Thesis (MA)--Stellenbosch University, 2012. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This thesis explores the representation of personal narrative and nationhood within the genre of literary non-fiction written around the theme of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. The texts to be examined are Antjie Krog‟s, Country of My Skull, Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela‟s A Human Being Died That Night and Sindiwe Magona‟s Mother to Mother. The texts by Krog and Gobodo-Madikizela tell the story of apartheid‟s legacy from two different viewpoints. Their texts are filled with spatial patches of personal narrative which emphasize the impact apartheid had on two different South African cultures, thereby linking the personal to the national by exploring a subjective truth in their narratives. Both these authors were involved with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) in a professional capacity and through their respective ideologies the psyche of the apartheid perpetrator is examined, interrogated and analysed. Within the genre of literary non-fiction these two writers grapple with capturing the real, the objective, but simultaneously insist on doing so from a subjective vantage point. Sindiwe Magona‟s, Mother to Mother also centres on the theme of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and on the psyche of the perpetrator. This time, however, the perpetrator‟s psyche is explored through the lens of a narrator-mother in an address to the victim‟s mother. The most significant difference between this text and the other two is that the Magona text provides a fictional account of the TRC case in question. The ethical implications of a literary text with documentary subject matter, of a text that explores the intersections between fiction and non-fiction, surfaces again, and to a larger extent than in the other two texts, thereby further unsettling the line between the reportorial and the imaginative. / AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Hierdie tesis ondersoek die verteenwoordiging van persoonlike vertelling en nasieskap in die genre van die literêre nie-fiksie wat geskryf is om die tema van die Waarheids-en Versoeningskommissie (WVK). Die tekste wat ondersoek word is Antjie Krog se Country of My Skull, Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela se A Human Being Died That Night en Sindiwe Magona se Mother to Mother. Die tekste van Krog en Gobodo-Madikizela vertel die storie van apartheid-nalatenskap uit twee verskillende standpunte. Hul tekste bestaan uit gereelde ruimtelike kolle van persoonlike verhaal wat die impak van apartheid op twee verskillende kulture van die land beklemtoon om sodoende die persoonlike aan die nasionale te koppel en „n subjektiewe waarheid van hul narratiewe na vore te bring. Albei hierdie skrywers was in 'n professionele hoedanigheid betrokke by die WVK en deur hulle onderskeie ideologieë word die psige van die apartheid oortreder ondersoek, ondervra en ontleed. Dit is binne literêre nie-fiksie waar hierdie twee skrywers swoeg om die werklike en objektiewe ten toon te stel terwyl hulle dit terseldertyd vanuit „n subjektiewe oogpunt wil benader. Sindiwe Magona se Mother to Mother draai ook om die tema van die Waarheids-en Versoeningskommissie en die psige van die oortreder. Hierdie keer, egter, is die oortreder-psige ondersoek deur die lens van 'n verteller-ma in 'n toespraak aan die slagoffer se ma. Die belangrikste verskil tussen hierdie teks en die ander twee is dat die Magona teks 'n fiktiewe vertelling bied van die WVK saak betrokke in hierdie geval. Die etiese implikasies van 'n literêre teks met 'n dokumentêre onderwerp kom weer na vore en tot 'n groter mate as die ander twee tekste, en daardeur word die fyn lyn van die literêre genres met 'n dokumentêre onderwerp omver gegooi.

No abstract available. / Thesis (M.A)-University of Durban-Westville, 2004.

No abstract available. / Thesis (M.A.)--University of Durban-Westville, 2002

Thesis (MA (English Studies))--University of Stellenbosch, 2009. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Drawing on theories of gender and subjectivity, this thesis explores the way in which constructions of modernity as well as tradition are mapped onto geographical localities and thus expressed through gender acts. The female protagonists in Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior, Sindiwe Magona’s To My Children’s Children and Forced to Grow, as well as Eva Hoffman’s Lost in Translation undergo either transnational translocation or imagined translocation where they straddle multiple cultural contexts concurrently. The role of globalism and modernity amplifies the female’s ambiguous position and therefore challenges her gender identity as she takes on additional gender characteristics. This challenge, a result of translocation, causes both the individual and collective nature of the subject to be emphasised and placed in multiple cultures concurrently. The female’s subjectivity is under much tension as the cultures she immerses herself in interlace but also clash. As a result of this, her sense of self is constantly in flux as she attempts to achieve stability and coherence. This sense of a gendered, stable and located self will, I argue, both dissipate and transmutate upon undergoing physical or imagined translocation. In addition, this thesis examines the manner in which globalism allows for the dissolving of boundaries and explores the extent to which the ambiguous position these female protagonists occupy enables them to reformulate and refashion their gender identity as well as write themselves away from the marginalised positions they inhabit. I will further explore how female subjects are compelled to take on additional feminine or masculine attributes upon translocation, seeming to become androgynous in the reformulation of their gender identity for a certain period of time. I will argue that protagonists supplement their gender in order to obtain a sense of belonging in a specific cultural context which requires this alteration of gender, and argue that this is also a means by which they liberate themselves from the marginal positions they occupy in their ethnic culture where sexism and prejudice are prevalent. However, I will demonstrate that modernity does not only provide them with liberation and autonomy, but that simultaneously it is also restrictive on the subject’s gender identity. Finally, this thesis explores whether the female protagonists are able to use their ambiguous positioning strategically in order to generate coherence of the self yet, concurrently, maintain fluidity between multiple cultural boundaries of the self. / AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Hierdie verhandeling gebruik geslags- en subjektiwiteitsteorieë om ondersoek in te stel na die maniere waarop konstruksies van moderniteit en tradisie uiting vind in geslagshandeling. Dieselfde teorieë word gebruik om ondersoek in te stel na die invloed van geografiese plasing op geslagshandeling. Die vroulike protagoniste in Maxine Hong Kingston se The Woman Warrior, Sindiwe Magona se To My Children’s Children en Forced to Grow, sowel as Eva Hoffman se Lost in Translation, ervaar elkeen óf transnasionale translokasie, óf verbeelde translokasie, waardeur hulle vele kulturele kontekste tegelykertyd in die dwarste beset. Die rol van globalisering en moderniteit versterk sonder twyfel die vroulike protagonis se dubbelsinnige posisie, en haar geslagsidentiteit word in twyfel getrek soos sy addisionele geslagseienskappe aanneem. Hierdie vertwyfeling – die gevolg van translokasie – veroorsaak dat beide die kollektiewe sowel as die individuele aard van die subjek benadruk word, en gelyktydig in meervoudige kulture geplaas word. Die protagonis se subjektiwiteit verkeer onder baie spanning omdat die kulture waarin sy haarself verdiep onderling vervleg is, maar tog ook bots. Derhalwe is haar beskouing van haarself voortdurend vloeibaar en veranderend terwyl sy probeer om samehorigheid en stabiliteit te bewerkstellig. Ek is van mening dat hierdie sin van 'n “geslaghebbende”, stabiele, gelokaliseerde self verdwyn en/of transmuteer wanneer dit fisiese of verbeelde translokasie ondergaan. Gevolglik ondersoek hierdie verhandeling dus ook die manier waarop globalisme die ontbinding van grense tot gevolg het, sowel as die mate waartoe die dubbelsinnigheid van die vroulike protagoniste se posisie hulle toelaat om hul geslagsidentiteit te herformuleer en te herontwerp, en hulself weg, of uit, die gemarginaliseerde posisies wat hulle beset te skryf. Ek wil ook kyk na die maniere waarop die vroulike subjek genoop is om, as gevolg van translokasie, addisionele vroulike of manlike karaktertrekke aan te neem, met dié dat dit blyk dat die protagoniste vir 'n ruk lank androgene eienskappe in hul geslagsidentiteit toon. Ek argumenteer dat die protagoniste hul geslag aanvul, nie net sodat hul aanklank binne 'n spesifieke kulturele konteks kan vind nie, maar ook as 'n manier waarop hul hulself kan bevry van die marginale posisies waarin hulle hul in 'n etniese kultuur, waar seksisme en vooroordeel gedy, bevind. Nietemin wil ek ook aantoon dat moderniteit nie bloot net bevryding en selfstandigheid aan die vroulike protagoniste bied nie, maar dat dit ook tegelykertyd beperkings op die subjek se geslagsidentiteit plaas. Die uitkoms van hierdie tesis is om te bepaal of die vroulike protagoniste in staat is tot die strategiese gebruik van hul dubbelsinnige posisionering, wat koherensie van die self sal meebring, en tog terselfdertyd vloeibaarheid tussen verskillende kulture sal behou.

Zugl.: Konstanz, Univ., Diss., 2007

In this study I focus on a number of collections of short fiction by the South African writers Joël Matlou, Sindiwe Magona, Zoë Wicomb and Ivan Vladislavić, all of which evince certain of the characteristics of short story cycles or sequences. In other words, they display what Forrest L. Ingram describes as “a double tendency of asserting the individuality of [their] components on the one hand and of highlighting, on the other, the bonds of unity which make the many into a single whole”. The cycle form, thus defined, is characterised by a paradoxical yet productive and frequently unresolved tension between “the individuality of each of the stories and the necessities of the larger unit”, between “the one and the many”, and between cohesion and fragmentation. It is this “dynamic structure of connection and disconnection” which singularly equips the genre to represent the interrelationship of singular and collective identities, or the “coherent multiplicity of community”. Ingram, for example, asserts that “Numerous and varied connective strands draw the co-protagonists of any story cycle into a single community. … However this community may be achieved, it usually can be said to constitute the central character of a cycle”. Not unsurprisingly, then, in its dominant manifestations over much of the twentieth century the short story cycle demonstrated a marked inclination towards regionalism and the depiction of localised enclaves, and this tendency towards “place-based short story cycles” in which topographical unity is a conspicuous feature was as pronounced in South Africa as elsewhere. However, the specific collections which are my concern here increasingly employ innovative and self-reflexive narrative strategies that unsettle generic expectations and interrogate the notions of regionalism and community conventionally associated with the short story cycle. My investigation seeks to explain this shift in emphasis, and its particular significance within the South African context.