This thesis involves a theoretical study of the dynamics of cultural interaction
as represented in Ngugi wa Thiong'o's A Grain of Wheat, Zora Neale Hurston's
Jonah's Gourd Vine and Their Eyes Were Watching God, and Ema Brodber's Myal.
Specifically, it considers the role that a dialogue between critical theory (post-colonial
and feminist) and literary practice can play in the evaluation of two distinct
conceptions of cultural difference: identity politics, understood as positing an essential
binaristic difference between an ethnic or gendered Self and Other, and hybridity
theory, which conceives of Self and Other as mutually constitutive and inescapably
interconnected. While this thesis demonstrates some of the ways in which hybridity
theory can revise and expand contemporary critical readings of the novels under study,
it also demonstrates how literature can problematize the universalizing claims of both
hybridity theory and identity politics, thus stressing the importance of sociohistorical
and literary/narrative contexts to the evaluation of strategies of resistance to colonial
and/or patriarchal regimes. After an introductory chapter dealing with questions of theory, three subsequent
chapters discuss themes of hybridity and cultural separatism in the novels by Ngugi,
Hurston, and Brodber, respectively. Each of these latter chapters involves a detailed
analysis of the colonial and/or patriarchal discourses represented in the particular novel
or novels under study. These analyses include discussions of some of the ways in
which dominant discourses attempt to co-opt cultural difference and impede equitable intercultural hybridizing exchange by polarizing Self and Other in a binaristic
economy. Each chapter also considers the presence of internal contradictions in
dominant discourses and the implications of such contradictions for a revolutionary
politics. On the basis of these discussions, this thesis considers the relative efficacy of
hybridity and identity politics as strategies of resistance, demonstrating that different
contexts call for different approaches to revolutionary theory and practice. / Thesis / Master of Arts (MA)
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:mcmaster.ca/oai:macsphere.mcmaster.ca:11375/16065 |
| Date | January 1994 |
| Creators | Douglas Hutchings, Kevin |
| Contributors | O'Connor, Mary, English |
| Source Sets | McMaster University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
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