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Altering urbanscapes: South African writers re-imagining Johannesburg, with specific reference to Lauren Beukes, K. Sello Duiker, Nadine Gordimer and Phaswane Mpe

The following dissertation considers the ways in which we have come to perceive of our post-apartheid South African urban spaces. It focusses on the representation of our contemporary urban spaces as I posit that they are re-imagined in the works of Phaswane Mpe, K.Sello Duiker, Nadine Gordimer and Lauren Beukes. In particular, it is concerned with the representation of Johannesburg, and specifically Hillbrow, in relation to the space of the rural, the suburban enclave and the city of Cape Town. I argue that while so-called urban ‘slums’ such as Hillbrow have been denigrated in the local imaginary, the texts that I have selected draw attention to the potentialities of such spaces. Rather than aspiring to ‘First World’ aesthetics of modernity then, we might come to see such spaces as Hillbrow anew, and even to learn from them as models, so as to better create more fully integrated and dynamic African cities.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:nmmu/vital:8481
Date January 2014
CreatorsFryer, Jocelyn Teri
PublisherNelson Mandela Metropolitan University, Faculty of Arts
Source SetsSouth African National ETD Portal
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeThesis, Masters, MA
Format115 leaves, pdf
RightsNelson Mandela Metropolitan

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