The ghost of memory : literary representations of slavery in post-apartheid South Africa
dc.contributor.advisor | Steiner, Tina | en_ZA |
dc.contributor.advisor | Sanger, Nadia | en_ZA |
dc.contributor.author | Kasembeli, Serah Namulisa | en_ZA |
dc.contributor.other | Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. Dept. of English. | en_ZA |
dc.date.accessioned | 2018-01-18T18:03:14Z | |
dc.date.accessioned | 2018-04-09T06:52:24Z | |
dc.date.available | 2018-01-18T18:03:14Z | |
dc.date.available | 2018-04-09T06:52:24Z | |
dc.date.issued | 2018-03 | |
dc.description | Thesis (PhD)--Stellenbosch University, 2018. | en_ZA |
dc.description.abstract | ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This study examines how authors of slave/slave-owner ancestry have constructed slave memory in selected contemporary literary texts on slavery at the Cape. The texts I study include Rayda Jacobs’s The Slave Book (1998), Therese Benadé’s Kites of Good Fortune (2004), Yvette Christiansë’s Unconfessed (2006) and André Brink’s Philida (2012). All four novels are published in the post-apartheid moment, over a century after the practice of Cape slavery ended. In their examination, I explore the lasting social and psychic effects of traumatic and repressed slave histories in the ghostly presence of a slave past in the post-apartheid present by framing my literary analysis with the concepts of cultural haunting, collective memory and rememory. My conceptualisation of haunting is centred on the idea of slavery as a ghost that haunts the present moment. The study argues that the publication of stories regarding slave pasts at this point in time indicates a haunting that is embedded in oppressive slave histories and that contemporary writers are bringing to the surface through their works. As such, the concept of haunting is embedded in this study’s three main areas of interest: firstly, the revisiting of slave memory in the post-apartheid moment; secondly, the authors’ need to revisit their ancestors’ pasts because they are themselves of slave or slave-owner ancestry; and thirdly, that some of the legacies of slavery resonate with subjectivities in present day South Africa. The chapters therefore examine the representation embedded in the neo-slave narratives by asking two questions: How do they engage with the idea of representing ‘self’ in the sense that, in writing about these slaves, the authors are also writing about their own history and ancestors? And how do they represent the ‘other’ when they write about dead and silenced slaves? My first chapter focusses on Unconfessed to foreground the trauma of slavery by developing on concepts of silence and silencing, narrative structure and fragmentation and narrative as an appropriated court room. My discussion depicts an intergenerational trajectroy in traumatic slave pasts as elucidated in the violence on slave mothers, which rendered motherhood impossible in the practice that children born to slave women inherited their maternal slave status. The second chapter on Philida problematises representation in its reading of the legacy of centuries-old policing of intimacy, white privilege and authorship. In the third chapter, I investigate the narrative of black-on-black violence formulated in inventions of blackness and racial purity in The Slave Book. My fourth chapter introduces the concept of “first person autobiographical narrative voice” as a way to read the neo-slave narratives using the case of Kites of Good Fortune. The chapter shows that racial cultural identities remain a complex issue for descendants of manumitted slaves. In conclusion, I draw a connection between the representation of slavery in the novels and the post-apartheid present of their publication. I do this in order to suggest that slave histories have not been sufficiently engaged with in ways which function to minimise individual and collective trauma and as such they emerge as ‘ghosts that have refused to be laid to rest’. | en_ZA |
dc.description.abstract | AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: In hierdie tesis word die herskepping van slaweherinneringe in gekose kontemporêre letterkundige tekste ontleed. Die tekste wat ek bestudeer sluit Rayda Jacobs se The Slave Book (1998), Therese Benadé se Kites of Good Fortune (2004), Yvette Christiansë se Unconfessed (2006) en André Brink se Philida (2012) in. Al vier romans is gepubliseer in die post-apartheid tydsgewrig, meer as ‘n eeu nadat die praktyk van slawerny aan die Kaap beëindig is. Deur hierdie werke te ontleed, ondersoek ek die voortdurende sosiale en psigiese gevolge van traumatise en onderdrukte slawegeskiedenisse deur die raamwerk van kulturele byblywing, asook gemeenskaplike herinnerings sowel as herhalende herinnering. My konseptualisering van byblywing sentreer om die idee van slawerny as ‘n ‘spook’ wat kwellend inwerk op die hede. Daarvolgens word geargumenteer dat die publisering van verhale aangaande die slaweverlede in die huidige moment ‘n kwellende byblywing aandui wat ingebed is in slawegeskiedenisse van onderdrukking wat deur kontemporêre skrywers teruggebring word na die oppervlak. As sulks word die konsep van kwellende byblywing ingebed in hierdie studie se hoof-onderwerpe: eerstens, die herbesoek aan slaweherinnerings in die post-apartheid oomblik, tweedens, die skrywers se behoefte om hul eie voorouers se werklike slaweverlede te herbesoek en derdens die premis dat sommige van die slawerny-erfenisse aanklank vind by die belange van ‘n huidige Suid-Afrika. Die hoofstukke bestudeer dus die voorstellings van slawerny wat in die narratiewe ingebou is deur twee vrae te vra, Hoe skakel hierdie verhale met die verbeelding van die ‘self’ in díe sin dat, deur oor hierdie slawe te skryf, die outeurs ook oor hul eie voorouers en geskiedenisse skryf? En hoe beeld hulle “die ander” uit wanneer hulle oor gestorwe en stilgemaakte slawe skryf? My eerste hoofstuk fokus op Unconfessed en bring die sielkundige trauma van slawerny na die voorgrond deur die bespreking van die onmoontlikheid van slawe-moederskap as voortspruitend uit inter-geslagtelike slawerny, asook die feit dat kinders van slawe-moeders by wyse van hul geboorte slaafstatus geërf het. In die tweede hoofstuk problematiseer my analise van Philida die voorstelling van slawe deur aan te dui hoedat wit rasbevoordeling tot uiting kom by wyse van skrywerskap en die optekening van geskiedenis, terwyl in my derde hoofstuk ek die verhaal van swart-op-swart geweldpleging en rasse-identiteitskategorieë in The Slave Book analiseer. My vierde hoofstuk gebruik Kites of Good Fortune om aan te toon dat rasse-identiteitskategorieë ‘n komplekse saak bly insoverre dit die afstsammelinge van slawe betref. Ter afsluiting dui ek ‘n verband aan tussen die voorstelling van slawe en slawerny in die vier romans en die post-apartheid hede van hul publisering. Ek doen dit ten einde voor te stel dat daar huidiglik nog onvoldoende aandag aan slawegeskiedenisse gegee is, hoewel groter aandag hieraan tot vermindering van individuele en kollektiewe trauma kan lei; dus verskyn hierdie geskiedenisse as ‘spoke wat weier om tot rus te kom'. | af_ZA |
dc.format.extent | 217 pages | en_ZA |
dc.identifier.uri | http://hdl.handle.net/10019.1/103309 | |
dc.language.iso | en_ZA | en_ZA |
dc.publisher | Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University | en_ZA |
dc.rights.holder | Stellenbosch University | en_ZA |
dc.subject | Slavery in literature | en_ZA |
dc.subject | Memory in literature | en_ZA |
dc.subject | Literature and history -- South Africa | en_ZA |
dc.subject | Slave histories -- South Africa -- Criticism and interpretation | en_ZA |
dc.subject | Cape slave history in literature | en_ZA |
dc.subject | UCTD | en_ZA |
dc.title | The ghost of memory : literary representations of slavery in post-apartheid South Africa | en_ZA |
dc.type | Thesis | en_ZA |