Fusing fact and fiction: biography and autobiography in the novels of Virginia Woolf
- Authors: White, Joshua Craig
- Date: 2016
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/4005 , vital:20580
- Description: Virginia Woolf was noted for a preoccupation with the genre of life-writing throughout her career. Her aims when it came to reshaping the nature of biographical and autobiographical literature were numerous. She veered away from the aggrandising and patriarchal methods with which Victorian biographers tended to depict their subjects. She increased the focus on women in life-writing, examining and subverting traditionally prescribed gender roles prevalent in both her society and the literature that reflected it, and advocating a balance between male and female patterns of thinking. She also devised a method of incorporating both basic biographical fact and aspects of fiction into life-writing in order to approach a more truthful depiction of a subject’s personality or character. This method is linked to the aforementioned balance of gendered thought patterns, since Woolf often aligns factuality with male thinking and the contrasting qualities of fiction, such as intuition, ambivalence and perspicacity, with female thinking. This thesis examines three novels which demonstrate Woolf’s constant preoccupation with combining fact and fiction in order to capture the essence of personality. In her debut novel, The Voyage Out, she presents Rachel Vinrace, who must achieve a balance of male-oriented fact with female-oriented insight in order to fashion a sufficient identity for herself and to identify others in a selective and judicious manner, thus being simultaneously autobiographical and biographical. In Orlando, Woolf explicitly subverts the traditional Victorian biography by depicting Vita Sackville-West as a man who transforms into a woman and remains living for over 400 years. In presenting such a character, Woolf posits that personality consists of and is influenced by myriad aspects of a person’s life that cannot be documented in the restrictive manner employed by Victorian biographers. Orlando’s essence being obfuscated by manifold “selves” attests to Woolf problematizing attempts to attain such an essence. The same challenge is particularly important in her autobiographical novel, To the Lighthouse, in which she transposes the traumas of her own life into a fictitious narrative in order to achieve catharsis for her and her readers, and to present the difficulty in capturing the essence of character. The conclusion that Woolf eventually posits is that personality cannot be reduced to an essence, but rather that it consists of idiosyncrasies that are various, intertwining, and capricious.
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- Date Issued: 2016
Information security concerns around enterprise bring your own device adoption in South African higher education institutions
- Authors: Sauls, Gershwin Ashton
- Date: 2016
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MSc
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/3619 , vital:20530
- Description: The research carried out in this thesis is an investigation into the information security concerns around the use of personally-owned mobile devices within South African universities. This concept, which is more commonly known as Bring Your Own Device or BYOD has raised many data loss concerns for organizational IT Departments across various industries worldwide. Universities as institutions are designed to facilitate research and learning and as such, have a strong culture toward the sharing of information which complicates management of these data loss concerns even further. As such, the objectives of the research were to determine the acceptance levels of BYOD within South African universities in relation to the perceived security risks. Thereafter, an investigation into which security practices, if any, that South African universities are using to minimize the information security concerns was carried out by means of a targeted online questionnaire. An extensive literature review was first carried out to evaluate the motivation for the research and to assess advantages of using Smartphone and Tablet PC’s for work related purposes. Thereafter, to determine security concerns, other surveys and related work was consulted to determine the relevant questions needed by the online questionnaire. The quantity of comprehensive academic studies concerning the security aspects of BYOD within organizations was very limited and because of this reason, the research took on a highly exploratory design. Finally, the research deliberated on the results of the online questionnaire and concluded with a strategy for the implementation of a mobile device security strategy for using personally-owned devices in a work-related environment.
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- Date Issued: 2016
Terrorism as a contributory factor to state failure in Somalia: A case study of Al-Shabaab
- Authors: Ndlovu, Sitembiso Irene
- Date: 2016
- Subjects: Terrorism -- Somalia
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , Degree
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10353/2656 , vital:27979
- Description: This study is an investigation of terrorism as a contributory factor to state failure in Somalia with specific reference to Al-Shabaab, using Huntington‟s Clash of Civilizations theory. It utilises both primary and secondary sources of data. The study found out that Somalia had been a failed state even before the birth of Al-Shabaab. However, the activities of Al-Shabaab perpetuated state failure in Somalia. These activities included bombings, small arms attacks, executions, siege, kidnappings, hijackings and looting. The study also found out that Al-Shabaab regularly conducted incursions in neighbouring countries and all these activities destabilised Somalia politically and perpetuated state failure. However, the study also found out that there were other factors that contributed to Somalia‟s state failure some of which were clan rivalry, civil war, warlordism, piracy, poverty and religion. Despite all these, the study noted that there were various actors involved in containing the terrorist activities of Al-Shabaab. These actors included the Transitional Federal Government, Kenya, the African Union, the United Nations and the United States. The study recommends that dialogue between the TFG, the clan structures and Al-Shabaab is the most viable path to sustainable peace in Somalia.
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- Date Issued: 2016