Department of English

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African traditional culture and modernity in Zakes Mda’s the heart of redness
(2005) Birama, Prosper Ndayi; Wittenberg, Hermann
In my thesis entitled ‘African Tradition and Modernity in Zakes Mda’s The Heart of Redness’, I analyze the way Western modernity and African traditions interact in Mda’s novel. I suggest that both modernity and tradition interact to produce a hybrid culture. This will become apparent in my analysis of the way Mda depicts the cattlekilling episode and the effects of Nongqawuse’s prophecy, and also in the novel’s contemporary characters. Mda shows the development of an African modernity through the semi-autobiographical figure of Camagu who is not slavishly indebted to Western ideas of progress, but is a hybrid of African values and a modern identity. In my thesis I will look at the way Mda also addresses the issue of the oppression of the Xhosa in colonial history, and the way he demonstrates that the divisions of the past deeply influence post-apartheid South Africa. In this regard, I will show how The Heart of Redness is a critique not only of colonial oppression, but also of the newer injustices plaguing the post-apartheid South African society. The focus of Mda’s critique in this regard is the proposed casino that stands as a model of environmentally destructive, unsustainable and capitalist development. Instead, Mda’s novel shows an alternative modernization of rural South African society, one which is based on community upliftment and environmentally friendly development. Through an exploration of the above aspects of the novel, my thesis shows that Mda’s writing exemplifies a hybrid African modernity, one that incorporates Western ideas as well as African values.
�Ag sjeim, siestog, sorry�: Tracing shame�s affect through performance in post-apartheid South Africa
(University of Western Cape, 2021) Wiese, Abigail; Taylor, Jane; Moolman, Jacobus
In this study I investigate what performance as a medium can contribute to our understanding of shame's affect. Given the difficulty of defining and concretising affect according to set parameters and outcomes, critical and dynamic debates about its nature continue. Most recently, New Affect theorists such as Brian Massumi have explored the role of the body in affective meaning-making. Our current social context requires a critical engagement with the forms of affect in order to achieve a deeper understanding of the intangible structures of power and oppression, as well as of desire, interest and pleasure. My aim is to determine the ways in which performance � as a medium through which to navigate an often difficult, evasive and deeply subjective experience � can facilitate a knowledge of how bodies experience, relate to and process shame.
�� The Agapanthi, Asphodels of the Negroes��: Life-writing, landscape and race in the South African diaries and poetry of George Seferis
(Taylor & Francis, 2012) Field, Roger
The Greek poet George Seferis (1900-1971) spent 10 months in South Africa during WWII as a senior diplomatic official attached to the Greek government in exile. Drawing on his diary entries, correspondence and poetry this article challenges earlier interpretations of his work best described as a �synchronic panoptic vision� (Bhabha). Beginning with an exploration of the troubled relationship between the �glory that was Greece� and the failure of its early 20thcentury nationalist, expansionist and modernization projects, the article argues that Seferis tried to overcome alienation from landscape and a crisis of creativity in two ways: he transcribed and commented on Cavafy�s poetry, but was unable to resolve his relationship with the latter; by reaching down into the ruins of ancient Greece and back into its mythological past, through a process of negative displacement he transforms these crises into a descent to the world of the dead. Unlike Odysseus, he receives no guidance from its inhabitants, for they speak only the language of flowers and there are none. Accompanying Seferis� dual purpose use of classical mythology as national heritage and ironic device is a more problematic aspect of modernism � the relegation of Africa and its sub- Saharan inhabitants to a primitive otherness that, he felt, limited his ability to express himself, and which generated some of his greatest poetry.
Alan Paton�s sublime: race, landscape and the transcendence of the liberal imagination
(University of KwaZulu Natal, 2005) Wittenberg, Hermann
This article develops a postcolonial reading of the sublime by suggesting that aesthetic theories of the sublime were, in their classical philosophical formulations by Edmund Burke and Immanuel Kant, founded on problematic assumptions of racial difference. In the colonial sphere, it is argued, the sublime could discursively manage and contain the contradictions inherent in the aesthetic appreciation and appropriation of contested landscapes. This is particularly evident in the Alan Paton's writing. This article looks at the origins and the influence of rhetoric of the sublime in Paton's work, particularly in his novel Cry, the Beloved Country, and argues that the sublime is a key discursive structure in the shaping of Paton's complex and ambivalent representation of South Africa's politicised and racialised landscape.
Alan Paton�s writing for the stage: towards a non-racial South African theatre
(Taylor & Francis (Routledge), 2007) Wittenberg, Hermann
Introduction: It would not be an exaggeration to assert that no South African playwright in the 1950s and 1960s received as much international attention and recognition as Alan Paton, until eclipsed by Athol Fugard�s emerging career. Paton�s own plays and musicals, and the stage adaptations of his novels, had some extensive and successful runs on Broadway in New York, and also played to packed houses in South Africa. Some highly acclaimed artists, ranging from the German avant-garde composer Kurt Weill to South Africa�s jazz musician Todd Matshikiza, helped to bring his work to the stage. Yet Paton�s theatrical work has received surprisingly scant attention from critics, which is all the more remarkable, given the author�s prominence as one of South Africa�s most well-known writers. Like his novels, Paton�s plays are not simply light human dramas or romantic comedies as much colonial theatre at the time, but serious works that were deeply concerned with the socio-political issues facing South Africa under apartheid. As Paton once put it, he was never interested in �writing a �jolly good fellow� sort of play.� Three of his major plays were written and performed in a crucial period of South African history: the Sharpeville massacre, the implementation of the Group Areas and other cornerstone apartheid acts, the treason trials, and the declaration of the republic.
Alex la Guma: a literary and political biography of the South African years
(University of the Western Cape, 2001) Field, Roger Michael; Bundy, Colin; Taylor, Jane; Dept. of English; Faculty of Arts
The South African years (1925-1966) of Alex la Guma is examined in this thesis. While La Guma's father was an important role model, most critics have overlooked his mother's contribution to his literary and political development. Throughout the thesis the same point is made about Blanche, La Guma's wife, who supported him in many ways. The researcher describes La Guma's infancy, childhood and adolescence, his father's political profile, how notions of race and writing, coloured identity and family and political experiences created the conditions that enabled him to become a story teller and political activist .
Alex La Guma’s short stories in relation to A Walk in the Night: A socio-political and literary analysis
(University of the Western Cape, 2005) Ntaganira, Vincent; Field, Roger; Dept. of English; Faculty of Arts
The minithesis provides a detailed socio-political and literary analysis of A Walk in the Night: Seven stories from the streets of Cape Town. It investigates and systematically compares each short story to the novella or compares the short stories with each other and shows their thematic and formal similarities and differences. The results of the study will provide a valuable contribution to the study of African literature. It will complete what other critics have left out. No one among La Guma’s scholars has analysed the anthology as a single entity; most critics have analysed the novella and have not analysed the accompanying short stories. As a result, the relationships between the novella and the short stories are unknown to many readers. I argue that this needs to be corrected. In order to situate the thesis, the study also presents a selected list of critics who have studied the novella and the short stories, and indicates their achievements and their shortcomings. The study will be carried out from a Marxist perspective, and will explore the use of realist and naturalist literary styles. Marxism will provide the socio-political and theoretical framework. Naturalism and realism are the two main literary genres that occur in the anthology.
All the Tokoloshes are dying
(Routledge, 2021) Pancham, Kershan ikram
The last line of defence, when even the most distant tokoloshe returned, Took up a place of arms or/of wisdom, to make the last stand of the world. Even the oldest ones returned, long away in their peace and nature after their years of service, even The Oldest Ones, returned.
Antigone’s return: when a once-told story is not enough
(African Journals Online (AJOL), 2022) Marika Flockemann
Encountering an old story in a reimagined way is sometimes deliberately more unsettling than pleasurably familiar in its new guise. A case in point is a recent revisioning of Sophocles’ Antigone, arguably the most frequently recalled story from the classical canon, which has seen several local it erations over time – most notably in The Island by Athol Fugard, John Kani and Winston Ntshon a (1973). The focus here is how the re-enactment of the Antigone story, Antigone (not quite/quiet) at the Baxter Theatre in Cape Town in 2019, produced as part of a project on Re-imagining Tragedy in the Global South, generates a multi-layered reading experience within the affect-laden and communal atmosphere of a live performance event. Reading here encompasses several dimensions: apart from reading the re-envisioned performative response in relation to its much-translated ‘original’ version, there is the experience of reading as an embodied, affective encounter in the context of the live performance event. In addition, this invites a process of reading around classic texts, which as I argue, can revitalise the intersections between current and apparently forgotten texts in one’s own reading history. In reflecting on Antigone (not quite/quiet) for instance, in relation to the contemporary need for ‘stark fictions’ of the past in developing an ethics of responsibility, I was struck by an unbidden recollection of Thomas Hardy’s preoccupation with tragedy in late nineteenth-century Victorian England. As I shall show, Hardy’s frequent rebuttals in response to often somewhat dismissive accusations of his over-determined pessimism reveal his fore sight in understanding the necessity of a tragic sensibility, which in hindsight now makes sense ‘differently’ and even anticipates some current debates on there velatory and critically urgent aspects of a tragic consciousness.
Around a Fire: Poems of Memory and Ritual
(University of the Western Cape, 2019) Mpuma, Nondwe; Moolman, Jacobus
This Creative Writing mini-thesis offers a deep meditation on what it means to speak to ritual and memory. The thesis is compiled from a collection of original creative work as well as a short reflective essay that present a critical analysis of the creative pieces in relation to the ideas I present. The first of these ideas being, memory as an encapsulation of the past, present and future as explored by writers such as W.G. Sebald and Toni Morrison. This collection examines an understanding of memory and ritual as being uncontained, as constant providers of stimulation for a range of literary responses. Ritual will be regarded primarily in the South African context where there is the intersection of the urban and rural landscapes both physically and metaphorically. In this regard I am thinking alongside writers such as Louise Glúck and Vangile Gantsho. The understanding of ritual is extended to the realm of spirituality where Christianity and African spirituality exist both harmoniously and in conflict. In short, the collection of poems and the reflective essay will explore the ways that memory and ritual interact in time and they will collectively contribute to the production of literature in South Africa.
Aspects of narration and voice in Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God
(The University of the Western Cape, 2017) Vass, Verity; Espin, Mark
Zora Neale Hurston is a significant figure in American fiction and is strongly associated with the Harlem Renaissance, the period noted for the emergence of literature by people of African-American descent. Hurston worked as a writer of fiction and of anthropological research and this mini-thesis will discuss aspects of her novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, first published in 1937. While the novel traces the psychological development of the central female character, Janie Mae Crawford and, thus, demonstrates several features of a conventional Bildungsroman, the novel also contains some intriguing innovations in respect of narration and voice. These innovations imply that the novel can be read in terms of the qualities commonly associated with the Modernist novel. This contention becomes significant when it is understood that a considerable degree of critical responses to the novel have discounted these connections. The novel is widely accepted to be a story about a woman’s journey to self-actualisation through the relationships she has with the men in her life. Much of the criticism related to the novel is based on this aspect of it, with many stating that Janie’s voice is often silenced by the third-person narrator at crucial moments in the text and that, as a consequence, she does not achieve complete self-actualisation by the end of the novel. This thesis will examine the significance of the shifts between first-person and thirdperson narration and the manifestations of other voices or means of articulation, which give the novel a multi-vocal quality. The importance of this innovation will also be considered, particularly when it is taken into account that Hurston sought to incorporate some elements associated with the oral tradition into her work as a writer of fiction.
Attending to the affective: exploring first year students� emotional experiences at university
(South African Journal of Higher Education, 2018) Bharuthram, Sharita
This study engaged students at the affective level in order to acquire a better understanding of their emotional experiences at university with the ultimate aim of improving teaching and learning. A qualitative research study was undertaken whereby students wrote about their feelings at that particular moment, on two different occasions in a semester. The data reveals that students used mostly negative descriptors to express their emotions some of which included feelings of self-doubt, alienation, loss of identity and not belonging to the university and their disciplinary community. The feelings expressed by students show that their emotions constitute the very core of their being and are therefore intertwined with the way they perceive their studies and themselves as students and as individuals. Hence, it is argued that emotional factors cannot be disentangled from teaching and learning and that spaces need to therefore be created in the curriculum for the inclusion of the affective domain.
Bab’aba - Ugly short stories
(University of the Western Cape, 2018) Nxadi, Julie Ruth Sikelwa; Moolman, Kobus
Bab’aba - Ugly Short Stories is a collection of vignettes whose function is to colour and collage three portraits of Black women characters; namely, a rural woman (Nozikhali), a township teenager (Zola), and a child/baby (Loli). Each of these stories serve as details in each other’s portraits whilst remaining stories on their own. My intention with this collection was to restore some form of abstract equality and right to mystery by functioning within a lexicon of opacity. In the scholarship of decoloniality this is my argument for the legitimacy of vernacular/customised definitions for problems that preoccupy communities/individuals rather than having to always pin ourselves to already existing theory in order to be legible. In the scholarship of opacity, this is a contribution to the argument against the necessity for legibility/transparency (in the first place) in exchange for dignity. I chose ugliness as my thematic district of departure because of its connoted potential to provide richer explorations into notions of marginality and an emancipatory praxis that cannot afford to have in its makeup the potential to seek to eliminate. And though such a liberatory ambition is hard to fantasize about against the backdrop of popular chauvinism in the contemporary landscape of - particularly - South Africa, and the visceral effects thereof and the swift justice needed to attend thereto, I do think that there is merit in hallucinating some sort of doctrine of humanity that ends in dignity for all.
BECOMING-MINORITARIAN Constructions of coloured identities in creative writing projects at the University of the Western Cape, South Africa
(Taylor & Francis, 2020) Moola, Fatima
The institutional history of the University of the Western Cape (UWC) in some ways mirrors the paradoxes, ambiguities, absurdities, contradictions and possibilities � in short, the complexities � of the concept �coloured�. The one feature that remains constant in coloured identity constructions is the conception of marginality, a marginality which primes it for consideration through the lens of theoretical articulations of minority discourses generally, and minority literature, in particular. If published writers of coloured identity are a minority in the South African literature landscape, the creative writing student is an interesting minority within that minority. Perhaps what is most unique about the UWC creative writing programmes is the way in which they have fostered a �becoming-minoritarian� in respect of language, through the multi-and trans-linguality encouraged by cross-faculty collaborations, bringing in disciplinary expertise from Afrikaans, English and Xhosa, the Nguni language most commonly spoken in the Western Cape
Between text and stage: the theatrical adaptations of J.M. Coetzee's Foe
(University of the Western Cape, 2016) Naidoo, Kareesha; Wittenberg, Hermann
This thesis will critically analyse two theatrical adaptations of J. M. Coetzee's Foe (1986). Primarily, this thesis will be seeking to understand the complex relationship of the primary text to its adaptations more closely, regarding them not only as second-order versions or interpretations of the novel, but also to consider the way they may retrospectively construct new readings and understandings of the source text. This thesis will not only consider the way in which Foe is used in the adaptations but also how Robinson Crusoe (1719) influenced the adaptors and adaptive process. Theories of adaptation will be discussed, drawing extensively on work by Linda Hutcheon (2006) and Robert Stam (2005). One of the key ideas in adaptation theory is that adaptive fidelity to the source text is neither possible nor desirable, but that adaptation is a more complex, multi-layered intertextual and intermedial interplay of fictional material. One of the aims of this thesis is to ask whether or not Foe can be successfully transposed to the stage. This thesis will serve as a close analysis of the two theatrical adaptations, focusing on the beginning and endings of the respective adaptations. This research will contribute a new approach to Coetzee studies and to Foe in particular by exploring how these texts can lead to a broader understanding of Coetzee's work and the way it crosses into different media.
Between text and stage: the theatrical adaptations of J.M. Coetzee�s Foe
(Taylor & Francis, 2017) Naidoo, Kareesha; Wittenberg, Hermann
Several of J.M. Coetzee�s novels have been adapted successfully for the stage, both as theatrical and operatic versions, but these adaptations have not received much critical attention. This article examines the ways in which Peter Glazer and Mark Wheatley have adapted Coetzee�s novel Foe (1986), resulting in two different and distinct stage productions, performed in the US and the UK respectively. In order to explore the complex relationship between the published text and the play versions, the article will ground itself in theories of adaptation, drawing extensively on work by Linda Hutcheon and Robert Stam and Alessandra Raengo. One of the key ideas in adaptation theory is that adaptive fidelity to the source text is neither possible nor desirable, but that adaptation is a more complex, multi-layered intertextual and intermedial interplay of fictional material. The article discusses the two play scripts and analyses the adaptive choices which underpin them and how these structure their meaning-making. Finally, the article also suggests that these scripts can be used to throw more light on Coetzee�s enigmatic novel.
Bildungsroman writing by women in Africa and in the African diaspora
(University of the Western Cape, 2023) Bivan, Amos Dauda; Sithole, Nkosinathi
The Bildungsroman has from inception traditionally been a male-dominated genre, but a number of significant women-authored novels written in the 20th century disrupt these established patterns. The thesis demonstrates how women authors of African descent are deconstructing, reappropriating, and reimagining the Bildungsroman genre to create space for black women protagonists in various geohistorical contexts. The thesis employs a critical framework that draws on concepts from Helen Tiffin's idea of counter-discourse narratives, as well as discourses on feminist criticism more generally. The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison, The Colour Purple by Alice Walker, Maru by Bessie Head, Nervous Conditions by Tsitsi Dangarembga, Beyond the Horizon by Amma Darko, and Purple Hibiscus by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie are among the novels by African and African-American women writers analyzed for this study using such frameworks. As opposed to the individualistic male protagonists of traditional Bildungsromane, the texts examined in this thesis are found to demonstrate a sense of sisterhood instead of male heroic self-actualization. Instead of the Bildungsroman's typical story arc, which involves the development of a European young male character into adulthood these novels exemplify collective female experience.
Blood, race and the construction of 'the coloured' in Sarah Gertrude Millin's God's Stepchildren
(University of the Western Cape, 2011) Coetzee, Mervyn A.; Kohler, Peter
In this paper I attempt to look critically at the literary construction of one particular 'race', namely the 'Coloureds', in Sarah Gertrude Millin's God's Stepchildren. To this end, the paper draws on the historical background of Millin, and investigates the way in which Millin has consciously and strategically formed, as it were, a 'unique' Coloured identity. Furthermore, the paper explores the proximity or tension between author and narrator in the novel. This tension, I suggest, emerges in response to various pressures in the novel which in turn are based upon the author's social, political and economic background. Evidence to this effect is derived from Millin's biography and other sources. What emerges from the paper is that the concepts 'race' and 'Coloured', as they are employed in this novel, are equally elusive. In attempting to piece together a 'race', the novel communicates Millin's aversion to miscegenation, and discloses characteristics of her 'self'. Ironically, I conclude, she falls prey to the same kinds of prejudices that she projects onto her literary subjects.
Blood, race and the construction of 'the Coloured' in Sarah Gertrude Millin's God's stepchildren
(University of the Western Cape, 2011) Coetzee, Mervyn A.; Kohler, Peter
In this paper I attempt to look critically at the literary construction of one particular 'race', namely the 'Coloureds'. In Sarah Gertrude Millin's God's Stepchildren. To this end, the paper draws on the hlstorlcal background of Millin, and investigates the way in which Millin has consciously and strateglcally forrned, as it were, a 'unique' Coloured Identity. Furthermore, the paper explores the proximity or tension between author and narrator in the novel. This tension, i suggest, emerges In response to various pressures In the novel which in tum are based upon the author's social, . political and economic background. Evidence to this effect is derived from Millin's biography and other sources. What emerges from the paper Is that the concepts 'race' and 'Coloured', as they are employed In this novel, are equally elusive. In attempting to piece together a 'race', the novel communicates Millin's aversion to miscegenation, and discloses characteristics of her 'self. Ironically, I conclude, she falls prey to the same kinds of prejudices that she projects onto her literary subjects
The body unbound: ritual scarification and autobiographical forms in Wole Soyinka�s Ak�: the years of childhood
(Sage Publications, 2012) Moolla, Fiona F.
The scarification in Ak� is invested with major significance apropos Soyinka�s ideas on African subjectivity. Scarification among the Yoruba is one of the rites of passage associated with personal development. Scarification literally and metaphorically �opens� the person up socially and cosmically. Personal formation and self-realization are enabled by the Yoruba social code brought into being by its mythology. The meaning of the scarification incident in Ak� is profoundly different. Determined by the form of autobiography which creates a self-constituting subject, the enabling Yoruba sociocultural context is elided. The story of Soyinka�s personal development is allegorical of the story of the development of the modern African subject. For Soyinka, the African subject is a rational subject whose constitution precludes the splitting of the scientific and spiritual which is a consequence of the Cartesian rupture. The African subject should be open to other subjects and the object world. Subjectivity constituted by the autobiographical mode closes off the opening up symbolically signalled by scarification.

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