A fragmented history: visual sites of traumav in Zoë Wicomb's works of fiction

dc.contributor.advisorHermann, Wittenberg
dc.contributor.authorPetersen, Charlise Wall
dc.date.accessioned2025-08-01T13:03:27Z
dc.date.available2025-08-01T13:03:27Z
dc.date.issued2024
dc.description.abstractThis thesis examines key works of fiction by the South African author Zoë Wicomb, re-reading them as engagements with the country’s traumatic apartheid past. A crucial argument advanced is that Wicomb’s prose makes trauma readable and visible through several explicitly visual moments. The thesis argues that Wicomb creates pictures in words, shedding light on the traumatic struggles of people in apartheid and post-apartheid settings and that such ekphrastic descriptions of visual media can make visible states of inner being. Such pivotal visual moments in her fictions include references to images such as photographs, art, and sculpture, but also hallucinations, dreams, or visions. These visual descriptions in the fictions do not only point to historical traumas and acts of violence against black bodies, but are themselves narrated in a broken, dismembered, and discontinuous way, thereby staging a collapse of language. The thesis argues that Zoë Wicomb’s works of fiction consistently explore correspondences between literature and various visual media and that this is one of the hallmarks of her authorship.
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/10566/20647
dc.language.isoen
dc.publisherUniversity of the Western cape
dc.subjectEkphrasis
dc.subjectZoë Wicomb
dc.subjectIntermediality
dc.subjectVisual Media
dc.subjectTrauma
dc.titleA fragmented history: visual sites of traumav in Zoë Wicomb's works of fiction

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