Masters Degrees (English)

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Browsing Masters Degrees (English) by browse.metadata.advisor "Graham, Lucy"

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    The apartheid censors' responses to the works of Frantz Fanon, Amilcar Cabral and Steve "Bantu" Biko
    (Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2013-03) Ross, Tamlyn Sue; Graham, Lucy; Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. Dept. of English.
    ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This thesis explores the ways in which the censors during the apartheid era responded to the works of three black liberation theorists; namely Frantz Fanon, Amilcar Cabral and Steve Biko. Although other studies of apartheid‐era censorship have been published, this is the first to examine the censors’ reactions to the work of key African liberation writers. Apartheid in South Africa brought with it a stringent system of governance, which included a board of censors who would decide, according their interpretation of the laws of the time, whether a publication was considered to be “desirable” or “not undesirable.” One of the major themes examined in the thesis is the interface and tension between the specific and the transnational. As we shall see, all three liberation theorists put forward Pan‐African ideas of liberation, but often explicated upon the specificities of their particular liberation struggles. In a strange act of mirroring, while upholding the idea of South Africa as “a special case” (exempt from the norms of international human rights law), the apartheid‐era censors were concerned about the spread of Pan‐African theories of liberation. Beginning with Fanon, I speculate on the reason why Black Skin White Masks was not banned in South Africa, though Fanon’s later works to enter the country were banned. I also examine Gillo Pontecorvo’s film The Battle of Algiers, which was influenced by Fanon’s theories, and censorship, arguing that the “likely readers” or “likely viewers” of revolutionary material included not only possible revolutionaries, but also paranoid networks of counterinsurgency. I then move on to examine the apartheid censors’ responses to the works of Amilcar Cabral, outlining the interface and tension between local and continental as described above. The final chapter, which deals with the censors’ responses to Steve “Bantu” Biko’s I Write What I Like as well as Donald Wood’s Biko, the film Cry Freedom and other Biko related texts and memorabilia, has some surprises about the supposedly “liberal” censors’ responses to what they deemed to be “undesirable” and “not undesirable” literature.
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    Perspectives of estrangement : England and Englishness in the novels of Justin Cartwright
    (Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2013-03) Buchanan, Andrea Susan; Graham, Lucy; Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. Dept. of English.
    ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This thesis explores how Justin Cartwright’s perspective on Englishness, as a South Africanborn writer living and writing in England, is played out in his novels. Four of Cartwright’s novels with English settings are analysed: In Every Face I Meet (1995), The Promise of Happiness (2004), To Heaven by Water (2009) and Other People’s Money (2011). Cartwright’s position as a self-conscious observer of English life is revealed as eliciting a nuanced critique of Englishness. It is argued that Cartwright adopts something of an anthropological approach towards his English subjects, and that this troubles the traditional gaze of the Western anthropologist upon the “other”. At the same time, his protagonists are represented with humane sympathy, though this is often tempered with irony. Drawing on Paul Gilroy’s ideas about race and multiculture in England and Robert J.C. Young’s The Idea of English Ethnicity, this thesis discusses Cartwright’s presentation of Englishness as both potentially inclusive and exclusive. Cartwright also sets England against America, and more significantly, against Africa. Cartwright’s portrayal of Africa is shown to reveal his somewhat ambivalent attitude towards his birthplace. Throughout the thesis, Cartwright’s novels are discussed with an awareness of the influence that the social philosopher Isaiah Berlin has had on the author, particularly with regard to his critique of idealism and his espousal of value pluralism and liberal humanism. Yet it is also suggested that Cartwright’s liberal humanism may be intertwined with his complex and ambivalent attitude towards Africa. Moreover, the ironic tone and postmodern, metafictional elements of these novels perform Cartwright’s belief in value pluralism in interesting ways. The relationship between literature, art and national fictions is furthermore discussed, in conversation with Benedict Anderson’s ideas about nationalism. This thesis provides a close-reading of the works of this under-researched author and examines the complexity of his “estranged” position towards Englishness.