The past in the present: race, gender and transnationalism in Zoë Wicomb’s October and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Americanah
- Authors: Nthunya, Manosa
- Date: 2016
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/3939 , vital:20559
- Description: This thesis will interrogate the ways in which the most recent novels of Zoë Wicomb and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (namely October and Americanah) explore race, gender and transnational issues. Wicomb and Adichie share an interest in representing the lives of people who have been historically marginalised by racial and gender classifications. This thesis will argue that historical and stereotypical ways of looking at people, particularly African people, are still prevalent in the twenty-first century. Wicomb’s interest is in the coloured community and the impact that apartheid ideology has had on it. She shows, as this thesis will argue, that notions of shame and respectability still influence the coloured community, post-1994, in the same ways they did under apartheid. Furthermore, the thesis will show that religion, which was used to justify apartheid, has been instrumental in maintaining racist and sexist norms in the coloured community in post-apartheid South Africa. Adichie’s novel, on the other hand, shows the impact of gender norms in Nigeria on her female characters. Unlike characters in Wicomb’s novel, Adichie’s mostly experience racial bias when they move to Western countries. This thesis will argue that many Western countries, which were the main beneficiaries of colonialism, continue to ‘other’ Africans, in spite of their claims to respect all human beings. Wicomb’s and Adichie’s novels depict characters that are moving between different continents, along with the impact that this has on them. In the twenty-first century, more people are moving between different spaces and, as a result, interacting with different cultures. These migrations, as this thesis will show, give rise to paradoxical circumstances: people are still being judged according to their race and gender, in spite of the freedom that these moves are supposed to lead to. Of central importance to both novels then is the question of home and belonging. Since people are moving between different continents, is it still possible to belong to one place? Is it in fact possible to belong at all? These are some of the questions that will be raised and answered in this thesis. Lastly, the thesis will look at the thematic representations of reading and writing in the novels under consideration. This is most evident in Adichie’s novel where her main character starts blogging as a way to express her dissatisfaction with the racist and sexist environment she encounters in the United States of America. The thesis will explore how Adichie examines blogging as a mode of communication that is unique to the twenty-first century. It will argue that it is perhaps through new media that historically subjugated subjects, such as African people and women, will be able to express themselves. Less hackneyed modes of communication might provide the necessary channels for those who have historically been denied voice to finally find it.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2016
Detecting the transnational space: metaphysical detecting in Kazuo Ishiguro’s When we were orphans, Michiel Heyns’s Lost ground, and Amitav Gosh’s The Calcutta chromosome
- Authors: Botes, Niki
- Date: 2020
- Subjects: Literature and transnationalism , Detective and mystery stories -- History and criticism , Ishiguro, Kazuo, 1954- , Ishiguro, Kazuo, 1954- -- When we were orpahns , Heyns, Michiel , Heyns, Michiel -- Lost ground , Ghosh, Amitav, 1956- , Ghosh, Amitav, 1956- -- The Calcutta chromosome
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/140971 , vital:37933
- Description: The transnational detectives in the three primary texts under scrutiny—Kazuo Ishiguro’s When We Were Orphans, Michiel Heyns’s Lost Ground, and Amitav Ghosh’s The Calcutta Chromosome—are regarded as metaphysical detectives in this thesis. As transnational figures, they criss-cross physical and national borders, but their investigations also often require the crossing of epistemological and ontological borders, as well as thinking outside of binaries. The fictional transnational, postcolonial worlds presented in these texts all feature a lack of change and the persistence of the socio-economic inequalities and discriminations of the colonial or, in the case of Lost Ground, the apartheid past. This thesis will argue that the three texts foreground the inability to break free from conceptual frameworks and a lack in human relationships as two possible reasons why the communities and societies in question have not been able to affect change. To solve the various mysteries in the texts, the transnational detectives need to find new ways of knowing and being. The lessons that these detectives learn and the personal changes they experience serve as synecdoche for how a better tomorrow for the transnational, postcolonial world could possibly be achieved. The methodology employed in this thesis involves a comparative reading of the three primary texts. To analyse and interpret these texts, this thesis draws on the philosophies of postmodern philosophers such as Martin Heidegger, Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, and Emmanuel Levinas, as well as postcolonial theorists like Edward Said, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, and Homi K. Bhabha. The thesis will contend that especially Derrida’s work on deconstruction, which forms the conceptual basis for Bhabha’s notion of the ‘third space,’ as well as Levinas’s anti-totalitarian approach with regard to the ethical relationship between the self and the other, are viable better ways of knowing and being in the transnational, postcolonial worlds presented in the texts. Derrida’s notion of différance and the trace, as well as Bhabha’s third space, this thesis contends, completely destabilises binary thinking and offers ways to think outside of the limited frameworks of ideological discourse. This thesis also posits that Levinas’s metaphysical and pluralistic interpretation of how the self should, and can, relate to the other, presents a better way of forming human relationships and has the potential to affect positive change.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2020
An assessment of the monitoring and evaluation function in the Eastern Cape office of the premier
- Authors: Qinela, Loyisokazi
- Date: 2013
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MPA
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10353/1071 , vital:26523
- Description: This study responds to the need to understand the shifts in the national monitoring and evaluation policy context from output and compliance focus to outcomes and performance focus. The study also responds to need to understand how national policies are interpreted and implemented in the province through the Office of the Premier. The purpose of the study is to assess the monitoring and evaluation function in the Eastern Cape Office of the Premier. The following research questions will guide the study: a. What is the context, rationale, purpose and claims of the National M&E Policy? b. How does the Eastern Cape Office of the Premier implement the monitoring & evaluation function? c. How does the implementation of M&E by Office of the Premier resonate with intention of the National M&E policy & what are the gaps. In this study, both qualitative and quantitative approaches were used. The use of interviews and questionnaires demonstrates the mix method approach. This approach was preferred since one part of the research analyses policy documents and the other one assesses implementation. The key findings of the research were: Although the context, rationale, purpose and claims of the National and Provincial M&E Policies are clearly articulated, there is no national legislation that gives the Office of the Premier power to enforce the implementation of the M&E policies. Both national and provincial M&E policies are not sensitive to the context of implementation. There is poor enabling environment in the Office of the Premier to implement M&E. There is a gap between planning and M&E functions in the Province the Premier’s Office, Provincial Treasury and Department of Local Government have not succeeded in coordination and the definition of roles and responsibilities for rolling out a Province wide M&E system. The M&E Policies do not address the problem of duplicate reporting in the Province. The M&E Provincial Framework has several limitations that will affect implementation. The National M&E policies are silent on the monitoring role of the legislative branch of government. There is no alignment between the development and monitoring of Service Delivery Improvement Plans with the rest of the implementation of M&E policies. Poor intergovernmental relations in the province make it difficult to fully implement M&E policies. . Programme Managers focus narrowly on day to day management functions with little or no focus on monitoring and evaluation. There was very poor usage for M&E evidence by the for decision making.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2013
Exorcising the Past: History, Hauntings and Evil in Neo-Gothic Fiction
- Authors: Van der Wielen, Karlien
- Date: 2016
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
- Identifier: vital:2333 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1021257
- Description: This thesis explores the conventions of both historical and Gothic fiction in order to investigate what seems to be a recurrent impulse to exorcise the past in what I define as contemporary Neo-Gothic fiction. It therefore attempts to establish a distinction between Neo-Gothic fiction and other forms of contemporary Gothic fiction by focusing on the treatment of history, the supernatural and the grand narrative of progress in three contemporary Gothic novels: The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters, The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova and The Accursed by Joyce Carol Oates. This thesis argues that the most potent manifestation of history can be found in the representation of the revenant in Neo-Gothic fiction, which exhibits a disruptive and evil ontology that problematises the exorcism of the past. Furthermore, the reactions of ‘modern’ characters to these revenants illustrate the imperative to exorcise the past, and therefore the treatment of history and the past is reflected in the interaction between the ‘modern’ characters and the Gothic revenants. Through this interaction as well as the parody of traditional Gothic and historical fiction conventions, Neo-Gothic fiction constructs a critique of the Enlightenment’s grand narrative of progress. Paradoxically, this constitutes Neo-Gothic fiction’s own attempt to exorcise the past, which it recognises in a simplified and reductive narrative of history propounded through the grand narrative of progress. This thesis therefore pays particular attention to the configuration of revenants as evil and ‘modern’ humans as good, and the disruption of this simple binary that is effected through Neo-Gothic fiction’s subversion of the grand narrative of progress. This focus allows for the theorisation of the revenant through Jacques Derrida’s notion of ‘hauntology’ and Julia Kristeva’s ‘the abject’, the investigation of the treatment of history in Neo-Gothic fiction and the exploration of very recent Gothic texts that have not yet received much critical attention.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2016
In search of the comprador: self-exoticisation in selected texts from the South Asian and Middle Eastern diasporas
- Authors: Shabangu, Mohammad
- Date: 2015
- Subjects: Rushdie, Salman. Midnight's children -- Criticism and interpretation , Kureishi, Hanif. Buddha of suburbia -- Criticism and interpretation , Hosseini, Khaled. Kite runner -- Criticism and interpretation , Hosseini, Khaled. Thousand splendid suns -- Criticism and interpretation , Compradors , Exoticism in literature , Literature and transnationalism -- Middle East , Literature and transnationalism -- South Asia , Middle Eastern literature (English) -- History and criticism , South Asian literature (English) -- History and criticism
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MSocSc
- Identifier: vital:2328 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1017770
- Description: This thesis is concerned with transnational literature and writers of the Middle Eastern and South Asian diasporas. It argues that the diasporic position of the authors enables their roles as comprador subjects. The thesis maintains that the figure of the comprador is always acted upon by its ontological predisposition, so that diasporic positionality often involves a single subject which straddles and speaks from two or more different subject positions. Comprador authors can be said to be co-opted by Western metropolitan publishing companies who stand to benefit by marketing the apparent marginality of the homelands about which these authors write. The thesis therefore proceeds from the notion that such a diasporic position is the paradoxical condition of the transnational subject or writer. I submit that there is, to some degree, a questionable element in the common political and cultural suggestions that emerge upon closer evaluation of diasporic literature. Indeed, a charge of complicity has been levelled against authors who write, apparently, to service two distinct entities – the wish to speak on behalf of a minority collective, as well as the imperial ‘centre’ which is the intended interlocutor of the comprador author. However, it is this difference, the implied otherness or marginality of the outsider within, which I argue is sometimes used by diasporic writers as a way of articulating with ‘authenticity’ the cultures and politics of their erstwhile localities. This thesis is concerned, therefore, with the representation of ‘the East’ in four novels by diasporic, specifically comprador writers, namely Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children, Hanif Kureishi’s The Buddha of Suburbia, and Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns. I suggest that the ‘third-world’ and transnational literature can also be a selling point for the transnational subject, whose representations may at times pander to preconceived ideas about ‘the Orient’ and its people. As an illustration of this double-bind, I offer a close reading of all the novels to suggest that on the one hand, the comprador author writes within the paradigm of the ‘writing back’ movement, as a counter-discourse to the Orientalist representations of the homeland. However, the corollary is that such an attempt to ‘write back’, in a sense, re-inscribes the very discourse it wishes to subvert, especially because the literature is aimed at a ‘Western’ audience. Moreover, the template of the comprador could be used to explain how a transnational post-9/11 text from an Afghan-American, for instance, may be put to the service of the imperial machine, and read, therefore, as a supporting document to the U.S. policy on Afghanistan.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2015
Between nationalism and transnationalism: entanglements of history, individual narrative, and memory in diaspora spaces in selected transnational fiction
- Authors: Bosman, Sean James
- Date: 2020
- Subjects: Literature and transnationalism , Gurnah, Abdulrazak, 1948- , Gurnah, Abdulrazak, 1948- -- By the sea , Gurnah, Abdulrazak, 1948- -- Gravel heart , Nguyen, Viet Thanh, 1971- , Nguyen, Viet Thanh, 1971- -- The sympathizer , Nguyen, Viet Thanh, 1971- -- The refugees , Urrea, Luis Alberto , Urrea, Luis Alberto -- The house of broken angels , Urrea, Luis Alberto -- The water museum
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Doctoral , PhD
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/140932 , vital:37930
- Description: This thesis offers close readings and a comparative analysis of selected works by Abdulrazak Gurnah, Viet Thanh Nguyen, and Luis Alberto Urrea. The selected primary texts used are Gurnah’s By the Sea (2000) and Gravel Heart (2017), Nguyen’s The Sympathizer (2015) and The Refugees (2017), and Urrea’s The Water Museum (2015) and The House of Broken Angels (2018). Analyses are informed by a conceptual framework that draws on critical works by Avtar Brah, J. U. Jacobs, Sarah Nuttall, Homi K. Bhabha, Judith Butler, Stuart Hall, Paul Ricoeur, Viet Thanh Nguyen, and Christopher B. Patterson. These theories are deployed to analyse how the selected works engage with the entanglements of history, individual narratives, and memory in the diaspora spaces they articulate. The thesis argues that the selected works indicate an emerging subgenre within the broader category of transnational literature. This subgenre rejects disempowering interpolations of transnational identities. Instead, it prioritises ethical forms of memory. These acknowledge that transnational subjects share at least partial accountability for the precarity they experience in diaspora spaces. The selected literature limns how this may be accomplished by rejecting the label of victim. In so doing, the selected literature also suggests that the elevation of transnationals to full ethical agency would enable them to exercise power in their diaspora spaces. All three authorial projects studied here also give rise to uncomfortable juxtapositions that suggest a mounting fear that, as nationalisms become more pronounced in the UK and the USA, transnationals may have to re-experience conditions from which they have already fled. The thesis concludes by identifying four additional areas of confluence amongst the selected literature worthy of future study.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2020
Bosman as Verbindingsteken: Hybridities in the Writing of Herman Charles Bosman.
- Authors: Leff, Carol Willa
- Date: 2014
- Subjects: Bosman, Herman Charles, 1905-1951 -- Criticism and interpretation , South African fiction (English) -- 20th century -- History and criticism , Authors, South African -- 20th century , South Africa -- Social life and customs -- 20th century , National characteristics, South African
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
- Identifier: vital:2314 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1013163
- Description: This thesis is concerned with how hybridity is created and interpreted by Herman Charles Bosman in his fiction and non-fiction. Bosman was a gifted writer and raconteur who captured the historical, socio-political context of his time by translating Afrikaans culture for the edification and pleasure of an English readership. Hennie Aucamp summed up this linguistic and cultural translation by pointing out that Bosman was a writer who acted as a “verbindingsteken” or hyphen (65) between Afrikaans and English. His texts contain many voices, and are therefore essentially hybrid. Firstly, by drawing on aspects of postcolonial theory, the terms ‘hybridity’, ‘culture’ and ‘identity’, are discussed. Homi Bhabha’s notion of ‘hybridity’ is the conceptual lens through which Bosman’s texts are viewed, and aspects of Mikhail Bakhtin’s cultural theory also serve the same function. Thereafter, biographies of Bosman are discussed in an effort to understand his hyphenated identity. Following this, specific attention is paid to a selection of Bosman’s essays, short stories, and a novel. Scholarly opinions aid interpretation of levels of hybridity in Bosman’s work. In analysing Bosman’s texts critically, it becomes clear that he believed in a united South Africa that acknowledged and accepted all races. However, analysis also reveals that there are some inconsistencies in Bosman’s personal views, as expressed particularly in his essays. His short stories do not contain the same contradictions. Critical analysis of the novel Willemsdorp attests that cultural hybridity is not always viewed as celebratory. It can also be a painful space where identities are split, living both inside and outside their environment, and subsequently marginalized. Bosman’s texts, although published decades ago, remain relevant today in post-apartheid South Africa as much of his writing can be seen as a record of historical events. His short stories and novels capture a confluence of languages, people and cultures. His essays illustrate a deep commitment to promoting South African culture and literature. When reading Bosman one is constantly reminded that differences are not only to be acknowledged, but embraced, in what he prophetically imagined as a hybrid, post-apartheid South African society.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2014