Department of English

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Absence as narrational trope in the fictionalised transliteration of experience : a discussion of Dominique Botha's False River
(Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2014-12) Visser, Lisa Marie; Mbao, Wamuwi; Roux, Daniel; Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. Dept. of English.
ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Dominique Botha‟s False River, published simultaneously with the rewritten Afrikaans text Valsrivier in 2013, is a fictionalised memoir presented as a novel that is written into the tradition of the plaasroman. The text follows the lives of the Bothas of Rietpan in the Free State and spans the years between 1980 and 1997. In this thesis I discuss the novel focussing on questions surrounding narration and its affirmation or negation of agency, embodiment and subjectivity, the narrative construction of the Botha family‟s isolating liberalism in its present post-apartheid context, and the perception of the author and the novel by Afrikaans and English literary communities. I explore the text‟s relationship to genre, drawing on J.M. Coetzee‟s examination of the literary pastoral in White Writing: On the Culture of Letters in South Africa. It is through this theoretical lens that I argue that False River depicts a conflicted, inconsistent and perforated view of Afrikaner identity and its relationship to gender, notions of landed belonging, Afrikaans-English linguistic co-habitation, and black subjectivity, in an agrarian landscape that dominates through anthropopsychism and primogeniture.
The afterlife of the Victorian marriage plot in neo-Victorian fiction
(Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2019-04) Vorndran, Truchen; Ellis, Jeanne; Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. Dept. of English.
ENGLISH ABSTRACT: The neo-Victorian novel is known for exposing the hidden sex lives of what Steven Marcus in The Other Victorians: A Study of Sexuality and Pornography in Mid-Nineteenth-Century England (1964) and, following him, Michel Foucault in The History of Sexuality (1984) describe as the “Other Victorians”, those marginal and sexually transgressive figures who now populate its pages. However, this has led to the neo-Victorian novel being criticised for its reconstruction of nineteenth-century history into a sexually explicit narrative for the enjoyment of a contemporary audience, or what Marie-Luise Kohkle in “The Neo-Victorian Sexsation: Literary Excursions into the Nineteenth-Century Erotic” refers to as “sexsation” (345). Neo-Victorian novels critically engage with the Victorian past and its narratives by employing either an historical, or partly historical setting. A number of recent novels which are not historical in their setting similarly respond to or engage with a particular Victorian novel or Victorian morals and values either explicitly or implicitly in this highly self-conscious, revisionary fashion. Examples of such novels are Here on Earth (1997) by Alice Hoffman, On Chesil Beach (2007) by Ian McEwan and Re Jane (2015) by Patricia Park. In this thesis, I undertake to read these novels as representative of a separate category of neo-Victorian fiction by focussing on the “afterlife” of the Victorian marriage plot in them, a term I take from John Kucich and Dianne F. Sadoff’s Victorian Afterlife: Postmodern Culture Rewrites the Nineteenth Century.
Alternative afterlives : secular expeditions to the undiscovered country
(Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2012-03) Adriaanse, Jaco Hennig; Green, Louise; Slabbert, Mathilda; Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. Dept. of English.
ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This thesis investigates texts which are argued to construct secular imaginings of the afterlife. As such my argument is built around the way in which these texts engage with death, while simultaneously engaging with the religious concepts which have come to give shape to the afterlife in an increasingly secular West. The texts included are: Captain Stormfield’s Visit to Heaven (1907), Mark Twain’s unfinished reimagining of Christian salvation; Kneller’s Happy Campers (1998) by Etgar Keret, its filmic adaptation Wristcutters: A Love Story (2006), as well as the Norwegian film A Bothersome Man (2006), which all strip the afterlife of its traditional furnishings; Philip Pullman’s acclaimed His Dark Materials trilogy (1995, 1997, 2000) in which he wages a fictional war with the foundations of Western religious tradition; and finally William Gibson’s Neuromancer (1984) and Feersum Endjinn (1994) by Iain M. Banks, two science fiction texts which speculate on the afterlife of the future. These texts are so chosen and arranged to create a logical progression of secular projects, each subsequent afterlife reflecting a more extensive and substantial distantiation from religious tradition. Twain’s text utilises a secularising satire of heaven, and draws attention to the irrational notions which pervade this concept. In the process, however, it embarks on the utopian endeavour of reconstructing and improving the Christian afterlife of salvation. In Chapter 3, the narratives under investigation discard the surface details of religious afterlives, and reimagine the hereafter against a contemporary backdrop. I argue that they conform, in several significant ways, to the mode of magical realism. Furthermore, despite their disinclination for evident religiosity, these texts nevertheless find problematic encounters when they break this mode and invoke higher authorities to intervene in the unfolding narratives. Chapter 4 focuses on Philip Pullman’s high fantasy trilogy, which enacts open war between the secular and religious and uses the afterlife as an integral part of the secularising agenda. With the literal battle lines drawn, this text depicts a clear distinction between what is included as secular, or renounced as religious. Finally, I turn to science fiction, where the notion of the virtual afterlife of the future has come to be depicted, with its foundations in human technologies instead of divine agencies. They rely on the ideology of posthumanism in a reimagining of the afterlife which constitutes a new apocalyptic tradition, a virtual kingdom of heaven populated by the virtual dead. Ultimately, I identify three broad, delineating aspects of secularity which become evident in these narratives and the meaningful distinctions they draw between religious and secular ideologies. I find further significance in the way in which these texts engage with the very foundations on which fictions of the afterlife have been constructed. Throughout these texts, I then find a secular approach to death as a developing alternative to that which has traditionally been propagated by religion.
Alternative worlds in Spenser's The faerie queene
(Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2000-03) Van Zyl, Liezel; Goodman, Ralph; Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Arts & Social Sciences. Dept. of English.
ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Although The Faerie Queene was written in 1589 as a commentary on and criticism of issues which would concern many sixteenth-century Protestant subjects of Queen Elizabeth of England, Spenser creates in his text worlds which even a twentieth-century reader can find significant. Allegorical representations, mythical, historical and poetical figures and pastoral retreats, for example, not only reflect the harsh realities which sixteenth-century English society experienced, but also offer the possibility of escape to worlds of divine and charitable interaction. Spenser, drawing on Philip Sidney's An Apology for Poetry, constructs an ideal world where there is no strife, only peaceful interaction and stability, as opposed to the problems and fears of the "real" world of sixteenth-century England. The story of Faery Land is, therefore, about a magical world of wish fulfilment, but at the same time it also draws on the concrete reality of sixteenth-century England, which has relevance for a twentieth-century world still concerned with many of the same issues of crime, justice, religion, government, relationships and history. Discussion in this thesis focuses on the different "real" and ideal worlds and the devices used to represent these worlds in the narrative of The Faerie Queene. Chapter 1 deals with allegorical representation and distinguishes between two levels of representation: a "literal" or primary level of signification which reflects the everyday experiences of the sixteenth-century reader, and the allegorical level whereby these experiences and desires are personified. The allegory, in tum, communicates and reveals different doctrines or themes: this chapter shows how Redcrosse represents the struggle of the religious man who finally earns salvation by perseverance and dependence on the grace of God. In this allegorical world, Spenser shows the religious conflicts, doubts and victories of the sixteenth-century Protestant man. Chapter 2 explores a series of allegorical parallels in plot, theme and structure in Book 2 of The Faerie Queene which create the "real" and ideal worlds through which Guyon now runs his race. Here, the discussion focuses on the clues provided by the allegory which lead the reader to a redefinition of the categories of good and evil. The primary purpose of the allegory is, therefore, didactic and the sixteenth-century reader is taught how to interpret the signs and symbols of Spenser's allegorical, historical and mythical worlds. This chapter concludes with an examination of Spenser's mythical devices and an exploration of the historical significance of his fictional characters and plots - all of which help the reader to grasp the significance of Spenser's world of knights and fairies. Chapter 3 focuses on a discussion of Books 3 and 4, in which issues of love and friendship come to shape Spenser's ideal world. The analyses consider how sixteenth-century perceptions of marriage, love and power may have influenced his conceptionalization of such an ideal world. The chapter concludes with an exploration of sixteenth-century concerns with time and discord, and demonstrates how Spenser fmally resolves these issues in his vision of the Garden of Adonis. Chapter 4 deals with Book 5, where Artegall represents the just knight. Here the thesis examines Spenser's political aspirations, and shows how historical events are reflected in the actions of characters and how they may influence Spenser's vision of the ideal society with its just ruler. This discussion also focuses, among other things, on those factors which may have contributed to Spenser's disillusionment with sixteenth-century society. Chapter 5 concludes with Spenser's pastoral ideal of Book 6, which brings the promise of peace and prosperity, as opposed to a life of waste and thwarted ambition at Court. On Mount Acidale, Spenser's alternative worlds coincide, as Calidore, representing the fallen and "real" world of Faery Land, is allowed a glimpse of the poetic and divine worlds which the poet, Colin Clout, already shares with three Graces and his mistress. Chapter 5 examines the poet's autobiographical persona in the figure of Colin Clout and the relevance of his appearance on Mount Acidale in particular, and in the poem in general. It is the intention of this thesis to follow the route which Spenser has marked out, to read and interpret the signs and to finally share in this world of dream and thought, experience and vision.
An analysis of narratology in mainstream film through the application of gender equity critical assessment
(Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2019-04) Gagiano, Vicki; Oppelt, Riaan; Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. Dept. of English.
ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Gender inequity in the Hollywood film industry highlights the importance of continued feminist filmdiscourse development and analysis. Female representation in film is also assessed through popular media tests in cyberfeminism such as the Bechdel Test as a measurable method of revealing gender inequity. The power dynamics between male and female protagonists result in hierarchical power plays which affect the agency of a female character’s arc. The development of the Revised Mako Mori Test as an alternative popular media test shows the power distribution of the character arc of female characters in film. The analysis of three science fiction female characters namely Mako Mori (Pacific Rim 2013), Imperator Furiosa (Mad Max: Fury Road 2015), and Ellen Ripley (Aliens 1983), illustrated the impact of a strong narrative arc. The Revised Mako Mori Test indicated that, through the close proximity of a female character’s arc to the narrative arc of the film, her agency is advanced. A strong female protagonist acts as a driving force of a film’s narrative arc if her character arc is continuously developed with consideration of the film’s plot. The Revised Mako Mori Test shows the relevance of assessing the character arc of a female protagonist and how it impacts on female representation in film.
And other scientists : stories of women in science - creating an imaginative archive for marginalised women in science
(Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2021-03) Sleet, Francesca Bryony; Murray, Sally Ann; Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. Dept. of English.
ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Please refer to full text for abstract
Animals and nature : mapping storylines and metaphors in David Kramer’s narratives
(AOSIS Publishing, 2011-04) Slabbert, M.
This article discusses the representation of animals and nature in selected lyrics from the oeuvre of singer, songwriter and producer David Kramer and considers his engagement with historical and contemporary discourses about human-animal and human-nature interaction in relation to ecological awareness within a South African context. I trace the socio-political commentary voiced through his depiction of animals in the folksongs he wrote during apartheid, especially in lyrics from the album “Baboondogs” (Kramer, 1986). Kramer also employs intertextual references to traditional South African folksongs and tales in his music. Furthermore, the social and environmental significance of Kramer’s representations of nature in a selection of his postapartheid lyrics is investigated. I argue that the pedagogical value of Kramer’s cultural commentary can contribute significantly to the challenge of teaching animal studies and ecocriticism in South African context.
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.
The application and modification of human resource management in the critical analysis of Harry Potter
(Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2016-03) Cox, Alexia Georgina; Roux, Daniel; Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. Dept. of English.
ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This thesis revisits the much-discredited idea of a “common sense” way of reading a literary text. It proposes that a common sense reading – one that treats narrative fictions as reflections of the real world, and that focuses on the didactic message of the story – can provide particular kinds of insights about social life. Such insights are not readily available to the hermeneutics of suspicion that characterise literary and cultural studies in the academy today. The case study for this exercise is J.K. Rowling’s popular Harry Potter series, and the theoretical wager advanced in this thesis is that Human Resource Management (HRM) theory can act as a powerful, if unconventional, tool for exploring common sense assumptions about human behaviour in the context of neoliberal Western culture. In order to conduct this kind of theoretical experiment, it is necessary for a narrative to comply with three components: (1) a formal institution must be present; (2) the institution can be regarded as a learning organization, (3) there is a clearly articulated common objective against which to compare and analyse individual behaviour. By ensuring that these three components are present in the narrative, the language of HRM, its theory and general practices, can be retooled for a specialised form of literary analysis that provides insight into common sense assumptions that circulate in present-day society. This can be achieved by applying four HRM relatable topics: (1) organizational structure, (2) organizational culture, (3) identity and emotional intelligence and (4) leadership. This thesis demonstrates how organizational structure theory can be used to identify Hogwarts, the fictional school, as a bureaucratic institution. By positioning the fictional characters within this specific framework, it becomes possible to determine various culturally mediated dispositions by analysing the bureaucratic structure in light of the issues typical of such a structure in HRM theory. HRM theory, then, provides a language for thinking about the historical context and the impact of environmental forces on Hogwarts in a way that employs the fictional school as a didactic model that speaks to real-world situations. Simultaneously, the application of HRM theory allows us a unique way of thinking about narrative design and plot development in relation to institutional processes. In other words, HRM theory allows us to consider the possible connections between a fictional environment and the real world, while also providing us with an unusual approach to narratology: one that thinks about literary actors, functions, narrative development and so on in relation to the idea of an institution or organisation. HRM processes such as recruitment, career development, performance management etc. can find surprising applications in literary analysis, especially when benchmarked against scholarly findings about British national culture and its predominantly neoliberal economic base. In general, this thesis argues that it is not only possible to apply general HRM theory language, theory, and practice to an apposite narrative, but also that this theory can serve as a viable tool for surfacing and critiquing particular cultural assumptions embedded in a text. Such a critique can be called a “common sense” critique because it is not based on a hidden foundation such as class conflict, the operation of the unconscious or the concealed structure of the sign, but instead on empirically based, practical scholarly observations working in the service of institutional efficiency.
Appraising the counterpoint : bifocal readings of literary landscapes in the American Renaissance and post-apartheid South Africa
(Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2021-03) Theron, Cleo Beth; Jones, Megan; De Villiers, Dawid; Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. Dept. of English.
ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This study constitutes an experimental bifocal reading that was prompted by historical and literary parallels and convergences between the United States and South Africa. In particular, the study demonstrates several thematic similarities between literature produced during the “American Renaissance” in the mid-nineteenth century and post-apartheid South Africa. Bifocalism is based on conceptions of world literature as 1) a domain that brings into contact texts from different geographical contexts, and 2) a mode of reading comparatively. Bifocalism is employed in conjunction with Edward Said’s characterisation of contrapuntalism, a means to reappraiselong-standing interpretations or bring to the fore subtle or occluded features of one text through a reading of another placed alongside it. Each chapter is devoted to a textual pairing that is based on similarities between the socio-historical contexts of the American Renaissance and the post-apartheid period. Chapter One looks at Margaret Fuller’s Summer on the Lakes, in 1843(1844) and Julia Martin’s A Millimetre of Dust: VisitingAncestral Sites(2008),two female-authored travel narratives that engage with the effects of European expansion on the frontier and the resultant displacement of indigenous communities. Chapter Two focuses on inherited land among descendants of European settlers and the legacies of political and judicial injustices that helped to construct whites’ occupation of the land as a given while eliding the presence of those who inhabited the land before them. It analyses Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Gothic story, The House of the Seven Gables(1851),and Michiel Heyns’s translationof Marlene van Niekerk’s Afrikaans plaasroman, Agaat(2006). Chapter Three concerns myths of paradisiacal landscapes, how these are employed to legitimise claims of landownership and how mixed bloodlines complicate such claims in its reading of William Wells Brown’s Clotel; or, the President’s Daughter(1853) and Zoë Wicomb’s David’s Story(2000). Chapter Four analyses Frederick Douglass’ slave narrative My Bondage and My Freedom(1855) and Aziz Hassim’s historical novel Revenge of Kali(2009) to compare depictions of imported labour. The chapter juxtaposes Douglass’ view on slavery and Hassim’s depiction of indentured labour to compare their texts’ representations of national belonging for those who worked on plantations. The bifocal readings are anchored in the significant body of comparative work that has already been done on American and South African society and literature. Attention to these literary contexts reveals that they have in common concerted efforts to put in writing the circumstances of a purportedly new nation built on the principles of democracy. I argue that such attempts are frequently addressed in these two eras by means of the motifs of land and landscape (the latter being the aesthetic configuration of the former). I analyse how land, as a deeply contested phenomenon in both countries in the periods under consideration, is used by writers to depict national struggles pertaining to democracy, national newness, identity and belonging.
Bearing witness to trauma : representations of the Rwandan genocide
(Stellenbosch : University of Stellenbosch, 2010-03) Samuel, Karin; Samuelson, Meg; University of Stellenbosch. Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. Dept. of English.
ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This thesis will examine representations of the Rwandan genocide and its aftermath in selected literary and filmic narratives. It aims in particular to explore the different ways in which narrative devices are used to convey trauma to the reader or viewer, thus enabling them to bear witness to it. These include language, discourse, image, structure and perspectives, on the one hand, and the framing of the genocide on screen, on the other hand. The thesis argues that these narrative devices are used to provide partial insight into the trauma of the genocide and/or to produce empathy or distance between readers and viewers and the victims, perpetrators and survivors of the genocide. Particular attention is paid to the ways in which the selected novels and films advance the human dimension of the genocide. This will shift both victims and perpetrators out of the domain of statistics and evoke emotional engagement from readers and viewers. The thesis argues for the importance of narrative in bearing witness to trauma, particularly due to its unique ability to forge an emotional connection between reader or viewer and character. The primary texts analysed in the thesis are the novels Inyenzi: A Story of Love and Genocide by South African author Andrew Brown and Murambi, The Book of Bones by Senegalese author Boubacar Boris Diop, along with the films Shooting Dogs, directed by British Michael Caton- Jones, and Hotel Rwanda, directed by American Terry George. In addition to considering the use of narrative devices to produce empathy and engagement among readers and viewers, the thesis explores also the implications of the various outsider perspectives of the writers and film-makers, and the effect that this has on their narratives, not least given the role played by the world community in failing to avert the genocide .
Becoming the third generation: negotiating modern selves in Nigerian Bildungsromane of the 21st century
(Stellenbosch : University of Stellenbosch, 2009-12) Smit, Willem Jacobus; Samuelson, Meg; University of Stellenbosch. Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. Dept. of English.
ENGLISH ABTRACT: In recent years, original and exciting developments have been taking place in Nigerian literature. This new body of literature, collectively referred to as the ―third generation‖, has lately received international acclaim. In this emergent literature, the negotiation of a new, contemporary identity has become a central focus. At the same time, recent Nigerian literary texts are articulating responses to various developments in the Nigerian nation: Nigeria‘s current political and socio-economic situation, diverse forms of cultural hybridisation, as well as an increasing trans-national consciousness, to mention only a few. Three 21st-century novels – Chimamanda Nogzi Adichie‘s Purple Hibiscus (2004), Sefi Atta‘s Everything Good Will Come (2004) and Chris Abani‘s GraceLand (2005) – reveal how new avenues of identity-negotiation and formation are being explored in various contemporary Nigerian situations. This study tracks the ways in which the Bildungsroman, the novel of self-development, serves as a vehicle through which this new identity is articulated. Concurrently, this study also grapples with the ways in which the articulation and negotiation of this new identity reshapes the conventions of the classical Bildungsroman genre, thereby establishing a unique and contemporary Nigerian Bildungsroman for the 21st century. The identity that is being negotiated by the third generation is multi-layered and inclusive, as opposed to the exclusive and unitary identities which are observable in Nigerian novels of the previous two generations. Such inclusivity, as well as the hybrid environments in which this identity is being negotiated, results in a form of ―identity layering‖. Thus, the individual comes into being at the point of intersection, overlap and collision of various modes of self-making. Such ―layering‖ allows the individual, albeit not without challenge, to perform a self-styled identity, which does not necessarily conform to the dictates of society. At the same time, the identity is negotiated by means of an engagement, in the form of intertextual dialoguing, with Nigeria‘s preceding literary generations. The most prominent arenas in which this new identity is negotiated include silenced domestic spaces, religo-cultural traditions, constructs of gender and nation, as well as in multicultural and hybrid communities. The investigation conducted in this thesis will, consequently, also focus on such areas of Nigerian life, as they are portrayed in the focal texts. Various theories of literary analysis (some of which specifically focus on Nigeria), Bildungsroman theory, theories of allegory, (imaginative) nation formation, feminism, gender and performativity, as well as theories of cultural identity and cultural exchanges, will form the critical and theoretical framework within which this investigation will be executed. Chapter One explores how Purple Hibiscus‘s protagonist, Kambili Achike, negotiates her gender identity and voice in order to constitute herself as an independent, self-authoring individual. Chapter Two, which focuses on Everything Good Will Come, investigates the dialectic relationship between Enitan Taiwo‘s national and personal identity, which inevitably leads to her quest to reconceive her gender identity, since national identity, as she finds out, is always an engendered construct. In its analysis of GraceLand, Chapter Three turns to the difficulties that Elvis Oke faces when he attempts to negotiate an alternative masculine identity within a rigid patriarchal system and between the cracks of a fraudulent African modernity.
Between wilderness and number : on literature, colonialism and the will to power
(Stellenbosch : University of Stellenbosch, 2006-10-11) Hugo, Pieter Hendrik; Jamal, Dr.; Klopper, D.; University of Stellenbosch. Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. Dept. of English.
The eras of colonial expansion and the era designated the modern have been both chronologically and philosophically linked from the commencement of the Renaissance period and Enlightenment thought in the 15th century. The discovery of the New World in 1492 gave impetus to a new type of literature, the colonial novel. Throughout the development of this genre, in both its narrative strategies and the depiction of the colonist’s relationship with the foreign land he now inhabits, it has been both informed and formed by the prevailing philosophical atmosphere of the time. In the context of this discussion it is particularly interesting to note what might be termed the level of regression of the modern ideal, and how it is reflected in the colonial novels written at the time. Commencing with the essentially optimistic Robinson Crusoe and The Coral Island, and progressing through the far darker imaginings of Heart of Darkness, Lord of the Flies, and eventually Apocalypse Now and Blood Meridian, it is possible to trace the effects of the declining power of Enlightenment thought. Whereas earlier texts deal quite unambiguously with the issue of the Western subject’s subjugation of both the foreign environment and the foreign subjects he encounters there, and the relation between subject and object remains quite uncomplicated, in later, more self-reflexive texts the modern subject’s relationship with both the alien land and alien people becomes far more problematic. Later texts such as Heart of Darkness and Lord of the Flies depict a world where the self-assurance of early texts is strikingly absent. Increasingly, as the initial self-confidence of modernism is eroded, secular moral values, too, come to be questioned. It is here that the works of Nietzsche come to play a prominent role in the analysis of how such a decline in modern confidence is reflected in later colonial works. Even later works such as Apocalypse Now and Blood Meridian provide a view of the colonial enterprise that is in striking contrast to the optimism of early texts. The chronological progression of texts dealt with here, spanning an era of almost three hundred years prove to be reflective, to a large degree, of the decline of modernity and the effects of this on the colonial enterprise as depicted in the colonial genre.
Biafra as third space : reading the politics of belonging in Nigeria-Biafra civil war literature
(Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2019-12) David, Stephen Temitope; Viljoen, Shaun; Mbao, Wamuwi; Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. Dept. of English.
ENGLISH ABSTRACT: The image of Biafra as a space of belonging has assumed currency in contemporary secessionist discourse. Wartime Biafran society is framed as a utopia where everyone belonged and felt safe. Consequently, this framing has birthed a robust following among Igbo youths who desperately seek an alternative to the ‘unfriendly’ Nigerian space. This deployment of memory/remembrance stirs up a need to question how people belonged within Biafra as well as the dimensions of violence that being ‘an outsider within’ might have created during the war. Thus, this thesis examines the representation of un/belonging in Biafra in selected literary texts to map the violence and layers of exclusion which the politics of belonging generates. This is to map and listen to those marginal voices that often ‘fall through the cracks’ in the war’s historicity. I employ Nira Yuval-Davis’s situated intersectionality as my methodological anchor in teasing out the unique experiences of vulnerable ‘Biafrans’ who were differently located within the wartime society as ‘outsiders within’ due to their ethnicity, gender, age, ability/disability, sexuality and class. I pay attention to the ways in which the interaction of these axes of identity creates characters whose fraught narratives of unbelonging spill outside the binary narrative frame of Nigeria-Biafra which is mostly deployed in writing and reading popular histories of the conflict. My reading is further moored to Nira-Yuval Davis’ conception of the politics of belonging and Homi Bhabha’s idea of third space. I position literary texts as my canvas in engaging with Biafra and Biafranness due to the poignant way fictional narratives represent private suffering. I read nine fictional narratives and two memoirs to curate a conversation between literature and history as ‘cotexts.’ Memoirs are selected across victims/hegemons divide to question the politics of memory and remembrance. I have selected texts written by erstwhile Biafrans due to the intimate manner in which they narrate the Biafran experience, and to facilitate my aim of listening to Biafran voices and stories. My aim is to get a more nuanced reading of the ‘Biafran’ experience by bringing the victims into conversation with the power brokers in wartime Biafra. The study finds that the unavowed narratives of Biafra that are trapped within the binary approach are revelatory of the excess which plagues most hegemonic accounts of the war. Within these stories from in-between, which I have framed as third space stories, the idea of Biafra as a homely space is unsettled to reveal the multiple forms of violence deployed against characters caught at the margins of belligerent positions in order to police belonging, ensure dogmatic solidarity, and to smelt a linear Biafran identity. These stories that emerge from the interstices of the Nigeria-Biafra dichotomy indicate that adopting an intersectional frame in thinking about the civil war produces a much more nuanced encounter with Biafra. More importantly, the voices that come to light within this mode of reading speak of excess and absences in a way that calls attention to an unfinished business of mourning and healing. They speak of a lack of return in the post-war moment, and of a continuity of trauma which is tied to a ruptured sense of belonging. These voices, and the stories they tell, also reveal that by creating spaces for narrative engagements where speaking and listening can thrive, unencumbered by hagiographical histories, a measure of belonging could blossom.
Biography of a vanished community : South End, Port Elizabeth
(Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2017-03) Hendricks, Shaheed; Viljoen, S.; Grundlingh, A.; Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. Dept. of English.
ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This study attempts to construct a biography of the community of South End, Port Elizabeth, in space and time. This project arises from a need to understand the birth, growth, zenith, decline and demise of this community. The need also exists to capture aspects of the heritage, history, experiences and perceptions of South End. A biographical approach will be used rather than a historical one because aspects of the lives of individuals are reconstructed as part of the life of a place. Furthermore, the study will deal with lives collectively of former residents of South End in its different facets, namely emotional, experiential, political, social and others. The community will thus be viewed as a complex and multi-faceted being. The intention here is to gather as much relevant information as possible on the historical, social, geographical and cultural context of the life of the community. This study will also explore what constitutes biographical writing and in what respect this biography differs from the traditional understanding of the term biography. A number of aspects namely history, the subjects and the subjects in relation to the community are explored in reconstructing this community. History forms an important aspect of this study, therefore it deals with issues such as what constitutes history and how it is written; a brief overview of the history of Port Elizabeth and the emergence of South End as a community and key legislation that affected the community. In addition to this the focus will also be on geographical space and specifically on the relationship between space and identity and space and community. The emphasis will be on the question of identifying how the individual identity is constituted in relation to community and how the individual assumes complex subject positions. Lastly, this study will focus on the discoveries I have made in the course of the research, it will reflect on the difficulties encountered in this project and the significance of the study and what the study has yielded.
Bodies and borders : space and subjectivity in three South African texts
(Stellenbosch : University of Stellenbosch, 2009) Mulder, F. Adele; Klopper, D. C.; University of Stellenbosch. Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. Dept. of English.
ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This thesis interrogates the relationship between body, subjectivity and space in three antipastoral novels. The texts which I will be discussing, Karel Schoeman’s This Life, Anne Landsman’s The Devil’s Chimney and J.M. Coetzee’s In the Heart of the Country, all foreground the female protagonist’s relationship to a specifically South African landscape in a colonial time-frame. The inter-relatedness between the body, subjectivity and space is explored in order to show that there is a shifting interaction between these registers in the novels. Arising from this interaction, the importance of perspective as a way of being in the world is foregrounded. The approach adopted in this study is based on the assumption that our experience depends upon how we make meaning of the world through our bodies as we encounter people, places and objects. The lived, embodied experience is always a subjective experience. The conceptual framework is derived broadly from psychoanalysis and phenomenology. My primary concern in this study is how marginal subject positions are explored in the space of the South African farm, which, traditionally, is an ideologically fraught locus of Afrikaner patriarchy and oppression. The novels are narrated by distinctive female voices, each speaking differently, but all having the effect of undermining and exposing the hegemony of the patriarchal farm space. In all three novels the question of genre is involved as forming the space of the text itself. The novels speak to the tradition of the plaasroman and the pastoral and, in doing so, open up a conversation with the past.
The body has a mind of its own
(Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2017-03) Van Wyk, Juanita-Juliet; Roux, Daniel; Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. Dept. of English.
ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This dissertation explores the mind versus body dialectic of the Enlightenment period. My thesis draws attention to the tensions within Enlightenment ideology and the manner in which materialist philosophy surfaces as a consequence of an historical period at odds with itself in a variety of ways. It engages the fictional work of three eighteenth century writers: Jean-Jacques Casanova, Denis Diderot and Tobias E. Smollett. These writers show how the presence of the body is made manifest in a cultural context which favoured the intellect over the sensual drives. My discussion ventures to show that for these writers, the mind and body possess similar intellectual capacity. The body possesses an intelligence of its own and is capable of expressing that intelligence in a way that accentuates its innate knowledge and experience. In this way, these writers represent an Enlightenment trend that undercuts the distinction between the rational will and a subjacent, unruly body.
Born with the caul : a fictocritical revisiting of race-d and queer(ed) his/stories
(Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2019-03) Croeser, Chantelle Claire; Sanger, Nadia; Murray, Sally-Ann; Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. Dept. of English.
ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Using fictocriticism, a mode that b(l)ends creative and critical writing, in this thesis I am led on a winding journey in which I explore elusive, intersectional accounts of various kinds of queer and Queer belonging. These are stories from the margins, and they coax me to engage the unsettled relations of my own white, Queer, Afrikaner identities. In so doing I come face-to-face with personal and cultural ghosts, who emerge from disparate clusters of history, story, interview, verse, folk tale, song lyrics, and scholarship. Divided (and yet assembled) into various entries, the thesis begins by contending with the haunting loss of much of my original interview archive with Queer womxn, conducted for a previous project, material I had intended to consider again, more critically, in respect of my own conflicted autoethnographic role in the interview process. For the present study, my point of departure in addressing this now missing archive takes a specific focus on an Afrikaans folk tale known as “The Curse of Boontjieskraal” and “The Curse of the De Wets”. I inventively (re)write and (re)read this material and the speculated aftermath of the curse as a queer story, and thinking around about (B)orderlands, queerness, hospitality, Afrikaner identity, and my growing awareness of the necessarily incomplete archive, I consider what this story can tell us about the politics of inclusion and exclusion, presence and absence. Here, I also write toward expanding the term ‘queer’ beyond the umbrella term for the LGBTQIAP+ community and therefore use ‘Queer’ to signify the LGBTQIAP+ community and ‘queer’ to signify the expanded term. The second path I follow traces the spiritual powers of being gebore met die helm, meaning 'born with a caul'. Using Achmat Dangor’s short story ‘Waiting for Leila’ (2001) and Chris Barnard’s film Paljas (1998), I delve into the queer abilities of caul bearers as receptive to haunting and boundary-blurring. Seeking the experience of haunting as a means of meeting my ghosts, I use folklore as a means to consider what it might look like to retrieve the insight of my helm via the narrative power of queer Afrikaner stories. The final path is one I take with Antjie Somers, a Queer, stigmatised, witch-like figure well-known among Afrikaans people. By bringing permutations of their story into conversation with writing about outcasts like witches and Queer people, I consider the parallels that might be drawn between the experiences and knowledge of such ostracised, unconventional figures. I also consider how Antjie’s story and the story of other queer figures might be able to guide us in the present toward a powerfully recuperative language of storytelling.
Borrowing identities : a study of identity and ambivalence in four canonical English texts and the literary responses each invokes
(Stellenbosch : University of Stellenbosch, 2008-03) Steenkamp, Elzette; Roux, Daniel; University of Stellenbosch. Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. Dept. of English.
The notion that the post-colonial text stands in direct opposition to the canonical European text, and thus acts as a kind of counter-discourse, is generally accepted within post-colonial theory. In fact, this concept is so fashionable that Salman Rushdie’s assertion that ‘the Empire writes back to the Centre’ has been adopted as a maxim within the field of post-colonial studies, simultaneously a mission statement and a summative description of the entire field. In its role as a ‘response’ to a dominant European literary tradition, the post-colonial text is often regarded as resorting to a strategy of subversion through inversion, in essence, telling the ‘other side of the story’. The post-colonial text, then, seeks to address the ways in which the western literary tradition has marginalised, misrepresented and silenced its others by providing a platform for these dissenting voices. While such a view rightly points to the post-colonial text’s concern with alterity and oppression, it also points to the agonistic nature of the genre. That is, within post-colonial theory, the literature of Empire does not emerge as autonomous and self-determining, but is restricted to the role of counter-discourse, forever placed in direct opposition (or in response) to a unified dominant social order. Post-colonial theory’s continued classification of the literature of Empire as a reaction to a normative, dominant discourse against which all others must be weighed and found wanting serves to strengthen the binary order which polarises centre and periphery. This study is concerned with ‘rewritten’ post-colonial texts, such as J.M. Coetzee’s Foe, Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea, Marina Warner’s Indigo, or, Mapping the Waters and Aimé Césaire’s A Tempest, and suggests that these revised texts exceed such narrow definition. Although often characterised by a concern with ‘political’ issues, the revised text surpasses the romantic notion of ‘speaking back’ by pointing to a more complex entanglement between post-colonial and canonical, self and other. These texts signal the collapse of binary order and the emergence of a new literary landscape in which there can be no dialogue between the clearly demarcated sites of Empire and Centre, but rather a global conversation that exceeds geographical location. It would seem as if the dependent texts in question resist offering mere pluralistic subversions of the logic of their pretexts. The desire to challenge the assumptions of a Eurocentric literary tradition is overshadowed by a distinct sense of disquiet or unease with the matrix text. This sense of unease is read as a response to an exaggerated iterability within the original text, which in turn stems from the matrix text’s inability to negotiate its own aporia. The aim of this study, then, is not to uncover the ways in which the post-colonial rewrite challenges the assumptions of its literary pretext, but rather to establish how certain elements of instability and subversion already present within the colonial pretext allows for such a return.
Boundaries in cyberpunk fiction : William Gibson's Neuromancer trilogy, Bruce Sterling's Schismatrix, and Neal Stephenson's Snow crash
(Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2000-03) Toerien, Michelle; Goodman, Ralph; Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Arts & Social Sciences . Dept. of English.
ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Cyberpunk literature explores the effects that developments in technology will have on the lives of individuals in the future. Technology is seen as having the potential to be of benefit to society, but it is also seen as a dangerous tool that can be used to severely limit humanity's freedom. Most of the characters in the texts I examine wish to perpetuate the boundaries that contain them in a desperate search for stability. Only a few individuals manage to move beyond the boundaries created by multinational corporations that use technology, drugs or religion for their own benefit. This thesis will provide a definition of cyberpunk and explore its development from science fiction and postmodern writing. The influence of postmodern thinking on cyberpunk literature can be seen in its move from stability to fluidity, and in its insistence on the impossibility of creating fixed boundaries. Cyberpunk does not see the future of humanity as stable, and argues that it will be necessary for humanity to move beyond the boundaries that contain it. The novels I discuss present different views concerning the nature of humanity's merging with technology. One view is that humanity is moving towards a posthuman future, while some argue that humanity is not discarded, but that these characters have merely evolved to the next step in the natural development of humankind. Both these views deal with constant change, a notion advocated by both postmodernism and cyberpunk.

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