Philosophiae Doctor - PhD (English)

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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.
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.
�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.
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.
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.
The jewelled net: Towards a Southern African theory/ practice of environmental literacy
(University of the Western Cape, 1999) Martin, Julia
This thesis suggests that there is an urgent need for academic work in literary and cultural studies to become more responsive to the contemporary eco-social crisis of environment and development. Questioning the sustainability of current practices, I introduce an approach which has emerged in the attempt to reorient my own work in English Studies towards what I call environmental literacy. My discussion consists of a prologue, six chapters, and an epilogue. The prologue is a story essay which presents through metaphor and narrative some of the questions which later chapters explore in more familiarly academic register. Chapters One and Two assemble the theoretical tools which have shaped my priorities. The first situates the project in terms of issues in South African eco-politics, and goes on to introduce potentially useful models in eco-criticism , environmental history, ecological philosophy and feminist theory. The second chapter argues that elements in Mahayana Buddhism (specifically teachings on emptiness and dependent arising and their relation to compassion) offer suggestive models for further radicalizing our theory I practice. The following degree chapters experiment with writing environmentally literate responses to several texts (one historical and the rest contemporary). Chapter Three is an appreciative reading of the representation of the Garden in William Blake's poem The Book of Thel (1789), Chapter Four brings personal narrative into an analysis of Gary Snyder's epic poem Mountains and Rivers Without End (1996), and Chapter Five is a critical survey of eco-cultural texts produced in South Africa during the period 1986- 1996. In Chapter Si.." I report on some of the pedagogical implications of thee orientation 1 have described , drawing on thee experience of teaching at the University of the Western Cape. The epilogue is brief and imagistic. The written text of the thesis is accompanied by pictures of people, plants and places.
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.
The post-genocidal condition: Ghosts of genocide, genocidal violence, and representation
(University of the Western Cape, 2018) Van Der Rede, Lauren; Van Bever Donker, Maurits; Pillay, Suren
As a literary intervention, The Post-Genocidal Condition: Ghosts of Genocide, Genocidal Violence, and Representation is situated at the intersection of genocide studies, psychoanalysis, and literature so as to enable a critical engagement with the question of genocide and an attempt to think beyond its formulation as phenomenon. As the dominant framework for thinking genocide within international jurisprudence, and operating as the guiding terrain for interventions by scholars such as Mamood Mamdani, Linda Melvern, and William Schabas, the presumption that genocide may be reduced to a marked beginning and end, etched out by the limits of its bloodiness, is, I argue, incomplete and thus a misdiagnosis of the problem, to various effects. Moreover, I contend that it is this misdiagnosis that has led to what I name as the post-genocidal condition: a deferred return to the latent violences of genocide; enabled often through various mechanisms of transitional justice. This intervention is not a denial that under the rubric of the crime of genocide, as an attempt to destroy in whole or in part what Raphael Lemkin referred to as an �enemy group�, millions of people have died. Rather what I posit is that the physical violence of genocide is a false limit � that the bloodiness of genocide has been mistaken for the thing-in-itself. Thus this intervention is an attempt to offer another way of thinking the question of genocide by reading it as concept, enabling a consideration of its more latent violences, its ghosts. As such, I argue that genocide is first an attack on the minds of the persons who form the targeted people or group, through the destruction of cultural apparatuses, such as books, works of art, and the language of a people, to name but a few; and is lastly an attempt to physically exterminate a people. Thus this intervention invites a return to Lemkin�s formulation of the term in Axis Rule in Occupied Europe: Laws of Occupation, Analysis of Government, Proposals for Redress (1944); that the word genocide is meant to �signify�, and as such offers a reading of the question of genocide as signifier, understood, I suggest, in the Lacanian sense. Thus, I posit that genocide, as signifier, operates on both the levels of metaphor and metonym, and as such both condenses and displaces its violence(s). The metaphor for genocide as signifier is, furthermore, rather than the signifying chain as Lacan would have it, the network. As such genocide is marked as text, rather than work; its perpetrators not authors, as Lemkin and various pieces of legislation have described them, but writers; and those who engage with the question of genocide, to whatever degree, as readers rather than critics. Consequently, this intervention stages the question of the reach of impunity and complicity, beyond the limit of judicial guilt and innocence. Metonymically, the relational displacement at work within the network of genocide allows for a reading of the various constitutive examples of the violence(s) that, in combinations and as collective, produce a new signification, other than that of the definitional referent.
Cinematic and photographic aesthetics in the novels of J.M. Coetzee
(The University of the Western Cape, 2017) Gilburt, Iona; Wittenberg, Hermann
This thesis will examine the extensive cinematic and photographic visuality inscribed in the fictions of J. M. Coetzee. Coetzee's prose is inflected by a complex intermediality that references media aesthetics, practices, and genres, as well as creating linkages to specific film texts. This study will examine a range of Coetzee's writings but will pay particular attention to his second novel In the Heart of the Country (1977), which will be used as a lens to explore the visuality of Coetzee's earlier and later fictions. In the Heart of the Country, it will be shown, employs innovative film techniques that reflect the influence of 1960s avant-garde cinema, with strong ties to two films in particular: Andrzej Munk's Pasaerka (1963), and Jean-Luc Godard's Alphaville (1965). A comparative analysis of the novel with Coetzee's unrealised screenplay adaptation will be used to show that these cinematic influences extend to narrative experimentation and theoretical engagements with time. This will be followed by an intensive exploration of the cinematographic aesthetic in Life & Times of Michael K (1983). Coetzee's two Karoo novels, it will be shown, employ film effects to a degree that sets them apart from his other fictions, rendering these texts as cinematographic counterparts. The study of photography will then examine how Coetzee's theoretical understanding of the image enables him to utilise and extend the narrative power of the photographic medium in three ways: by inscribing important narratives within individual images, by employing the photograph as a method of characterisation, and by simulating the photographic processes of capture and development during key narrative events. Although this exploration of photography will reference several of Coetzee's fictions, analysis will focus predominantly on Dusklands (1974), In the Heart of the Country, and Slow Man (2005).
What lies beneath tutors' feedback? Examining the role of feedback in developing 'knowers' in English studies
(The University of the Western Cape, 2017) van Heerden, Martina; Clarence, Sherran; Bharuthram, Sharita
Feedback plays an important role in student learning and development in higher education. However, for various reasons, it is often not as effective as it should be. Many studies have attempted to �solve� the feedback situation by finding new ways to give feedback, or by exploring the various perceptions around feedback to see where the problem lies. In many of these studies, however, the purpose of feedback within disciplines are taken for granted or not actively made visible. This study therefore explores how (or whether) the practice of feedback aligns with the often hidden, taken for granted purpose of feedback in a discipline. The study focused specifically on English Studies, an undergraduate first year literature course at the University of the Western Cape. As the nature of the discipline is often invisible, even to those who are familiar with the course, the study drew on Legitimation Code Theory, and specifically the dimensions of Specialisation and Semantics, to make the invisible purpose of the discipline more visible. In so doing, it sought to enable a clearer understanding of what the purpose of feedback should be; namely, consistent with the underlying purpose of the discipline. English Studies was classified as a rhizomatic knower code, which means that what is valued in the discipline is not possessing knowledge as a study-able concept, but rather possessing the required aptitudes, attitudes, and dispositions. Feedback plays an important role in developing these knower attributes. The study took a qualitative case study approach to obtain a full, detailed account of tutors� feedback-giving practices. Data was collected from a small group of participant tutors, via questionnaires, focus group meetings, individualised interviews, and written feedback on sample essays provided by the tutors. 962 comments, spread over 65 essays, were analysed. The study found that, in terms of Specialisation, there was a misalignment between the purpose and the practice of feedback: feedback did not predominantly and/or progressively focus more on making the knower code more visible. Instead, the feedback was largely focused on a relativist code and a knowledge code. This indicates that students may be being misled about what is valued in the discipline. Additionally, in terms of Semantics, it was found that the feedback, given on single-draft submissions, would be more useful in a drafting cycle and that learning from the feedback was made difficult by the context-dependent comments that were either too complex to be enacted, or would be more appropriate in a drafting cycle. Ultimately, it was found that if there is not a careful consideration of what feedback should focus on, students may be misled about what is valued in the discipline. This could have effects beyond merely passing or failing the course.
Haunting temporalities: Creolisation and black women's subjectivities in the diasporic science fiction of Nalo Hopkinson
(University of the Western Cape, 2016) Volschenk, Jacolien; Birch, Alannah; Flockemann, Marika
This study examines temporal entanglement in three novels by Jamaican-born author Nalo Hopkinson. The novels are: Brown Girl in the Ring (1998), Midnight Robber (2000), and The Salt Roads (2004). The study pays particular attention to Hopkinson's use of narrative temporalities, which are shape by creolisation. I argue that Hopkinson creatively theorises black women's subjectivities in relation to (post) colonial politics of domination. Specifically, creolised temporalities are presented as a response to predatory Western modernity. Her innovative diasporic science fiction displays common preoccupations associated with Caribbean women writers, such as belonging and exile, and the continued violence enacted by the legacy of colonialism and slavery. A central emphasis of the study is an analysis of how Hopkinson not only employs a past gaze, as the majority of both Caribbean and postcolonial writing does to recover the subaltern subject, but also how she uses the future to reclaim and reconstruct a sense of selfhood and agency, specifically with regards to black women. Linked to the future is her engagement with notions of technological and social betterment and progress as exemplified by her emphasis on the use of technology as a tool of empire. By writing science fiction, Hopkinson is able to delve into the nebulous nexus of technology, empire, slavery, capitalism and modernity. And, by employing a temporality shaped by creolisation, she is able to collapse discrete historical time-frames, tracing obscured connections between the nodes of this nexus from its beginnings on the plantation, the birthplace of creolisation and, as some have argued, of modernity itself.
Shadows, faces and echoes of an African war: The Rhodesian bush war through the eyes of Chas Lotter � soldier poet
(University of the Western Cape, 2016) Hagemann, Michael Eric; Field, Roger
Poetry that is rooted in that most extreme of human experiences, war, continues to grip the public imagination. When the poetry under scrutiny comes from the "losing side" in a colonial war of liberation, important moral and ethical questions arise. In this thesis, I examine the published and unpublished works of Chas Lotter, a soldier who fought in the Rhodesian Army during the Zimbabwean liberation war (1965- 1980). In investigating Lotter's artistic record of this war, I propose that a powerful, socially embedded Rhodesian national mythology was a catalyst for acceptance of, and participation in, the Rhodesian regime's ideological and military aims. A variety of postcolonial theoretical approaches will be used to explore the range of thematic concerns that emerge and to unpack the dilemmas experienced by a soldier-poet who took part in that conflict. Trauma theory, too, will be drawn upon to critically respond to the personal impact that participation in organized violence has upon combatants and non-combatants alike. The production and marketing of this cultural record will also be examined and in the conclusion, I speculate on the changes modern technology and evolving social mores may have on future developments in war literature. Finally, I conclude my case for installing the challenging work of this often conflicted and contradictory soldier-poet as a necessary adjunct to the established canon of Zimbabwean Chimurenga writing.
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.
Representations of fatherhood and paternal narrative power in South African English literature
(University of the Western Cape, 2016) Andrews, Grant; Wittenberg, Hermann
This study explores the different ways that South African novels have represented fatherhood across historical periods, from the dawn of apartheid to the post-transitional moment. It is argued that there is a link between narrative power and the father, especially in the way that the father figure is given authority and is central to dominant narratives which support pervasive ideologies. The study introduces the concept of paternal narratives, which are narratives that support the power of the father within patriarchal systems and societies, and which the father is usually given control of. This lens will be applied to prominent South African literature in English, including early texts such as Alan Paton�s Cry, the Beloved Country, Nadine Gordimer�s Burger�s Daughter and J. M. Coetzee�s In the Heart of the Country, where the father�s authority is strongly emphasised, and where resisting the paternal narratives often leads to identity struggles for sons and daughters. Later texts, published during the transition from apartheid, often deconstruct the narrative power of fathers more overtly, namely Mark Behr�s The Smell of Apples, Zakes Mda�s Ways of Dying and K. Sello Duiker�s The Quiet Violence of Dreams. More recent novels, published in �post-transitional� South Africa, are radical in their approach to father figures: fathers are often shown to be spectral and dying, and their control of narratives is almost completely lost, such as in Lisa Fugard�s Skinner�s Drift, Mark Behr�s Kings of the Water, Zo� Wicomb�s Playing in the Light and Zukiswa Wanner�s Men of the South. Exploring these shifting representations is a useful way to unearth how ideological and social shifts in South Africa affect the types of representations produced, and how fatherhoods are being reimagined.
A study of Roy Campbell as a South African modernist poet
(University of the Western Cape, 2013) Birch, Alannah; Parr, A.N
Roy Campbell was once a key figure in the South African literary canon. In recent years, his poetry has faded from view and only intermittent studies of his work have appeared. However, as the canon of South African literature is redefined, I argue it is fruitful to consider Campbell and his work in a different light. This thesis aims to re-read both the legend of the literary personality of Roy Campbell, and his prose and poetry written during the period of �high� modernism in England (the 1920s and 1930s), more closely in relation to modernist concerns about language, meaning, selfhood and community. It argues that his notorious, purportedly colonial, �hypermasculine� personae, and his poetic and personal explorations of �selfhood�, offer him a point of reference in a rapidly changing literary and social environment. Campbell lived between South Africa and England, and later Provence and Spain, and this displacement resonated with the modernist theme of �exile� as a necessary condition for the artist. I will suggest that, like the Oxford dandies whom he befriended, Campbell�s masculinist self-styling was a reaction against a particular set of patriarchal traditions, both English and colonial South African, to which he was the putative heir. His poetry reflects his interest in the theme of the �outsider� as belonging to a certain masculinist literary �tradition�. But he also transforms this theme in accordance with a �modernist� sensibility.
Out of place: a re-evaluation of the poetry of Dennis Brutus
(University of the Western Cape, 2014) August, Tyrone Russel; Field, Roger
The main aim of my dissertation is to re-evaluate the poetry of the South African writer Dennis Brutus (1924-2009). Even though he produced a substantial number of poems over more than half a century, his work continues to receive limited attention in South African literary criticism. One of the main reasons is the perception that he was primarily a political activist who wrote poetry with the purpose of advancing his political objectives. However, even though he wrote extensively on political issues, his themes include a wide range of subjects. In addition, he paid close attention to the craft of poetry. Due to the tendency to foreground the political content of his writing, the complexity and diversity in the language and style of his poetry are seldom examined. Refocusing attention on the aesthetic features of his work is a key aspect of my dissertation. I also contend that, despite the political content of much of his poetry, Brutus remains, first and foremost, a writer of lyric poetry. What makes his writing different from the conventional lyric, though, is his quest to find ways of using a very personal mode of poetic expression to make statements on public matters. How he pursues this objective is a major focus of my dissertation. I examine various literary influences on his writing as well. Brutus initially drew extensively on the traditional English literary canon he was taught at school and at university. Later, in order to communicate more directly and accessibly, he drew on traditional Chinese poetry. For the same reason, he subsequently wrote some poems with the specific objective of public performance. My re-evaluation of Brutus� poetry is primarily based on a contextual reading of his work. Such an approach is based on the notion that the context within which a writer lives and writes is vital in order to gain a more informed understanding of his or her writing. In addition, my dissertation draws on Homi K. Bhabha�s elaboration of Freud�s notion of the �unheimlich� (�unhomely�) to examine Brutus� life and poetry. Bhabha pays particular attention to the sense of estrangement which is embedded in Freud�s theory. His elaboration provides an important conceptual tool with which to analyse Brutus� writing, and makes it possible to identify links among his various poetic personae and to identify common features in the themes of his poetry. I argue that Brutus� unhomelineness lies at the centre of his poetic personae � the troubadour, the exile and the cosmopolitan � and of most of the themes of his poetry. Another important focus of my dissertation is how Brutus responds to this state of unhomeliness. The central aspect of my argument is that he redefines his sense of self during different periods of his life: he evolves from initially being a patriot in South Africa into a rooted cosmopolitan in exile; he then, finally, becomes a rootless cosmopolitan. I explore the reasons behind this evolution, and contend that these shifts were essentially attempts to regain agency over his life.
Imagining and imaging the city � Ivan Vladislavi? and the postcolonial metropolis
(University of Western Cape, 2011) Ngara, Kudzayi Munyaradzi; Woodward, Wendy; Nas, Loes; Versluys, Kristiaan
This thesis undertakes an analysis of how six published works by the South African writer Ivan Vladislavi? form the perspective of writing the city � Johannesburg � into being. Beginning from the basis that Vladislavi?�s writing constitutes what I have coined dialogic postcolonialism, the thesis engages with both broader contemporary urban and postcolonial theory in order to show the liminal imaginative space that the author occupies in his narrations of Johannesburg. Underlining the notion of postcolonialism being a �work in progress� my thesis problematises the issue of representation of the postcolonial city through different aspects like space, urbanity, identity and the self, and thus locates each of the texts under consideration at a particular locus in Vladislavi?�s representational continuum of the continually transforming city of Johannesburg. Until the recent appearance of Mariginal Spaces � Reading Vladislavi? (2011) the extant critical literature and research on the writing of Ivan Vladislavi? has, as far as I can tell, not engaged with his work as a body of creative consideration and close analysis of the city of Johannesburg. Even this latest text largely consists of previously published reviews and articles by disparate critics and academics. The trend has therefore largely been to analyse the texts separately, without treating them as the building blocks to an ongoing and perhaps unending project of imaginatively bringing the city into being. Such readings have thus been unable to decipher and characterise the threads which have emerged over the period of the writer�s literary engagement with and representation of Johannesburg. I suggest that, as individual texts and as a collection or body of work, Ivan Vladislavi?�s Missing Persons (1989), The Folly (1993), Propaganda by Monuments and Other Stories (1996), The Restless Supermarket (2006 � first published in 2001), The Exploded View (2004) and Portrait with Keys: Joburg & what-what (2006), are engaged in framing representations of the postcolonial city, representations which can in my view best be analysed through the prism of deconstructive engagement. To this end, the thesis examines contemporary South African urbanity or the post-apartheid metropolitan space (as epitomised by the fictive Johannesburg) and how it is represented in literature as changing, and in the process of becoming. As a consequence, the main conclusion I arrive at is on how the irresolvable nature of the city is reflected in the totality of Ivan Vladislavi?�s writing. In that way, it was possible to treat every text in its own right (rather than forcing it to conform to an overarching thesis). This central insight allowed for the effective application of urban theory to the close readings of the texts.
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 .

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