Gender and popular imaginaries in Africa:
- Spencer, Lynda G, Ligaga, Dina, Musila, Grace
- Authors: Spencer, Lynda G , Ligaga, Dina , Musila, Grace
- Date: 2018
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/138860 , vital:37679 , DOI: 10.1080/10130950.2018.1526467
- Description: If we accept that many Africans’ social perceptions on a range of questions, including gender, are shaped by popular cultural productions which retain a keen pulse on the everyday, then it is important to reflect on the interface between gender and popular imaginaries. The debate on the definition of the ‘popular’ remains an open one with multiple interpretations and categories. This contestation in itself gestures towards popular culture’s inclination for ambiguity and slipperiness. As Karin Barber (2018:13) reminds us, the popular constitutes “expressive forms that are constantly emergent, ephemeral, embedded in daily life, given to extraordinary bursts of activity and rapid transformation”. For George Ogola, popular cultural forms “engage with and subject the polity to constant critique through informal but widely recognised forms of censure” (2017:2). In this special issue, we use popular imaginaries to mean the range of cultural productions, platforms, and interactions between consumers and producers - which are often interchangeable - that capture the material, the affective, as inflected and refracted in different texts, contexts and platforms.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2018
- Authors: Spencer, Lynda G , Ligaga, Dina , Musila, Grace
- Date: 2018
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/138860 , vital:37679 , DOI: 10.1080/10130950.2018.1526467
- Description: If we accept that many Africans’ social perceptions on a range of questions, including gender, are shaped by popular cultural productions which retain a keen pulse on the everyday, then it is important to reflect on the interface between gender and popular imaginaries. The debate on the definition of the ‘popular’ remains an open one with multiple interpretations and categories. This contestation in itself gestures towards popular culture’s inclination for ambiguity and slipperiness. As Karin Barber (2018:13) reminds us, the popular constitutes “expressive forms that are constantly emergent, ephemeral, embedded in daily life, given to extraordinary bursts of activity and rapid transformation”. For George Ogola, popular cultural forms “engage with and subject the polity to constant critique through informal but widely recognised forms of censure” (2017:2). In this special issue, we use popular imaginaries to mean the range of cultural productions, platforms, and interactions between consumers and producers - which are often interchangeable - that capture the material, the affective, as inflected and refracted in different texts, contexts and platforms.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2018
‘Abagyenda bareeba. Those who Travel, See’: Home, Migration and the Maternal Bond in Doreen Baingana’s Tropical Fish
- Authors: Spencer, Lynda G
- Date: 2016
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/139017 , vital:37696 , https://doi.org/10.1080/00020184.2016.1182319
- Description: Doreen Baingana’s Tropical Fish explores the migratory experiences of the main narrator-focalizer, Christine Mugisha, as she travels from Uganda to the United States of America. Although the analyses of home, exile, and migration by writers like Edward Said and Paul Tiyambe Zeleza tend to be ungendered; Baingana seems to elaborate on these concerns by reflecting on the gendered experience of travel. As Carole Boyce Davies has argued, the act of travelling and migration opens up new spaces and possibilities for black women writers as they come into contact with multiple places and cultures. In their encounters with migration, black women are able to negotiate and re-negotiate their identities. This article focuses on how Tropical Fish, interrogates complex, contradictory, ambiguous and often conflicted questions of home and migration with their concomitant issues of belonging and alienation/ estrangement and how they are intimately tied to the maternal bond.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2016
- Authors: Spencer, Lynda G
- Date: 2016
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/139017 , vital:37696 , https://doi.org/10.1080/00020184.2016.1182319
- Description: Doreen Baingana’s Tropical Fish explores the migratory experiences of the main narrator-focalizer, Christine Mugisha, as she travels from Uganda to the United States of America. Although the analyses of home, exile, and migration by writers like Edward Said and Paul Tiyambe Zeleza tend to be ungendered; Baingana seems to elaborate on these concerns by reflecting on the gendered experience of travel. As Carole Boyce Davies has argued, the act of travelling and migration opens up new spaces and possibilities for black women writers as they come into contact with multiple places and cultures. In their encounters with migration, black women are able to negotiate and re-negotiate their identities. This article focuses on how Tropical Fish, interrogates complex, contradictory, ambiguous and often conflicted questions of home and migration with their concomitant issues of belonging and alienation/ estrangement and how they are intimately tied to the maternal bond.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2016
Roundtable review: cold case: the elusive story of Julie Ward's murder
- Authors: Spencer, Lynda G
- Date: 2017
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/138894 , vital:37683 , https://doi.org/10.1080/23277408.2017.1362199
- Description: A Death Retold in Truth and Rumour: Kenya, Britain and the Julie Ward Murder by Grace Ahingila Musila is an extraordinary, captivating, thought-provoking and chilling account of the unsolved murder of Julie Ward. Musila points out that this book does not set out to reveal who murdered Julie Ward. Instead, as an academic, she is interested in examining the intertextual process between the rumours around this cold case and the evidence available in various published accounts, such as books, newspapers and court judgements.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2017
- Authors: Spencer, Lynda G
- Date: 2017
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/138894 , vital:37683 , https://doi.org/10.1080/23277408.2017.1362199
- Description: A Death Retold in Truth and Rumour: Kenya, Britain and the Julie Ward Murder by Grace Ahingila Musila is an extraordinary, captivating, thought-provoking and chilling account of the unsolved murder of Julie Ward. Musila points out that this book does not set out to reveal who murdered Julie Ward. Instead, as an academic, she is interested in examining the intertextual process between the rumours around this cold case and the evidence available in various published accounts, such as books, newspapers and court judgements.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2017
Visible Wars and Invisible Women: interrogating women's roles during wartime in Goretti Kyomuhendo's Waiting: a novel of Uganda at war
- Authors: Spencer, Lynda G
- Date: 2015
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/138880 , vital:37682 , https://0-hdl.handle.net.wam.seals.ac.za/10520/EJC177790
- Description: Goretti Kyomuhendo's Waiting: A Novel of Uganda at War explores the atrocities that ordinary people experience during wartime by placing emphasis on the private suffering and humiliation inflicted on women in the domestic space of the home. This article argues that even if women do not actively feature on the battleground, they are still inadvertently drawn into the war, which has an adverse impact on their lives. Kyomuhendo draws on the experiences of different female characters to problematize the inherently ambiguous symbolic image of the mother, and shows that the violence performed on women's bodies is a result of the interplay between two hegemonic forces, patriarchal authority and state power.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2015
- Authors: Spencer, Lynda G
- Date: 2015
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/138880 , vital:37682 , https://0-hdl.handle.net.wam.seals.ac.za/10520/EJC177790
- Description: Goretti Kyomuhendo's Waiting: A Novel of Uganda at War explores the atrocities that ordinary people experience during wartime by placing emphasis on the private suffering and humiliation inflicted on women in the domestic space of the home. This article argues that even if women do not actively feature on the battleground, they are still inadvertently drawn into the war, which has an adverse impact on their lives. Kyomuhendo draws on the experiences of different female characters to problematize the inherently ambiguous symbolic image of the mother, and shows that the violence performed on women's bodies is a result of the interplay between two hegemonic forces, patriarchal authority and state power.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2015
‘In defence of chick-lit’: refashioning feminine subjectivities in Ugandan and South African contemporary women’s writing
- Authors: Spencer, Lynda G
- Date: 2019
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/138736 , vital:37669 , DOI: 10.1177/1464700119831544
- Description: Ugandan and South African contemporary women’s narratives reflect on the rapid pace of change in the social lives of women in two countries that are contending with the aftermath of conflict and violence. This article will interrogate how contemporary women writers such as Goretti Kyomuhendo (Whispers from Vera), Zukiswa Wanner (The Madams and Behind Every Successful Man) and Cynthia Jele (Happiness is a Four-Letter Word) are embracing chick-lit as a form of writing, while simultaneously short-circuiting this genre to create an experimental form that allows them to reflect on the realities of women and engage with the contradictions, complexities and ambiguities of contemporary feminine subjectivities.
- Full Text: false
- Date Issued: 2019
- Authors: Spencer, Lynda G
- Date: 2019
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/138736 , vital:37669 , DOI: 10.1177/1464700119831544
- Description: Ugandan and South African contemporary women’s narratives reflect on the rapid pace of change in the social lives of women in two countries that are contending with the aftermath of conflict and violence. This article will interrogate how contemporary women writers such as Goretti Kyomuhendo (Whispers from Vera), Zukiswa Wanner (The Madams and Behind Every Successful Man) and Cynthia Jele (Happiness is a Four-Letter Word) are embracing chick-lit as a form of writing, while simultaneously short-circuiting this genre to create an experimental form that allows them to reflect on the realities of women and engage with the contradictions, complexities and ambiguities of contemporary feminine subjectivities.
- Full Text: false
- Date Issued: 2019
'On the fringes of society’ and ‘out of the closest’: a response to ‘Sexual/Textual Politics
- Authors: Spencer, Lynda G
- Date: 2014
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/139034 , vital:37698 , https://doi.org/10.1080/02589001.2014.983324
- Description: Gibson Ncube’s ‘Sexual/Textual Politics: Rethinking gender and sexuality in gay Moroccan literature’ focuses on an emerging body of gay literature that is developing within the larger framework of Moroccan literature. Ncube attempts to illustrate how the contemporary narratives of Rachid O. and Abdellah Taïa portray the quotidian experiences of minority sexualities who strive to exist in the hegemonic heteropatriarchies of Moroccan societies. These narratives challenge and destabilise the heteronormative ideals of Arab-Muslim communities and endeavour to offer alternative ways of thinking about marginalised sexualities in the public space. This analysis draws on the feminist underpinnings of Maria Pia Lara to argue that private gay narratives have the potential to re-imagine the public domain.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2014
- Authors: Spencer, Lynda G
- Date: 2014
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/139034 , vital:37698 , https://doi.org/10.1080/02589001.2014.983324
- Description: Gibson Ncube’s ‘Sexual/Textual Politics: Rethinking gender and sexuality in gay Moroccan literature’ focuses on an emerging body of gay literature that is developing within the larger framework of Moroccan literature. Ncube attempts to illustrate how the contemporary narratives of Rachid O. and Abdellah Taïa portray the quotidian experiences of minority sexualities who strive to exist in the hegemonic heteropatriarchies of Moroccan societies. These narratives challenge and destabilise the heteronormative ideals of Arab-Muslim communities and endeavour to offer alternative ways of thinking about marginalised sexualities in the public space. This analysis draws on the feminist underpinnings of Maria Pia Lara to argue that private gay narratives have the potential to re-imagine the public domain.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2014
“Not the story you wanted to hear": reading chick-lit in JM Coetzee’s Summertime
- Moonsamy, Nedine, Spencer, Lynda G
- Authors: Moonsamy, Nedine , Spencer, Lynda G
- Date: 2017
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/138915 , vital:37685 , https://doi.org/10.1080/02533952.2017.1390878
- Description: J.M. Coetzee’s Summertime has been widely explored – both for its controversy and merits – as engaging in “acts of genre” where the inscription of an autobiographical narrative simultaneously serves as a metatextual and ideological critique of its form. Similarly, this article is intrigued by generic instability, but our terrain lies further afield, exploring how the narrative lapses from the lofty ideals of romance to the baser “truth” of chick-lit. In Summertime, all the female characters besmirch Mr. Vincent, the biographer, for wanting to cast John Coetzee in the role of a romantic hero. Yet, their resistance results in a series of romantic failures which then situates Summertime in the generic ambit of chick-lit. In embodying a spirit that is as playful as it is critical, we suggest that Coetzee offers an opportunity to cast aside a literary critical tradition of suspicion and, in doing so, passes critical comment on how we approach a popular genre like chick-lit.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2017
- Authors: Moonsamy, Nedine , Spencer, Lynda G
- Date: 2017
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/138915 , vital:37685 , https://doi.org/10.1080/02533952.2017.1390878
- Description: J.M. Coetzee’s Summertime has been widely explored – both for its controversy and merits – as engaging in “acts of genre” where the inscription of an autobiographical narrative simultaneously serves as a metatextual and ideological critique of its form. Similarly, this article is intrigued by generic instability, but our terrain lies further afield, exploring how the narrative lapses from the lofty ideals of romance to the baser “truth” of chick-lit. In Summertime, all the female characters besmirch Mr. Vincent, the biographer, for wanting to cast John Coetzee in the role of a romantic hero. Yet, their resistance results in a series of romantic failures which then situates Summertime in the generic ambit of chick-lit. In embodying a spirit that is as playful as it is critical, we suggest that Coetzee offers an opportunity to cast aside a literary critical tradition of suspicion and, in doing so, passes critical comment on how we approach a popular genre like chick-lit.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2017
“Having it all”?’: ”?:(re) examining conspicuous consumption and pernicious masculinities in South African chick-lit
- Authors: Spencer, Lynda G
- Date: 2018
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/138798 , vital:37673 , https://0-hdl.handle.net.wam.seals.ac.za/10520/EJC-13f7e3010
- Description: A number of South African women writers have taken up chick-lit as a form of writing that enables them to reflect on the experiences of the modern woman in post-apartheid South Africa. The protagonists portrayed in chick-lit narratives occupy ambiguous positions: they may have benefitted from feminist politics, which has opened new possibilities for them; however, underlying this emancipation is an implicit collusion with patriarchy. Chick-lit refuses to offer a clear-cut construct of women’s lives; instead, it suggests a problematic terrain that is inherently ambiguous and contradictory, simultaneously empowering and oppressing women. It depicts a realistic world where contemporary women critique patriarchy and attempt to break free of its stranglehold by finding new methods of self-realisation. In this article, I argue that as a genre chick-lit offers a space of recognition and reflection for women who share a similar world view and emotional knowledge that stems from a common historical experience.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2018
- Authors: Spencer, Lynda G
- Date: 2018
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/138798 , vital:37673 , https://0-hdl.handle.net.wam.seals.ac.za/10520/EJC-13f7e3010
- Description: A number of South African women writers have taken up chick-lit as a form of writing that enables them to reflect on the experiences of the modern woman in post-apartheid South Africa. The protagonists portrayed in chick-lit narratives occupy ambiguous positions: they may have benefitted from feminist politics, which has opened new possibilities for them; however, underlying this emancipation is an implicit collusion with patriarchy. Chick-lit refuses to offer a clear-cut construct of women’s lives; instead, it suggests a problematic terrain that is inherently ambiguous and contradictory, simultaneously empowering and oppressing women. It depicts a realistic world where contemporary women critique patriarchy and attempt to break free of its stranglehold by finding new methods of self-realisation. In this article, I argue that as a genre chick-lit offers a space of recognition and reflection for women who share a similar world view and emotional knowledge that stems from a common historical experience.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2018
“New ways of telling”: African textual forms and dissemination in the age of digital media
- Authors: Friedemann, Oriole Megan
- Date: 2019
- Subjects: Digital media -- Africa , Self-publishing -- Africa , African literature , Literature publishing -- Technological innovations , Blog authorship -- Africa , African Storybook Reader , FunDza Literacy Project , Long Story SHORT
- Language: English
- Type: text , Thesis , Masters , MA
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/115105 , vital:34078
- Description: In the age of digital media, creators are using the versatile nature of information and communication technologies and the ubiquity of the web to publish and distribute texts, circumventing traditional gatekeepers such as publishing institutions. In Africa, where web access and digitisation are relatively new, storytellers are eagerly exploring new mediums and the possibilities that they provide for African narratives and African representation. This thesis looks at the digital platforms of the African Storybook Reader, the FunDza Literacy Project, and Long Story SHORT, as well as Dudu Busani-Dube’s novel Hlomu the Wife, which first gained popularity on a blog platform. It examines three different web series, An African City, The Foxy Five, and Tuko Macho, as well as a transmedia documentary, Love Radio. The texts are grouped into literatures disseminated from digital platforms, localised narratives that explore the urban African woman, and narratives that make use of participatory culture. These are texts that make use of digital tools and platforms to create and disseminate African stories, making diverse and indigenous narratives more easily accessible to both local and global audiences. This thesis argues that digitisation and the global nature of the internet have created opportunities for Africans to become producers and exporters of indigenous information and representation, rather than passive consumers of imported knowledge, or subjects of external characterisation.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2019
- Authors: Friedemann, Oriole Megan
- Date: 2019
- Subjects: Digital media -- Africa , Self-publishing -- Africa , African literature , Literature publishing -- Technological innovations , Blog authorship -- Africa , African Storybook Reader , FunDza Literacy Project , Long Story SHORT
- Language: English
- Type: text , Thesis , Masters , MA
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/115105 , vital:34078
- Description: In the age of digital media, creators are using the versatile nature of information and communication technologies and the ubiquity of the web to publish and distribute texts, circumventing traditional gatekeepers such as publishing institutions. In Africa, where web access and digitisation are relatively new, storytellers are eagerly exploring new mediums and the possibilities that they provide for African narratives and African representation. This thesis looks at the digital platforms of the African Storybook Reader, the FunDza Literacy Project, and Long Story SHORT, as well as Dudu Busani-Dube’s novel Hlomu the Wife, which first gained popularity on a blog platform. It examines three different web series, An African City, The Foxy Five, and Tuko Macho, as well as a transmedia documentary, Love Radio. The texts are grouped into literatures disseminated from digital platforms, localised narratives that explore the urban African woman, and narratives that make use of participatory culture. These are texts that make use of digital tools and platforms to create and disseminate African stories, making diverse and indigenous narratives more easily accessible to both local and global audiences. This thesis argues that digitisation and the global nature of the internet have created opportunities for Africans to become producers and exporters of indigenous information and representation, rather than passive consumers of imported knowledge, or subjects of external characterisation.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2019
Intersectionality and complexity in the representation of ‘queer’ sexualities and genders in African women’s short fiction
- Authors: Du Preez, Jenny Boźena
- Date: 2019
- Subjects: Sexual minority culture , Sexual minorities' writings , African fiction -- Women authors -- History and criticism , Gender identity in literature , Short stories, South African , Feminism in literature , Political poetry , Eroticism in literature , Lesbianism in literature
- Language: English
- Type: text , Thesis , Doctoral , PhD
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/119047 , vital:34697
- Description: This thesis sets out to contribute to the growing body of knowledge about queer sexualities and genders in Africa by examining their depiction in selected post-2000 African women’s short fiction written in English. Post-2000, the short story form has become the primary vehicle for queer representations by African women writers, and is thus an important development in the burgeoning body of queer literature by African writers. Broadly speaking, this literary formation can be defined as anti-homophobic, feminist and politically pragmatic. Using an intersectional lens, this thesis sets out to examine four significant strands in the political work these stories engage in. The chapters are structured around four main points of contention that have particular significance at the intersection of ‘queer’, ‘women’ and ‘Africa’. Firstly, I examine South African short stories that perform what I call queer conversations with history: imaginatively asserting a queer South African history, writing back against a male-dominated and heterosexist literary canon and, in doing so, contributing to the reimagination of the contemporary South African nation. Secondly, I analyse short stories from Africa that foreground the family, both as social formation and ideology. I examine how these stories ‘fracture’ this powerful and naturalised heterosexist concept by depicting the tensions and contradictions that queer characters experience in relation to family. Thirdly, I consider short stories from various African contexts that work to reconceptualise queer sexuality in relation to religious discourse in order to challenge homophobic and patriarchal religious authority. Finally, I examine queer, feminist erotic short stories by African women writers that challenges various colonialist, racist, sexist and lesbophobic discourses that have historically stifled the portrayal of sex and erotic experience between women.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2019
- Authors: Du Preez, Jenny Boźena
- Date: 2019
- Subjects: Sexual minority culture , Sexual minorities' writings , African fiction -- Women authors -- History and criticism , Gender identity in literature , Short stories, South African , Feminism in literature , Political poetry , Eroticism in literature , Lesbianism in literature
- Language: English
- Type: text , Thesis , Doctoral , PhD
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/119047 , vital:34697
- Description: This thesis sets out to contribute to the growing body of knowledge about queer sexualities and genders in Africa by examining their depiction in selected post-2000 African women’s short fiction written in English. Post-2000, the short story form has become the primary vehicle for queer representations by African women writers, and is thus an important development in the burgeoning body of queer literature by African writers. Broadly speaking, this literary formation can be defined as anti-homophobic, feminist and politically pragmatic. Using an intersectional lens, this thesis sets out to examine four significant strands in the political work these stories engage in. The chapters are structured around four main points of contention that have particular significance at the intersection of ‘queer’, ‘women’ and ‘Africa’. Firstly, I examine South African short stories that perform what I call queer conversations with history: imaginatively asserting a queer South African history, writing back against a male-dominated and heterosexist literary canon and, in doing so, contributing to the reimagination of the contemporary South African nation. Secondly, I analyse short stories from Africa that foreground the family, both as social formation and ideology. I examine how these stories ‘fracture’ this powerful and naturalised heterosexist concept by depicting the tensions and contradictions that queer characters experience in relation to family. Thirdly, I consider short stories from various African contexts that work to reconceptualise queer sexuality in relation to religious discourse in order to challenge homophobic and patriarchal religious authority. Finally, I examine queer, feminist erotic short stories by African women writers that challenges various colonialist, racist, sexist and lesbophobic discourses that have historically stifled the portrayal of sex and erotic experience between women.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2019
Resisting the ‘Native Informant’ trope in examples of African Diaspora art and literature
- Authors: Nuen, Tinika
- Date: 2020
- Language: English
- Type: text , Thesis , Masters , MA
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/131657 , vital:36708
- Description: This thesis draws attention to the existence of the ‘native informant’ trope in the African Diaspora. It argues that a strong emphasis towards studying diasporic groups in relation to their African origin revives, consequently, the colonial politics that underpin the continent as an unknown mythical place. In response to this issue, I introduce multidisciplinary case studies that highlight various artists and authors who resist and challenge the diasporic individual as the ‘native informant’. Their works reinterpret and redefine the relationship between African communities, their connection to the continent and their experiences of living abroad. Analysing the exhibitions Looking Both Ways, Africa Remix and Flow, I investigate their visual art discourses that interpret diasporic artists and their works as cultural embodiments of their African background. As a result, the three art shows marginalise other potential readings to view diasporic experiences. This thesis introduces three resistant themes that reconceive the diasporic person’s relationship to the African Diaspora based on language, spatial interaction and self-identification opposed to a geographic tie. The first theme (language) references Victor Ekpuk’s drawings and Isidore Okpewho’s novel Call Me By My Rightful Name to suggest a language based diasporic experience. The second theme (spatial interaction) looks at Emeka Ogboh’s sound installations and Teju Cole’s novel Open City. Both works examine a diasporic individual’s conflicted engagement with her place of origin. The third theme (self-identification) considers the individual-community relationship in Wura-Natasha Ogunji’s performance art and Chika Unigwe’s novel On Black Sisters’ Street. Each of these visual-literary pairs focus on various components that shape the African diasporic lifestyle. My research re-interprets the continent’s significance in the diaspora from a geographic construct to a socio-spiritual connection to a community. Firstly, it outlines the persistent issue of a colonial residue in Africa’s definition as a physical-cultural space, and secondly, it offers three alternative discourses to read diasporic identities outside a geographic framework. I argue that belonging is a social individual-collective effort rather than an anchor to a tangible environment.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2020
- Authors: Nuen, Tinika
- Date: 2020
- Language: English
- Type: text , Thesis , Masters , MA
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/131657 , vital:36708
- Description: This thesis draws attention to the existence of the ‘native informant’ trope in the African Diaspora. It argues that a strong emphasis towards studying diasporic groups in relation to their African origin revives, consequently, the colonial politics that underpin the continent as an unknown mythical place. In response to this issue, I introduce multidisciplinary case studies that highlight various artists and authors who resist and challenge the diasporic individual as the ‘native informant’. Their works reinterpret and redefine the relationship between African communities, their connection to the continent and their experiences of living abroad. Analysing the exhibitions Looking Both Ways, Africa Remix and Flow, I investigate their visual art discourses that interpret diasporic artists and their works as cultural embodiments of their African background. As a result, the three art shows marginalise other potential readings to view diasporic experiences. This thesis introduces three resistant themes that reconceive the diasporic person’s relationship to the African Diaspora based on language, spatial interaction and self-identification opposed to a geographic tie. The first theme (language) references Victor Ekpuk’s drawings and Isidore Okpewho’s novel Call Me By My Rightful Name to suggest a language based diasporic experience. The second theme (spatial interaction) looks at Emeka Ogboh’s sound installations and Teju Cole’s novel Open City. Both works examine a diasporic individual’s conflicted engagement with her place of origin. The third theme (self-identification) considers the individual-community relationship in Wura-Natasha Ogunji’s performance art and Chika Unigwe’s novel On Black Sisters’ Street. Each of these visual-literary pairs focus on various components that shape the African diasporic lifestyle. My research re-interprets the continent’s significance in the diaspora from a geographic construct to a socio-spiritual connection to a community. Firstly, it outlines the persistent issue of a colonial residue in Africa’s definition as a physical-cultural space, and secondly, it offers three alternative discourses to read diasporic identities outside a geographic framework. I argue that belonging is a social individual-collective effort rather than an anchor to a tangible environment.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2020
‘Jujutech’: exploring cultural and epistemological hybridity in African science fiction
- Authors: Stier, Jordan Daniel
- Date: 2019
- Subjects: Science fiction, African -- History and criticism , Tutuola, Amos. The palm-wine drunkard , Mkize, Loyiso, 1987- .Kwezi , Black Panther (Comic book) , Dila, Dilman, 1977-. A killing in the sun , Superheroes, Black , Mbvundula, Ekari. Montague's last
- Language: English
- Type: text , Thesis , Masters , MA
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/96908 , vital:31346
- Description: This thesis aims to respond to the rise in the production of science fiction in Africa over the last decade, and to show how what I describe as the juju orientation of many of these works does not disqualify them from the genre of science fiction. Rather, I advocate for the recognition of juju ontologies as genuine sources of knowledge about the world, which have been overlooked by the globally dominant scientism that has informed science fiction theorisation to date. In my introduction I outline the theoretical frameworks of juju, science fiction and epistemology with which the thesis is in communication. In my second chapter I re-read Amos Tutuola’s novel The Palm-Wine Drinkard, showing the inherently science fictional structure of the juju-based storytelling that characterises colonial and pre-colonial African literature, as well as the essentiality of science fictional modes to Tutuola’s own prose. My third chapter considers Ian MacDonald’s theorisation of a jujutech aesthetic in African science fiction, wherein the speculations of the genres are rooted in both technoscientific and juju ontologies simultaneously. I account for the role this literary aesthetic plays in Ekari Mbvundula’s “Montague’s Last” to blur the divisions of worldly knowledge enforced by global epistemological inequalities, before showing how Dilman Dila’s A Killing in the Sun presents a critically frontier African epistemology in literary practice, and the value thereof. My fourth chapter considers the role of popular culture and consumption, and how the global literary industry resists juju-based texts. I conclude that juju-based nova and the jujutech aesthetic are not only essentially science fictional literary modes, but important players in science fiction’s role in being epistemologically productive in the future.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2019
- Authors: Stier, Jordan Daniel
- Date: 2019
- Subjects: Science fiction, African -- History and criticism , Tutuola, Amos. The palm-wine drunkard , Mkize, Loyiso, 1987- .Kwezi , Black Panther (Comic book) , Dila, Dilman, 1977-. A killing in the sun , Superheroes, Black , Mbvundula, Ekari. Montague's last
- Language: English
- Type: text , Thesis , Masters , MA
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/96908 , vital:31346
- Description: This thesis aims to respond to the rise in the production of science fiction in Africa over the last decade, and to show how what I describe as the juju orientation of many of these works does not disqualify them from the genre of science fiction. Rather, I advocate for the recognition of juju ontologies as genuine sources of knowledge about the world, which have been overlooked by the globally dominant scientism that has informed science fiction theorisation to date. In my introduction I outline the theoretical frameworks of juju, science fiction and epistemology with which the thesis is in communication. In my second chapter I re-read Amos Tutuola’s novel The Palm-Wine Drinkard, showing the inherently science fictional structure of the juju-based storytelling that characterises colonial and pre-colonial African literature, as well as the essentiality of science fictional modes to Tutuola’s own prose. My third chapter considers Ian MacDonald’s theorisation of a jujutech aesthetic in African science fiction, wherein the speculations of the genres are rooted in both technoscientific and juju ontologies simultaneously. I account for the role this literary aesthetic plays in Ekari Mbvundula’s “Montague’s Last” to blur the divisions of worldly knowledge enforced by global epistemological inequalities, before showing how Dilman Dila’s A Killing in the Sun presents a critically frontier African epistemology in literary practice, and the value thereof. My fourth chapter considers the role of popular culture and consumption, and how the global literary industry resists juju-based texts. I conclude that juju-based nova and the jujutech aesthetic are not only essentially science fictional literary modes, but important players in science fiction’s role in being epistemologically productive in the future.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2019
Rhodes University Research Report 2016
- Rhodes University, Gillitt, Tarryn, Mantolo, Thumeka, Macgregor, Jill, Roberts, Jaine
- Authors: Rhodes University , Gillitt, Tarryn , Mantolo, Thumeka , Macgregor, Jill , Roberts, Jaine
- Date: 2016
- Language: English
- Type: Text
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/58288 , vital:27197
- Description: From Foreword by Dr Sizwe Mabizela: The results of the 2016 academic year were celebrated during a bumper graduation weekend in April 2017, in which a record 2 464 graduates were capped at 6 graduation ceremonies, 46% of whom were Postgraduates, 59% were women, and 21% were international students. A record number of 88 PhD degrees were awarded (up from 67 of 2016). We celebrated a new record of 29 PhD degrees for the Faculty of Humanities, up from the previous record of 19 achieved last year. The Faculty of Science produced 38 PhD graduates, the Faculty of Commerce 6, the Faculty of Education 13, and the Faculty of Pharmacy 2. All Faculties have done exceedingly well. Our warm congratulations go to all our Faculty Deans, Heads of Department and the academic and support staff who made this possible. , A publication of the Rhodes University Research Office, compiled and edited by: Tarryn Gillitt, Thumeka Mantolo, Jill Macgregor and Jaine Roberts.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2016
- Authors: Rhodes University , Gillitt, Tarryn , Mantolo, Thumeka , Macgregor, Jill , Roberts, Jaine
- Date: 2016
- Language: English
- Type: Text
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/58288 , vital:27197
- Description: From Foreword by Dr Sizwe Mabizela: The results of the 2016 academic year were celebrated during a bumper graduation weekend in April 2017, in which a record 2 464 graduates were capped at 6 graduation ceremonies, 46% of whom were Postgraduates, 59% were women, and 21% were international students. A record number of 88 PhD degrees were awarded (up from 67 of 2016). We celebrated a new record of 29 PhD degrees for the Faculty of Humanities, up from the previous record of 19 achieved last year. The Faculty of Science produced 38 PhD graduates, the Faculty of Commerce 6, the Faculty of Education 13, and the Faculty of Pharmacy 2. All Faculties have done exceedingly well. Our warm congratulations go to all our Faculty Deans, Heads of Department and the academic and support staff who made this possible. , A publication of the Rhodes University Research Office, compiled and edited by: Tarryn Gillitt, Thumeka Mantolo, Jill Macgregor and Jaine Roberts.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2016
Rhodes University Research Report 2017 : a year in review
- Gillitt, Tarryn, Macgregor, Jill, Mantolo, Thumeka, Roberts, Jaine
- Authors: Gillitt, Tarryn , Macgregor, Jill , Mantolo, Thumeka , Roberts, Jaine
- Date: 2017
- Subjects: Rhodes University -- Research
- Language: English
- Type: text
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/72172 , vital:30012
- Description: From Foreword by Dr Sizwe Mabizela, Vice-Chancellor: Many of the goals of our recently completed Institutional Development Plan have to do with retaining and improving our research and scholarly contribution as a university, and ensuring that we not only generate dependable knowledge, but that the knowledge that we create has a positive impact on the social and natural world around us. In summary, our goals are to 1. Maintain and strengthen our general formative degree offering and the research, teaching, and community engagement nexus which enables our students to access powerful knowledge; 2. Enable access to all academically-qualifying students and provide them with conditions which allow them to flourish as critical and engaged citizens; 3. Maintain and strengthen our unique institutional niche as a research-intensive university outside a major urban area; 4. Ensure financial and environmental sustainability practices through good governance, leadership and management; 5. Attract, nurture and retain staff of high-calibre and maintain an inclusive, welcoming, affirming and positive intellectual environment; 6. Provide relevant and appropriate academic infrastructure, equipment and facilities to support our academic project; and 7. Promote Rhodes University as an institution for the public good in local, provincial, national and international contexts. The plan calls upon all of us to re-imagine our University as one in which sustainability permeates every aspect of our academic endeavour, including an elevated sense of awareness and responsibility of our graduates for building sustainable communities. It calls upon us to ensure that we are simultaneously locally responsive and globally engaged. It calls upon us to work towards advancing social justice and do all that we can to restore the dignity and humanity of those who were treated as lesser beings by the previous dispensation. And it calls upon us to remind ourselves that our university does not exist in a vacuum. It exists within a social, cultural and economic milieu, and has an important role to play in lifting the standard of living of our local community.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2017
- Authors: Gillitt, Tarryn , Macgregor, Jill , Mantolo, Thumeka , Roberts, Jaine
- Date: 2017
- Subjects: Rhodes University -- Research
- Language: English
- Type: text
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/72172 , vital:30012
- Description: From Foreword by Dr Sizwe Mabizela, Vice-Chancellor: Many of the goals of our recently completed Institutional Development Plan have to do with retaining and improving our research and scholarly contribution as a university, and ensuring that we not only generate dependable knowledge, but that the knowledge that we create has a positive impact on the social and natural world around us. In summary, our goals are to 1. Maintain and strengthen our general formative degree offering and the research, teaching, and community engagement nexus which enables our students to access powerful knowledge; 2. Enable access to all academically-qualifying students and provide them with conditions which allow them to flourish as critical and engaged citizens; 3. Maintain and strengthen our unique institutional niche as a research-intensive university outside a major urban area; 4. Ensure financial and environmental sustainability practices through good governance, leadership and management; 5. Attract, nurture and retain staff of high-calibre and maintain an inclusive, welcoming, affirming and positive intellectual environment; 6. Provide relevant and appropriate academic infrastructure, equipment and facilities to support our academic project; and 7. Promote Rhodes University as an institution for the public good in local, provincial, national and international contexts. The plan calls upon all of us to re-imagine our University as one in which sustainability permeates every aspect of our academic endeavour, including an elevated sense of awareness and responsibility of our graduates for building sustainable communities. It calls upon us to ensure that we are simultaneously locally responsive and globally engaged. It calls upon us to work towards advancing social justice and do all that we can to restore the dignity and humanity of those who were treated as lesser beings by the previous dispensation. And it calls upon us to remind ourselves that our university does not exist in a vacuum. It exists within a social, cultural and economic milieu, and has an important role to play in lifting the standard of living of our local community.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2017
Agreement and coordination in XiTsonga, SeSotho and IsiXhosa: an optimality theoretic perspective
- Authors: Mitchley, Hazel
- Date: 2016
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/3423 , vital:20491
- Description: This thesis provides a unified Optimality Theoretic analysis of subject-verb agreement with coordinated preverbal subjects in three Southern Bantu languages: Xitsonga (S53), Sesotho (S33), and isiXhosa (S41). This analysis is then used to formulate a typology of agreement resolution strategies and the contexts which trigger them. Although some accounts in the Bantu literature suggest that agreement with coordinate structures is avoided by speakers (e.g. Schadeberg 1992, Voeltz 1971) especially when conjuncts are from different noun classes, I show that there is ample evidence to the contrary, and that the subject marker used is dependent on several factors, including (i) the [-HUMAN] specification on the conjuncts, (ii) whether the conjuncts are singular or plural, (iii) whether or not the conjuncts both carry the same noun class feature, and (iv) the order of the conjuncts. This thesis shows that there are various agreement resolution strategies which can beused: 1) agreement with the [+HUMAN] feature on the conjuncts, 2) agreement with the[-HUMAN] feature on the conjuncts, 3) agreement with the noun class feature on both conjuncts, 4) agreement with the noun class feature on the conjunct closest to the verb, and 5) agreement with the noun class feature on the conjunct furthest from the verb. Not all of these strategies are used by all languages, nor are these strategies interchangeable in the languages which do use them – instead, multiple factors conspire to trigger the use of a specific agreement strategy within a specific agreement featural context. I show that these effects can be captured using Optimality Theory (Prince and Smolensky 2004). The analysis makes use of seven constraints: RES#, MAX[+H], MAX[-H], DEP[-H], MAXNC, DEPNC, and AGREECLOSEST. The hierarchical ranking of these constraints not only accounts for the confinement of particular strategies to specific agreement featural contexts within a language, but also accounts for the cross-linguistic differences in the use of these strategies. I end off by examining the typological implications which follow from the OT analysis provided in this thesis.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2016
- Authors: Mitchley, Hazel
- Date: 2016
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/3423 , vital:20491
- Description: This thesis provides a unified Optimality Theoretic analysis of subject-verb agreement with coordinated preverbal subjects in three Southern Bantu languages: Xitsonga (S53), Sesotho (S33), and isiXhosa (S41). This analysis is then used to formulate a typology of agreement resolution strategies and the contexts which trigger them. Although some accounts in the Bantu literature suggest that agreement with coordinate structures is avoided by speakers (e.g. Schadeberg 1992, Voeltz 1971) especially when conjuncts are from different noun classes, I show that there is ample evidence to the contrary, and that the subject marker used is dependent on several factors, including (i) the [-HUMAN] specification on the conjuncts, (ii) whether the conjuncts are singular or plural, (iii) whether or not the conjuncts both carry the same noun class feature, and (iv) the order of the conjuncts. This thesis shows that there are various agreement resolution strategies which can beused: 1) agreement with the [+HUMAN] feature on the conjuncts, 2) agreement with the[-HUMAN] feature on the conjuncts, 3) agreement with the noun class feature on both conjuncts, 4) agreement with the noun class feature on the conjunct closest to the verb, and 5) agreement with the noun class feature on the conjunct furthest from the verb. Not all of these strategies are used by all languages, nor are these strategies interchangeable in the languages which do use them – instead, multiple factors conspire to trigger the use of a specific agreement strategy within a specific agreement featural context. I show that these effects can be captured using Optimality Theory (Prince and Smolensky 2004). The analysis makes use of seven constraints: RES#, MAX[+H], MAX[-H], DEP[-H], MAXNC, DEPNC, and AGREECLOSEST. The hierarchical ranking of these constraints not only accounts for the confinement of particular strategies to specific agreement featural contexts within a language, but also accounts for the cross-linguistic differences in the use of these strategies. I end off by examining the typological implications which follow from the OT analysis provided in this thesis.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2016
Journeying home, exile and transnationalism in Noni Jabavu and Sisonke Msimang’s memoirs
- Authors: Masola, Athambile
- Date: 2020
- Subjects: Home in literature , Exile (Punishment) in literature , Women authors, Black -- South Africa -- History and criticism , Jabavu, Noni -- Criticism and interpretation , Msimang, Sisonke -- Criticism and interpretation
- Language: English
- Type: text , Thesis , Doctoral , PhD
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/166529 , vital:41376
- Description: This thesis examines the memoirs of two South Africa female writers: Noni Jabavu and Sisonke Msimang. In analysing their memoirs, this thesis sets out to contribute to the scholarship which centres the voices of Black women writers. It explores how both writers interrogate the concepts of home, exile and transnationalism. My focus is on the ways in which the writers theorise questions of belonging, and the extent to which their writing provides the opportunity to give voice to the complex nature of belonging. I read the narratives from these two writers alongside each other, as Noni Jabavu is Sisonke Msimang’s literary ancestor. By looking at their works alongside each other, this thesis becomes an intergenerational conversation between the past and the present. Using Black feminist thought and migratory subjectivity, this thesis examines the ways in which these writers connect the personal and the political. Noni and Sisonke navigate the private spaces of home in conversation with the political experience of exile and the nation. In the second chapter, I explore home as ekhaya, isizwe and an imaginary homeland. Ekhaya is the isiXhosa word denoting the family home, where there is a network of family rather than a nuclear family. Home is also isizwe: the isiXhosa word which evokes the nation state, which takes on layered meanings in the context of colonialism and apartheid. Home can also be an imaginary homeland, which is an imagined version of home after a long absence such as exile. In the third chapter, I examine three forms of exile: internal exile, estrangement and political exile. Finally, in chapter four, I analyse transnationalism: a border-crossing which raises questions of power, mobility and kinship. Looking at home, exile and transnationalism together allows for an exploration which challenges taken-for-granted ideas about place and identity. These memoirs illuminate the ways in which Black women constitute and reconstitute their identities according to the places which they access through travel.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2020
- Authors: Masola, Athambile
- Date: 2020
- Subjects: Home in literature , Exile (Punishment) in literature , Women authors, Black -- South Africa -- History and criticism , Jabavu, Noni -- Criticism and interpretation , Msimang, Sisonke -- Criticism and interpretation
- Language: English
- Type: text , Thesis , Doctoral , PhD
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/166529 , vital:41376
- Description: This thesis examines the memoirs of two South Africa female writers: Noni Jabavu and Sisonke Msimang. In analysing their memoirs, this thesis sets out to contribute to the scholarship which centres the voices of Black women writers. It explores how both writers interrogate the concepts of home, exile and transnationalism. My focus is on the ways in which the writers theorise questions of belonging, and the extent to which their writing provides the opportunity to give voice to the complex nature of belonging. I read the narratives from these two writers alongside each other, as Noni Jabavu is Sisonke Msimang’s literary ancestor. By looking at their works alongside each other, this thesis becomes an intergenerational conversation between the past and the present. Using Black feminist thought and migratory subjectivity, this thesis examines the ways in which these writers connect the personal and the political. Noni and Sisonke navigate the private spaces of home in conversation with the political experience of exile and the nation. In the second chapter, I explore home as ekhaya, isizwe and an imaginary homeland. Ekhaya is the isiXhosa word denoting the family home, where there is a network of family rather than a nuclear family. Home is also isizwe: the isiXhosa word which evokes the nation state, which takes on layered meanings in the context of colonialism and apartheid. Home can also be an imaginary homeland, which is an imagined version of home after a long absence such as exile. In the third chapter, I examine three forms of exile: internal exile, estrangement and political exile. Finally, in chapter four, I analyse transnationalism: a border-crossing which raises questions of power, mobility and kinship. Looking at home, exile and transnationalism together allows for an exploration which challenges taken-for-granted ideas about place and identity. These memoirs illuminate the ways in which Black women constitute and reconstitute their identities according to the places which they access through travel.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2020
Rhodes University Research Report 2015
- Rhodes University, Gillitt, Tarryn, Goba, Busi, Macgregor, Jill, Roberts, Jaine, Dore, Sally
- Authors: Rhodes University , Gillitt, Tarryn , Goba, Busi , Macgregor, Jill , Roberts, Jaine , Dore, Sally
- Date: 2015
- Language: English
- Type: Text
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/59298 , vital:27546
- Description: From Foreword by Dr Sizwe Mabizela: A further feature of research at Rhodes University has long been international collaborations, many of them responsible for raising the international competitiveness and voice of scholarship involving Rhodes academics and students. In March 2015, Rhodes University became a founder member of the African Research Universities’ Alliance (ARUA), launched at the African Higher Education Summit in Senegal. Leading universities with strong programmes of research and Postgraduate training formed the network of 16 institutions, which aim to bring together intersecting and complementary strengths in the interest of building critical mass in the key development priorities of the African continent. , A publication of the Rhodes University Research Office, compiled and edited by Tarryn Gillitt, Busi Goba, Patricia Jacob, Jill Macgregor and Jaine Roberts. Design & Layout: Sally Dore.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2015
- Authors: Rhodes University , Gillitt, Tarryn , Goba, Busi , Macgregor, Jill , Roberts, Jaine , Dore, Sally
- Date: 2015
- Language: English
- Type: Text
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/59298 , vital:27546
- Description: From Foreword by Dr Sizwe Mabizela: A further feature of research at Rhodes University has long been international collaborations, many of them responsible for raising the international competitiveness and voice of scholarship involving Rhodes academics and students. In March 2015, Rhodes University became a founder member of the African Research Universities’ Alliance (ARUA), launched at the African Higher Education Summit in Senegal. Leading universities with strong programmes of research and Postgraduate training formed the network of 16 institutions, which aim to bring together intersecting and complementary strengths in the interest of building critical mass in the key development priorities of the African continent. , A publication of the Rhodes University Research Office, compiled and edited by Tarryn Gillitt, Busi Goba, Patricia Jacob, Jill Macgregor and Jaine Roberts. Design & Layout: Sally Dore.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2015
Freedom and form in the fiction of Doris Lessing
- Authors: Flischman, Rita
- Date: 1981
- Subjects: Lessing, Doris May, 1919- -- Criticism and interpretation
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
- Identifier: vital:2269 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1005921 , Lessing, Doris May, 1919- -- Criticism and interpretation
- Description: From Introduction: This thesis then is a detailed study of Lessing's novels in an attempt to show her development as a writer. Her short stories are handled briefly in connection with her novels. For, although the short stories are among her finest work, focus on the novels is sufficient to show her growth as a writer. Hers is the small individual struggle to overcome the limitations of both her content and her form. To overcome the limitations of her content means expanding her own consciousness and re-forming life itself. Only when she is free and the world is free can she overcome the limitations of her content. Then, of course, she need no longer and can no longer write. The task seems as impossible as that of the dung beetles, but she nevertheless continues. Like the sacred beetles with "the sun between their feet" she carries on rolling the muck of the world into symbols of the truth.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 1981
- Authors: Flischman, Rita
- Date: 1981
- Subjects: Lessing, Doris May, 1919- -- Criticism and interpretation
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
- Identifier: vital:2269 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1005921 , Lessing, Doris May, 1919- -- Criticism and interpretation
- Description: From Introduction: This thesis then is a detailed study of Lessing's novels in an attempt to show her development as a writer. Her short stories are handled briefly in connection with her novels. For, although the short stories are among her finest work, focus on the novels is sufficient to show her growth as a writer. Hers is the small individual struggle to overcome the limitations of both her content and her form. To overcome the limitations of her content means expanding her own consciousness and re-forming life itself. Only when she is free and the world is free can she overcome the limitations of her content. Then, of course, she need no longer and can no longer write. The task seems as impossible as that of the dung beetles, but she nevertheless continues. Like the sacred beetles with "the sun between their feet" she carries on rolling the muck of the world into symbols of the truth.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 1981
The dionysian in performance reclaiming the female transgressive performing body
- Authors: Solomon, Zanne
- Date: 2012
- Subjects: Dionysia , Feminism and theater , Human body in literature , Performance art , Performing arts , Body image in women , Self-perception in women , Human body -- Social aspects
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
- Identifier: vital:2148 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1002380
- Description: In this thesis I investigate the theoretical or philosophical notion/archetype of the Dionysian in relation to the transgressive female body in performance. I do so through 1) an investigation into the theories behind the Dionysian and the transgressive; 2) an examination of the performative practice of the transgressive female body; and 3) a personal exploration of the theatrical practice. 1) In the first chapter I introduce and thoroughly explore the archetypal concept of the Dionysian, and identify its significance because of its intrinsic association with the transgressive. I associate it with its oppositional force, the Apollonian, which is similarly significant because it is through the Dionysian disruption of the Apollonian from which the very notion of the transgressive springs. Through a review of Camille Paglia's seminal text on the subject of the Dionysian¹, this chapter provides a historical, mythological and theoretical context for the schism between the two archetypal aesthetics, starting from the description of the mythology of the ancient Greek gods, Dionysus and Apollo, and unpacks the transgressive nature of the Dionysian. Drawing on concurring theories of Friedrich Nietzsche and Julia Kristeva, as well as Hans Thies-Lehmann's writings on post-dramatic theatre², Chapter One attempts to firmly establish the inherent link between the Dionysian and theatre and performance, as well as the Dionysian and the transgressive, and provide a thorough theoretical framework for the rest of the thesis. 2) The second chapter investigates the work of two female performance artists³ who (re)present⁴ their bodies as transgressive in performance, namely Marina Abramovic and Karen Finley. It critically examines specific performance works of theirs, and through this examination it explores how they (re)present their bodies as transgressive in performance, and why they do so. This chapter furthermore establishes the connection between the transgressive female performing body, as (re)presented by Abramovic and Finley, and the Dionysian. In so doing it explores how they negotiate this ancient aesthetic or practice in a contemporary performance context. I believe that these performance artists are in fact striving to celebrate and reclaim the Dionysian within their work, and I attempt to establish this within this chapter. 3) The third chapter of this thesis analyses my own practical exploration of the transgressive female body in performance in a piece entitled Bleeding Mermaid (2008). It examines this exploration in the context of the theory of the Dionysian, as well as investigating how and why I (re)presented my body as transgressive in the performance. The analysis furthermore questions how I understand my work on the (re)presentation of the transgressive female body in relation to, and within the context of, Finley and Abramovic's work on the same subject. Through this investigation, I aim to establish a link between the Dionysian and the transgressive female performing body; and investigate the motivation(s) behind the (re)presentation of the transgressive female body in performance. I hope to open up a pathway to the reclamation of the Dionysian, both in performance practice and research. ¹Paglia, Camille. Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson. England: Penguin Books, 1990. ²Lehmann, Hans-Thies. Postdramatic Theatre. Trans. and Intro. Karen Jürs-Munby. London and New York: Routledge, 2006. ³Performance Art began around the 1960s in Europe and America. It is performance with a sense of immediacy – in that it is hard to replicate as it interacts with each unique audience – it is thus effectively a fresh/new experience each time. It breaks the boundaries of traditional theatre (form, structure, venue, time etc) and is often shocking or provocative in nature. It mixed the aesthetics of theatre and art, often taking place in installation settings. Performance Art has developed and morphed throughout the years, and is also referred to as Live Art in Britain. A performance artist is someone who produces performance art. It is possible that Performance Art no longer exists/is possible because it no longer shocks or affects the audience. ⁴My use of the brackets in (re)presented/(re)present throughout this thesis is because I would like to make simultaneous reference to the words/connotations of "presentation" and "representation", without being bound to the connotations of illusion/falseness/non-reality as is associated with the word "representation" (in opposition to the concept of the "real"), and thus be left only with the one-dimensional approach/meaning of "presentation".
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2012
- Authors: Solomon, Zanne
- Date: 2012
- Subjects: Dionysia , Feminism and theater , Human body in literature , Performance art , Performing arts , Body image in women , Self-perception in women , Human body -- Social aspects
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
- Identifier: vital:2148 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1002380
- Description: In this thesis I investigate the theoretical or philosophical notion/archetype of the Dionysian in relation to the transgressive female body in performance. I do so through 1) an investigation into the theories behind the Dionysian and the transgressive; 2) an examination of the performative practice of the transgressive female body; and 3) a personal exploration of the theatrical practice. 1) In the first chapter I introduce and thoroughly explore the archetypal concept of the Dionysian, and identify its significance because of its intrinsic association with the transgressive. I associate it with its oppositional force, the Apollonian, which is similarly significant because it is through the Dionysian disruption of the Apollonian from which the very notion of the transgressive springs. Through a review of Camille Paglia's seminal text on the subject of the Dionysian¹, this chapter provides a historical, mythological and theoretical context for the schism between the two archetypal aesthetics, starting from the description of the mythology of the ancient Greek gods, Dionysus and Apollo, and unpacks the transgressive nature of the Dionysian. Drawing on concurring theories of Friedrich Nietzsche and Julia Kristeva, as well as Hans Thies-Lehmann's writings on post-dramatic theatre², Chapter One attempts to firmly establish the inherent link between the Dionysian and theatre and performance, as well as the Dionysian and the transgressive, and provide a thorough theoretical framework for the rest of the thesis. 2) The second chapter investigates the work of two female performance artists³ who (re)present⁴ their bodies as transgressive in performance, namely Marina Abramovic and Karen Finley. It critically examines specific performance works of theirs, and through this examination it explores how they (re)present their bodies as transgressive in performance, and why they do so. This chapter furthermore establishes the connection between the transgressive female performing body, as (re)presented by Abramovic and Finley, and the Dionysian. In so doing it explores how they negotiate this ancient aesthetic or practice in a contemporary performance context. I believe that these performance artists are in fact striving to celebrate and reclaim the Dionysian within their work, and I attempt to establish this within this chapter. 3) The third chapter of this thesis analyses my own practical exploration of the transgressive female body in performance in a piece entitled Bleeding Mermaid (2008). It examines this exploration in the context of the theory of the Dionysian, as well as investigating how and why I (re)presented my body as transgressive in the performance. The analysis furthermore questions how I understand my work on the (re)presentation of the transgressive female body in relation to, and within the context of, Finley and Abramovic's work on the same subject. Through this investigation, I aim to establish a link between the Dionysian and the transgressive female performing body; and investigate the motivation(s) behind the (re)presentation of the transgressive female body in performance. I hope to open up a pathway to the reclamation of the Dionysian, both in performance practice and research. ¹Paglia, Camille. Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson. England: Penguin Books, 1990. ²Lehmann, Hans-Thies. Postdramatic Theatre. Trans. and Intro. Karen Jürs-Munby. London and New York: Routledge, 2006. ³Performance Art began around the 1960s in Europe and America. It is performance with a sense of immediacy – in that it is hard to replicate as it interacts with each unique audience – it is thus effectively a fresh/new experience each time. It breaks the boundaries of traditional theatre (form, structure, venue, time etc) and is often shocking or provocative in nature. It mixed the aesthetics of theatre and art, often taking place in installation settings. Performance Art has developed and morphed throughout the years, and is also referred to as Live Art in Britain. A performance artist is someone who produces performance art. It is possible that Performance Art no longer exists/is possible because it no longer shocks or affects the audience. ⁴My use of the brackets in (re)presented/(re)present throughout this thesis is because I would like to make simultaneous reference to the words/connotations of "presentation" and "representation", without being bound to the connotations of illusion/falseness/non-reality as is associated with the word "representation" (in opposition to the concept of the "real"), and thus be left only with the one-dimensional approach/meaning of "presentation".
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2012
The representation of women in the plays of Sam Shepard
- Authors: Volks, Carolyn Dana
- Date: 1994
- Subjects: Shepard, Sam, 1943- -- Characters -- Women , Shepard, Sam, 1943- -- Criticism and interpretation
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
- Identifier: vital:2151 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1002383 , Shepard, Sam, 1943- -- Characters -- Women , Shepard, Sam, 1943- -- Criticism and interpretation
- Description: In the endeavour to abolish from society all forms of ideologies that prescribe the domination of one sex over another, it has become increasingly important to analyse the representation of women in dramatic literature because dramatic literature reflects the philosophies and codes of behaviour which enable individuals to dominate one another in society, and assists in either reinforcing old ideologies or shaping new ones. Although Sam Shepard has been an influential force in the creation of modern drama, his plays reflect a patriarchal ideology that dictates that women are subordinate to men. Shepard's plays dramatise various male predicaments and his female characters are constructed and utilised to express men's experience, not women's. One of the conflicts which besets the male characters is that they desire to return to the womb of the mother, but simultaneously fear that their identities will be engulfed by the mother. In The Rock Garden, Red Cross and Fourteen Hundred Thousand, these desires and fears are demonstrated through the female characters, who are manipulated to represent objects of male desire and/or objects onto which devouring images are projected. Women are therefore represented in a manner in which they are best able to express the male characters' identity related conflicts. In Curse of the Starving Class and Buried Child, characters suffer from receiving insufficient nurture, are spiritually and emotionally impoverished or cursed and appear unable to transform their lives. The female characters are presented as being partly responsible for causing these predicaments since their nurturing, generative and transformative abilities are presented in a negative light. Women are also represented as objects of blame in the male characters' attempts and failures to undergo rebirths and are once again created to express male predicaments. In Fool for Love and A Lie of the Mind, Shepard focuses on the relationships between men and women, but is only able to present the male characters' perspectives and represent male desire. The female characters are regarded, and engaged with, as reflections of the male characters' selves and are frequently utilised to express male desire. If Shepard's plays are persistently applauded and seen as examples to be emulated, we need to closely analyse these dramas that represent women in a manner which expresses male predicaments and which places them in roles that allow men to dominate them.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 1994
- Authors: Volks, Carolyn Dana
- Date: 1994
- Subjects: Shepard, Sam, 1943- -- Characters -- Women , Shepard, Sam, 1943- -- Criticism and interpretation
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
- Identifier: vital:2151 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1002383 , Shepard, Sam, 1943- -- Characters -- Women , Shepard, Sam, 1943- -- Criticism and interpretation
- Description: In the endeavour to abolish from society all forms of ideologies that prescribe the domination of one sex over another, it has become increasingly important to analyse the representation of women in dramatic literature because dramatic literature reflects the philosophies and codes of behaviour which enable individuals to dominate one another in society, and assists in either reinforcing old ideologies or shaping new ones. Although Sam Shepard has been an influential force in the creation of modern drama, his plays reflect a patriarchal ideology that dictates that women are subordinate to men. Shepard's plays dramatise various male predicaments and his female characters are constructed and utilised to express men's experience, not women's. One of the conflicts which besets the male characters is that they desire to return to the womb of the mother, but simultaneously fear that their identities will be engulfed by the mother. In The Rock Garden, Red Cross and Fourteen Hundred Thousand, these desires and fears are demonstrated through the female characters, who are manipulated to represent objects of male desire and/or objects onto which devouring images are projected. Women are therefore represented in a manner in which they are best able to express the male characters' identity related conflicts. In Curse of the Starving Class and Buried Child, characters suffer from receiving insufficient nurture, are spiritually and emotionally impoverished or cursed and appear unable to transform their lives. The female characters are presented as being partly responsible for causing these predicaments since their nurturing, generative and transformative abilities are presented in a negative light. Women are also represented as objects of blame in the male characters' attempts and failures to undergo rebirths and are once again created to express male predicaments. In Fool for Love and A Lie of the Mind, Shepard focuses on the relationships between men and women, but is only able to present the male characters' perspectives and represent male desire. The female characters are regarded, and engaged with, as reflections of the male characters' selves and are frequently utilised to express male desire. If Shepard's plays are persistently applauded and seen as examples to be emulated, we need to closely analyse these dramas that represent women in a manner which expresses male predicaments and which places them in roles that allow men to dominate them.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 1994