Night writing: The textual ideation of Andrew Jeptha
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Date
2015
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
University of the Western Cape
Abstract
The publication A South African Boxer in Britain contains the unique
aesthetic of the Cape Town born boxer Andrew Jeptha, the first black fighter
to win a British welterweight title in 1907. The booklet was published in 1910
to offer pecuniary relief to the blinded author (Jeptha) who incurred the
affliction during the very match that secured him the title. Thus, although
masquerading as a �light read� of sporting achievements and memories from
abroad, I argue the booklet authorises a complex thinking on text, disability
and boxing. The thesis takes care to present the publication as a crucial
historical work that offers a level of psychic and racial strategy not naturally
thought to exist in the genesis of a turn-of-the-century boxer. The textual
ideation manifest in Jeptha�s booklet is mooted within the thesis as distinctive
in its accommodation of both desire and difference, rendering a calculation
that sees the text not as the deserted boundary where �mind� and �flesh� depart,
but rather as a particular bibliographic configuration where both these worlds
meet in a moment that remands reductive views of the gladiator and his words
of care.
Description
Philosophiae Doctor - PhD
Keywords
Boxing, Cape Town, Andrew Jeptha, Welterweight, Disability