is to a large extent 'dominant' and influences the nation-building. The Owambos identify themselves as Namibians. The San groups on the other hand, identify themselves with their ethnic or tribal group. They are also in an inferior minority position, which they are highly aware of.

This paper investigates the view that non-governmental organizations have on childhood and child soldiers, and what its implications on the rehabilitation and reintegration of former child soldiers can be. Four documents produced by the Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers are examined by using qualitative discourse analysis. Postcolonial theory and new sociology of childhood are the main theoretical frameworks applied to the study. The study finds that the documents share a certain view of childhood, and that the aim of rehabilitation is to reproduce the child in that image. As the discourse may not be shared with local community, it is necessary to become aware of the different discourses and attempt to reconcile them.

Intimate partner violence impacts women around the world and therefore does not present itself congruently across cultures or regions (Devries et al., 2013; Sarkar, 2010; World Health Organization, 2012). Many contemporary researchers strive to name, classify and understand experiences of intimate partner violence that are distinct to the South Asian subcontinent and members of the South Asian diaspora (Ahmed-Ghosh, 2004; Bloch & Rao, 2002; Chatterji & Chaudhry, 2014; Jeyaseelan et al., 2007; Mani, 1987; Panchanadeswaran, & Koverola, 2005). Their works contribute to a dominant discourse about violence against South Asian women that often frames cultural understandings and practices to be the cause of harm within this community. A dominant discourse which predominantly utilizes Western feminist understandings of “patriarchy” and oppression primarily serves to further homogenize, Other, and essentialize the experiences of South Asian women which cannot and should not be discussed in contrast to violence in a Western context. The impact of applying a Western lens to violence against South Asian women is that Western scholars take on the responsibility of identifying and prioritizing the needs of South Asian peoples and offer solutions to these issues without considering the systems of support that already exist or asking those impacted how they imagine change. This project engages a postcolonial discourse analysis to examine dominant discourses on violence against South Asian women as they are deployed within the context, literature, and research on intimate partner violence. Through analyzing 75 highly cited articles using a postcolonial lens, this project unearths commonalities across the dominant discourse such as the use of positivistic colonial research methods, the construction of a monolithic South Asia, the technologies of neoliberalism and colonial capitalism, and the archetype of the Third World Woman via white feminism. These reoccurring themes throughout the dominant discourse indicate the existence of an inferiorizing and oversimplified understanding of South Asian people and their experiences which is frequently framed using colonial technologies and the white gaze. Deconstructing these mechanisms can create an intentional space for anti-colonial ways of being and knowing as a South Asian person and discussions of violence in the South Asian subcontinent and diaspora without essentializing, homogenizing, or erasing aspects of these experiences. / Thesis / Master of Social Work (MSW)

Travel agencies provide exciting opportunities for tourists to gain new experiences, allowing them to learn more about foreign countries. However, travel agencies also have a role in creating and maintaining problematic aspects of the tourism industry. Thailand is a country with one of the most prominent tourism industries in the world, which has also created a plethora of problems. The purpose of this study is to understand how Swedish travel agency websites portray Thailand from the standpoint of post-colonial theory. More specifically, Orientalism is the main theoretical framework used in this thesis because of its specific focus on the effects of European imperialism and colonization on Asia. A number of prior studies that use Orientalism and post-colonial theory are also referred to in examining the tourism industry. The empirical data for this study was collected from 7 Swedish travel agency websites and analyzed using critical discourse analysis. The results showed that the themes present in the data resemble elements of Orientalism discussed by Edward Said. These themes are ‘othering’, ‘exotification, ‘discovering the unknown’, ‘entitlement’, ‘paradise’, and ‘authenticity’. The themes exemplify the power dynamics between Thailand and Sweden created by tourism and suggest that Orientalist ideas continue to be perpetuated outside of their original contexts. The findings were consistent with the findings of prior studies. This study provides insight into the effects of Orientalism beyond the colonial era, and into aspects of modern life, like tourism.

Abstract not available

Thesis (Ph. D.)--State University of New York at Binghamton, Department of Comparative Literature, 2008. / Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (PhD (Economics))--University of Stellenbosch, 2005. / Numerous theories have been constructed to provide reasons for economic growth differences between countries. As data became more readily available, cross-country empirical studies identified a set of variables that contributed to economic growth, including variables such as the investment in human and physical capital.

This research transfigures in the field of “ postcolony ” (Achille Mbembe, 2001) ; an imperial situation that occurs in countries that were once destroyed by the ancient colonization and that keep its traces and bear its heritage. The novels of our study are as follows : Balbala (2002) by Abdourahman A. Waberi, Le bourreau (2004) by Séverin Cécile Abega, La grande mêlée (2011) by Michel Tremblay and Mãn (2013) by Kim Thúy. Indeed, we compare and would like to know why and how Africa, Canada and Vietnam may have a postcolony haloed by neo-colonialism. In addressing this issue, all the novels of our study converge to say that Colonizers succeeded to turn the suns of independence and decolonization into murderous suns, the vicious peppers into harmless flowers so as not to oppose the direction of the colonial fibres and transfer colonization to postcolony. Therefore, the fight remains perpetual between the postcolonial darkness and the anti-postcolonial light / Cette recherche transparaît dans « la postcolonie » (Achille Mbembe, 2001) ; une situation d’ordre impérial qui se vit dans les pays ravagés par l’ancienne colonisation, et qui gardent son héritage et portent ses traces. Voici les romans de notre étude : Balbala (2002) d’Abdourahman A. Waberi, Le bourreau (2004) de Séverin Cécile Abega, La grande mêlée (2011) de Michel Tremblay et Mãn (2013) de Kim Thúy. En effet, nous comparons et voulons savoir pourquoi et comment l’Afrique, le Canada et le Vietnam enfilent la postcolonie auréolée par le néo-colonialisme. Abordant cette problématique, tous les romans à l’étude convergent pour dire que les colonisateurs ont réussi à réifier les soleils des indépendances et de décolonisation en soleils assassins, les piments vicieux en fleurs inoffensives afin de ne pas contredire le sens des fibres coloniales et transférer la colonisation à la postcolonie. Dès lors, le combat reste donc perpétuel entre l’ombre postcoloniale et la lumière anti-postcoloniale / French Studies / M.A. (French)

Thesis (M. A. (Communication Studies)) -- University of Limpopo, 2022 / South Africa experiences a high rate of absent fathers and this makes single-mother households a prominent family structure in the country. There are many framings and discourses of single mother households in the media, ranging from the critical to the negative and occasional positive ones. But in these discourses, do the resilience, strength, and hard work of single mothers form part of the framing of single mothers in South Africa? The destruction of the Black family structure is one of the disastrous legacies of colonialism and apartheid in South Africa. The discoveries of gold and diamonds brought a rapid social and economic transformation in the country, and Black families bore the brunt of this transformation which changed the Black family structure to date. The implementation of colonial and apartheid policies such as the migrant labour system was set to grow the White economy and achieve this goal by getting cheap labour from Black males in the homelands. The migrant labour system forced Black men to work in the mines leaving their families behind as the men were placed in single-sex hostels. This system, therefore, resulted in many households being fatherless and women or mothers wielding the household responsibilities while their husbands were in the cities. This historical context is important in studying current absent fatherhood and single mother households in South Africa. The study used a historical approach to understand the Black family structure prior colonial era, and how it transitioned during colonialism, and apartheid up and in the current post-apartheid era. This study is built on the theories of post-coloniality, the intersectional burden of femininity, media framing, and it engages critical theoretical scholars such as Homi Bhabha, Arlie Hochschild, Simone de Beauvoir, Bell hooks, and Kimberle Crenshaw amongst others. Through these theoretical lenses, I examined the influence of colonialism and apartheid on the contemporary father absence and female-headed households. The theoretical lenses were further used to examine how the past influence the future and how women's issues are addressed. I also examined the role of media in the (re)presentation of female-headed households. The study tackled three objectives: to examine the media discourse of single motherhood in South Africa; to analyze if women’s resilience in matrifocal families forms part of the media discourse of single motherhood, and lastly to explore the effects of colonialism and apartheid on Black family structure and their consequences in South Africa today. Data were collected through an analysis of a documentary film titled “Last Grave at Dimbaza”. This was an apartheid-era documentary that captured the lives of both Black and White families during apartheid. I examined this film to locate data that capture the media discourse about absent fatherhood during apartheid–which directly reflects the South African colonial-apartheid influence on this phenomenon. Data were also collected from online newspaper publications such as IOL, TimesLive, and News24 on stories about single-motherhood within a period of three years from January 2018 to December 2020 to address the media construction of single-motherhood in the post-apartheid era. The results of the study show that media discourse tends to perpetuate a normative negative and global trend of stereotyping mothers who receive social grants. Single mothers are portrayed as a group that misappropriates state resources, who pocket state money to meet their personal needs. They are thus stereotyped as social burdens on the state finances and contribute to the country's economic risks. Women are portrayed as victims of apartheid without any agency in the absence of their men. The study revealed that women had to find ways to survive or feed their families while waiting for their husbands to send money. However, what is missing in this portrayal is how women in the Bantustans survived under the migrant labour and apartheid laws and policies. Thus, this study found that coloniality seems to continue to shape the Black family structure and that the father's absence in the black society persists and this pattern is transmitted from one generation to another. It was also revealed in this study that when the father is absent, he leaves a trait of absence that his son becomes likely to inherit. Black families are still built from the bourgeois colonialist environment, absent fatherhood and female-headed households are the legacies of colonialism as it is inherited from the colonial background and compounded by socio-economic challenges. Single mothers who are confronted with multiple burdens in raising their children should have their agency, resilience, and challenging work acknowledged. They should be celebrated, not scorned. / National Research Foundation (NRF)

My thesis consists of a commented translation of five selected short stories, including the title story of Thomas King’s One Good Story, That One, and a theoretical and contextual introduction. My commentary, beyond the explanation of my syntactic and vocabulary choices -which I will relate to King’s interfusional use of idiolect, which is to say his uniquely personal use of orality in writing-, discusses the use of irony and the Trickster as instruments of anticolonial resistance (based on King’s “Godzilla vs. Post-colonial”), with which King hopes to both challenge Western paradigms and raise awareness of Natives’ plight. King uses both of these strategies, interfusional dialect and the Trickster, not simply as postcolonial but rather as anticolonial instruments of discursive resistance (based on King’s “Godzilla vs. Post-colonial”), being in tune with King’s vision that postcolonialism is a concept which only lives in academia and in fact has no real basis in our current society, since we are still, in many ways, living in colonial times. King uses satire, first, to raise awareness of Natives’ physical and psychological plight to this very day, and second, to create a sense of accountability in these same people, to transform them by playfully making them aware of their unwitting complicity in this sordid affair. King's use of the Trickster Coyote as well is an important humorous element which also serves as an instrument of anticolonial discursive resistance and education, and whose mythological significance is crucial to the development of an alternate ideological structure, one which King establishes as a healthy counter-part to the Western religiously inspired one with its traditional Judaeo-christian dualism. When commenting on my translation, I note how King, with his use of the Trickster, satire and orality, contests the validity of Eurocentric paradigms with his literarily and orally established framework of modern Native mythologies and perspectives. With my translation, my aim was to reproduce King’s own translation of orality and traditional Native storytelling into writing, albeit with a slightly different use of dialect (closer to international French than Quebec French), since translating King's idiolect was no easy feat. And so, my main concern was to stay as true as possible to the original work, its gaps, repetitions, syntax and phatic (speech used as social function) use of language. In doing so, my goal was to once again foster the reader’s understanding of Natives and their plight, establishing an oral bond through the translation of King's orality between them and the translated work. Pertaining to the latter will be a discussion on how translation also ideally bridges the gap between cultures while expanding their horizons, just as King's modern, syncretic Native storytelling breathes new life into traditional spiritual practices and beliefs. However, as King warns us about stories, which can be not only healing but also harmful, translation can adversely widen that gap and harm intercultural relationships when improperly harnessed. When properly harnessed, however, translation re-enacts a narrative to launch it in a new language-culture (Benjamin in Venuti), in the same manner that Native storytelling (both traditional and modern) enacts a performative that not only preserves culture but recreates it anew. Hence my interest in discovering the links between the fashioning of a new world, full of promise, through narrative, and the refashioning of a narrated text through translation into a new language-culture. Translating the activism at work in King’s own telling of One Good Story, That One, I would further like to capture the ways in which King's modern Native storytelling and the bleak, satiric humour with which much of it is tinged, continues to combat neocolonialism to this day, even in this so-called postcolonial society. Eva Gruber's Humour in Contemporary Native North American Literature is an in-depth and informative work on this subject. I would like to elaborate on Gruber's statement that humour, more than just a coping strategy, as many would claim, is also, more importantly, especially to a non-Native audience, a Trojan horse of sorts: “Sneaking up on readers through shared laughter, humour can align their empathy with Native viewpoints, obscuring conflicts and hierarchies and triggering consensus and solidarity instead” (“Humour in Native Lit”, 118). As well, I take into account in the course of my translation how in presenting Western history and religion from a humorous angle, the author is exposing its fallacies in a tragi-comical context which blurs the boundaries between reality and myth, and thus alleviates the burden of colonialism upon his Native & non-Native readers, while also encouraging accountability. // Abstract : Mon mémoire consiste en une traduction commentée de cinq nouvelles, incluant la nouvelle titre, du recueil One Good Story, That One de Thomas King, ainsi qu'une introduction théorique et contextuelle. Mon commentaire, au delà de la justification de ma syntaxe et de mes choix de mots -que je relierai à l'utilisation d'un idiolecte interfusionnel de l'auteur, c'est-à-dire son usage personnalisé d'oralité dans son écriture- aborde l'usage d'ironie et du Trickster en tant qu'instruments de résistance anticoloniale (basé sur l'article « Godzilla vs. Postcolonial » de King), avec lesquels King espère contester les paradigmes occidentaux et contribuer à la reconnaissance du fardeau des Autochtones. King utilise ces deux éléments en tant qu'instruments discursifs de résistance anticolonialiste plutôt que postcoloniale, en accord avec son idée que le postcolonialisme est un concept qui n'existe que dans un contexte académique et non dans la réalité quotidienne de notre société, puisque nous vivons ultimement encore dans un contexte colonial. King utilise la satire premièrement pour contribuer à la reconnaissance du fardeau physique et psychique des Premières Nations jusqu'à ce jour, et deuxièmement, pour créer un sens de responsabilité chez ces même gens, pour les transformer en les rendant humoristiquement conscients malgré eux de leur complicité dans cette histoire sordide. L'usage de King du Coyote trickster est aussi un élément humoristique important qui est également un instrument discursif de résistance et d'éducation anticolonialiste, dont la signification mythologique est cruciale au développement d'une structure idéologique de rechange, qu'il établit en tant que saine contre-partie à celle inspirée par les religions occidentales, avec sa dichotomie traditionnelle judéo-chrétienne. Je commente sur le fait que King, avec son usage du Trickster, de la satire et de l'oralité, conteste la validité des paradigmes eurocentristes avec sa littérature oralisée portant sur les mythologies et perspectives autochtones modernes, qui exposent les problèmes de ces 8 paradigmes. Avec ma traduction, mon but est de reproduire la propre traduction de l'oralité des contes traditionnels autochtones de King dans un contexte littéraire, quoique avec un usage partiellement différent de dialecte (plus près du français international que de celui du Québec), puisque traduire l'idiolecte de King n'était pas une tâche aisée. Donc, ma principale priorité était de rester aussi fidèle que possible à l'original, à ses pauses, ses répétitions, sa syntaxe et son usage phatique de la langue (le langage en tant que fonction sociale). En ce faisant, mon but est encore une fois de donner une meilleure contextualisation aux lecteurs de la cause des Premières Nations, et d'établir une relation orale entre eux et la traduction. En relation à ce dernier aspect, je discute du fait que la traduction est aussi idéalement un pont entre les cultures qui sert également à élargir leurs horizons, comme les contes modernes, syncrétiques de King insufflent une vie nouvelle dans les croyances et pratiques spirituelles autochtones traditionnelles. Cependant, comme King nous met en garde contre les histoires, qui peuvent guérir mais aussi empoisonner, la traduction peut également élargir ce fossé et nuire aux relations interculturelles quand elle n'est pas adéquatement utilisée. Quand elle l'est, par contre, la traduction recrée une narration pour la relancer dans une autre culture langagière, de la même façon que les contes autochtones (traditionnels et modernes) recréent une performance qui non seulement préserve la culture mais la fait renaître. C'est pourquoi j'ai un tel intérêt dans la découverte des liens entre la création d'un monde nouveau, plein de possibilités, à travers la narration, et la nouvelle création d'un texte narré dans une nouvelle culture langagière à travers la traduction. À travers la discussion de l'activisme de King dans les nouvelles que j'ai traduites, je discute aussi des façons dont les contes modernes de King et leur humour noir et satirique continuent de 9 combattre le néocolonialisme jusqu'à ce jour, même dans notre société soi-disant postcoloniale. Le livre d'Eva Gruber, Humour in Contemporary Native North American Literature, est un ouvrage approfondi et très informatif à propos de ce sujet. Je voudrais élaborer partiellement sur l'affirmation de Gruber que l'humour, bien plus qu'une stratégie de survie comme plusieurs le croiraient, est aussi un cheval de Troie en quelque sorte, particulièrement pour un lectorat non-Autochtone : « S'approchant discrètement des lecteurs grâce au rire partagé, l'humour peut créer une empathie pour les points de vue autochtones, obscurant les conflits et les hiérarchies et déclenchant au lieu une solidarité et un consensus. » (« Humour in Contemporary Native Lit », 118, ma traduction). Je discute également de comment, en présentant l'histoire et la religion occidentale d'un point de vue humoristique, l'auteur expose ses faussetés dans un contexte tragi-comique qui estompe les barrières entre réalité et mythe, et ainsi réduit le fardeau du colonialisme sur les épaules de ses lecteurs autochtones et non-autochtones, tout en encourageant une prise de responsabilité.