Philosophiae Doctor - PhD (English)

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https://hdl.handle.net/10566/9290

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Browsing by Author "Moolla, Fiona"

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    The buried chameleon: A novel and critical reflective essay
    (University of the Western Cape, 2022) Fick, Cornelia Elizabeth; Moolla, Fiona
    The critical-reflective component of the novel The Buried Chameleon explores the background to the writing of the novel, how I conducted my research, the challenges of writing a historical and contemporary dual narrative, why I chose the romance genre and the application of the theory of romance as national allegory in a South African context to my work. The objective is to consider how slavery shaped love relations in early South Africa while indirectly continuing to influence the construction of contemporary identities. My novel positions itself in relation to a number of local and international intertexts about slavery. Local intertexts comprise five historical novels, namely, Islands (2000) by Dan Sleigh, Turning Wheels (1937) by Stuart Cloete, An Instant in the Wind (2008) by Andr� Brink, Unconfessed (2007) by Yvette Christians� and The Slave Book (1998) by Rayda Jacobs, all of which highlight romantic relationships in ways that read history through concerns contemporary with the writing of the novel.
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    Childhoods dis-ordered: Non-realist narrative modes in selected post-2000 West African war novels
    (University of the Western Cape, 2017) Addei, Cecilia; Moolla, Fiona
    This study explores how selected West African war novels employ non-realist narrative modes to portray disruptions in the child�s development into adulthood. The novels considered are Chris Abani�s Song for Night (2007), Ahmadou Kourouma�s Allah is Not Obliged (2006), Uzodinma Iweala�s Beasts of No Nation (2005) and Delia Jarrett-Macauley�s Moses, Citizen and Me (2005). These novels strain at the conventions of realism as a consequence of the attempt to represent the disruptions in child development as a result of the upheavals of war. A core proposition of the study is to present why the authors in question are obliged to employ non-realist modes in representing disrupted childhoods that reflect the social and cultural disorder attendant upon war. The dissertation also asks pertinent questions regarding the ideological effect of these narrative strategies and the effect of the particular stylistic idiosyncrasies of each of the authors in figuring childhood in postcolonial Africa. The novels in question employ surrealism, the absurd, the grotesque and magical realism, in presenting the first person narratives of children in war situations, or the reflections of adult narrators on children affected by war. This study further analyses the ways the aesthetic modes employed by these authors underscore, in particular, children�s experiences of war. Through strategic use of specific literary techniques, these authors highlight questions of vulnerability, powerlessness and violence on children, as a group that has been victimised and co-opted into violence. The study further considers how these narrative transformations in the representations of children in novels, capture transformations in ideas about childhood in postcolonial Africa.
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    Eros and politics: Love and its discontents in the fiction of Ng?g? wa Thiong�o
    (University of the Western Cape, 2020) Annin, Felicia; Moolla, Fiona
    In this study I focus on how Ng?g? wa Thiong�o�s fiction portrays his socio-political vision through the prevalence of the intimate relationships it displays. The study critically analyses the significant role romantic love and friendship play in the novels The River Between (1965), Weep Not, Child (1964), A Grain of Wheat (1967), Petals of Blood (1977), Devil on the Cross (1982), Matigari (1987) and Wizard of the Crow (2006) against the backdrop of Ng?g?�s other fiction, plays and non-fiction. Ng?g? identifies himself as a Marxist, anti-colonialist/imperialist, and anti-capitalist writer, for whom there is no contradiction between aesthetic and political missions. The aesthetic and political projects take form through the representation, very importantly, of romantic love in his fiction. The significance of eros, which is clear in the fiction, is not, however, present in Ng?g?�s theoretical reflections on his writing as formulated in his essays. In Ng?g?�s early novels, we see love attempting to break the boundaries of religion and class in the creation of a modern nation-state. But there are obstacles to these attempts at national unity through love, the only relationship apart from friendship that is self-made, and not determined by kinship relations. In the fiction from the middle of Ng?g?�s career, we see romantic love consummated in marriage. The achievement of unity is, however, undercut by betrayal, which is a repeated theme in all the novels. The �betrayal� of the ideal of romantic love by materialism is the most significant threat to love. Friendship emerges in one of the later novels as a kind of �excursus� to romantic love that foregrounds, by default, the ways in which Ng?g?�s political vision seeks be consolidated through the personal relationship of romantic love. In Ng?g?�s final novel, we see his personal and political visions coming together in a utopian erotic union for first time. Because of the nature of the exploration, which aims at opening up the wider significance of eros, the study is not framed by a dominant theory, most of which would lead to understanding eros through gender and power relations. Instead, the study has been framed through concepts and debates on romantic love that emerge in sociology, anthropology, philosophy and literary history.
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    Place, space and patriarchal femininities in selected contemporary novels by African women writers
    (University of the Western Cape, 2019) Steenkamp, Lize-Maree; Moolla, Fiona
    In much feminist literature, women�s spaces are analysed as constructive and supportive sites that may offer respite from patriarchy. However, women�s spaces are not inherently emancipatory. Through the socio-spatial dispersal of patriarchal power, places and spaces varying in scale � nations, cities, rural towns, private-public places and the home � can construct women who further the interests of men. Specifically, homosocial spaces, spaces where women interact with other women, can produce femininities that oppress other women by actively advancing patriarchal concerns. The selected primary texts consider spaces in regionally diverse but socially similar African contexts: Sefi Atta�s Swallow (2011) and Lola Shoneyin�s The Secret Lives of Baba Segi�s Wives (2010) are set in Nigeria, Miral al-Tahawy�s The Tent (1998) is set in Egypt, while Leila Aboulela�s Lyrics Alley (2010) is set in both Egypt and Sudan. I use the selected novels as cartographies for socio-geographical inquiry to establish how space and place construct patriarchal women. Literary spaces and places are studied from largest to smallest scale: The analysis of national spaces in the novels is followed by a study of urban and rural spaces, followed by private-public places, domestic place and, finally, at a micro-scale, the body-as-place. The analyses of these literary spaces will reveal the mechanisms by which patriarchal women are spatially produced, and may use space to oppress other women.
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    Zimbabwe/Rhodesia writing home: Space, place, mobility and diasporic identity in selected novels
    (University of Western Cape, 2021) Phepheng, Maruping; Moolla, Fiona
    This thesis examines how �unhomeliness� in a Zimbabwean context enjoins mobility and the diasporic particularities that manifest as subjects move back and forth in a homemaking journey between the country-side and the urban, as well as mobility to foreign countries and back to the homeland. Particularities of inclusion and exclusion, (re)emplacement, (re)identity, assimilation, rejection and (un)belonging, all loom large as mobility, paradoxically, takes root and comes to shape experience in as significant a way as being in a homeland or hostland. This thesis is also about the ways in which the �diasporic� settler, in one of the novels which destabilises the familiar paradigms of diasporic literature, can exist and be dominant in the foreign but colonised spatial setting without needing to assimilate, and how this attempt to territorialise can traumatise those marginalised by the settler community. Since the end of the twentieth century, there has been a rise in the significance of space in humanities and literary studies. Theories about diaspora, identity and belonging have featured strongly in works of scholars of space and place such as Henri Lefebvre, Yi-Fu Tuan, Doreen Massey, Edward Soja, Tim Cresswell, Nigel Thrift, Robin Cohen, John Agnew, and Kelly Baker. Space is largely regarded as a dimension within which matter is located.