Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1974. / Typescript. Vita. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Columbia university, 1920. / Vita. Published also without thesis note. "Bibliographical note": p. 317-327. Also available in digital form on the Internet Archive Web site.

Texte remanié de: Habil.-Schr.--Marburg--Philipps-Universität, 1997. / Bibliogr. p. 287-298. Index.

Diss.--Hamburg--Universität, 1988. / Bibliogr. pp. 320-327.

Summary Zakes Mda’s dramatic productions extend many frontiers, including polemics. Like some of his Southern African fellow-dramatists, the apartheid plays of Mda lent to the deprivation of the marginalised group a sardonic voice of condemnation that characterised the era. Most of his theatrical events were remarkable as they scanned the sordid worlds of hopelessness, disillusionment, betrayal and degradation. His dramaturgy was mostly wry, coarse and ‘dark’. In his post-apartheid plays, there seems to be a change of gear as the playwright gravitates towards satire – a blend of amusement and contempt. This study attempts to deny Mda his traditional role as a tragic and comic dramatist and situate him as a writer of satire. The aim is to demonstrate, by means of a scholarly critique of two plays – The Mother of All Eating (2002. Johannesburg: Wits University Press) and You Fool, How Can the Sky Fall (2002. Johannesburg: Wits University Press), how Mda acted as the consciousness and the conscience of his society by using satire as an instrument of censure to castigate the politically dominant groups betraying the masses in both Lesotho and South Africa.

This project examines facets of racial identity as they emerge in a contemporary South African context, and considers how instances of local satire both subtly resist and support white normativity. It consists of two separate sections: firstly, a self-reflective essay that, employing current theories from the academic field of whiteness studies, assesses South African satire’s relation to and negotiation of race and identity politics; and secondly, The Weekly Crab, my own creative response to the genre of satire. Using contemporary theories of racial construction, the first section will delineate whiteness as a dominant but invisible identification, and as a social construction underpinned by an inherited and continually reproduced privilege. Satire, in turn, will be described as a mode of rhetorical and conceptual attack that is capable of cultivating an understanding of how whiteness functions as a cultural construct, as well as foster a sensitivity to how its cultural dynamics shape and inform racial politics in the South African context. The first section will identify the website Hayibo.com as a source of local satire whose satirising of current events is often complicit in the perpetuation of white normativity. I will point to moments in its work where white expectations, fears and social mores are left unexamined, and, indeed, become an unspoken part of their critiquing lens rather than the focus of it. An accompanying critical breakdown of my own satire in The Weekly Crab will show my work to be a countertext to Hayibo. As I will make clear, I am not saying that I successfully fill a gap in the landscape of South African satire. Instead, in comparing my work to the satire that Hayibo produces, and by providing, in the second section, a creative response to that particular approach to satire, I am trying to circumscribe a blind spot in South African literary journalism : that is, the paucity of satire that aggressively subverts the normativity of whiteness.

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Ce travail s'inscrit dans le cadre d'une analyse argumentative du discours satirique chez un auteur du dixième siècle, Abû Hayyân al-Tawhidi. Bien que son livre, La satire des deux vizirs, (paru après sa mort) soit représenté dans les critiques classiques et modernes comme une pure et simple démarche vindicative du savant courroucé, privé des mannes de deux éminents vizirs, cette étude vise à en souligner la portée multifonctionnelle. La satire, en tant qu'élément essentiel parmi les composants de l’identité arabe fondée, comme on le rappellera, sur les mœurs, constitue le noyau d'une démarche argumentative fortement tributaire de l'idée de la conformité, fondamentale dans la culture arabo-musulmane. En effet la norme est la pierre angulaire de deux processus argumentatifs polarisés, dans le discours de Tawhîdî, ayant pour objectif un changement de représentation chez l'auditeur-lecteur : le premier tente d'entacher l'image des deux vizirs, le deuxième œuvre à construire une image personnelle telle qu'elle est élaborée par l'auteur. Ces deux représentations sont analysées à la lumière des notions clés dans la pensée arabe comme la vérité et l'argument, tantôt sacralisés tantôt rationnalisés. Elles dépendent fortement des critères intellectuels et sociaux d'une époque en proie à des mutations radicales qui conduisent à une opposition totale entre les vizirs et Tawhîdî, comme représentant d'une minorité savante discriminée. Aussi, à partir de cette place et de ce rôle qu'il se représente, la volonté de l'auteur est de construire, par des mécanismes d'analogie et d'amplification, des arguments relevant de l'ethos, du pathos ou plus largement du logos. Non seulement ces deux mécanismes miment des démarches par lesquelles l'esprit humain accède à la connaissance, mais elles représentent, selon nous, non pas des pratiques paralogiques manipulatrices mais une voie d'expression, la seule possible en temps de crise, comme l'affirment certains théoriciens de l'identité. / This study is part of an argumentative analysis of a satirical speech of the tenth century. Although the latter is represented in classical and modern critics as a simple vindictive approach of a scientist angry and deprived of bonanzas by two viziers, this study aims to demonstrate a more complex and multifunctional range. Satire, a core component of Arab identity since pre-Islamic times, was used to criticize and judge those who did not conform to fundamental Arab Muslim cultural values. In fact, these values are the cornerstone of two polarized argumentative processes in Tawhîdî speech that aim to change the listener-reader's point of view: the first attempts to tarnish the image of the two viziers while the second tries to embellish his own image. These two views are analyzed in light of the key concepts in the Arab thought as truth and argument, sometimes sacralised other times rationalized. They rely heavily on intellectual and social criteria of an era plagued by radical changes that lead to discord between the viziers, who were the representatives of the non-Arab governing power, and Tawhîdî, who represented the discriminated Arab minority. Therefore, from this position, the will of the author is to create a new reality, by analogy and amplification mechanisms, relying on arguments of ethos, pathos and logos to act on the mind of the reader/listener. These two approaches mimic the actions by which the human mind comprehends and reacts to reality. In fact, they do not represent, in our view, manipulative fallacies but are a means of expression in times of crisis, as some identity theorists assert.

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