Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'African literature (French) – Black authors – History and criticism'

Le roman africain de la nouvelle génération s’élabore au carrefour des langues et des cultures. Dans son orientation théorique et paratextuelle, le discours romanesque de la nouvelle génération se résume en une « modernité universalisante », lieu de l’articulation dialectique entre l’africanité et la mondialisation. Le contexte idéologique de création de cette littérature et le questionnement identitaire nous amènent à considérer l’africanité comme une notion dynamique et la mondialisation littéraire comme une ouverture à la concurrence et à la légitimité littéraire. Le discours péritextuel, ce haut lieu de la lisibilité/visibilité, amorce les stratégies de cette altérité que le romancier développe largement dans l’énonciation textuelle.

La reconfiguration de l’énonciation dégage les ressorts d’une écriture nouvelle marquée par une narration éclatée, une spatialité multiple et une innovation thématique. La transgression narrative s’intègre au rang des discours de la déconstruction caractéristique de la postmodernité et se donne à lire comme le reflet de l’être de l’entre-deux qu’est l’écrivain migrant comme d’ailleurs son protagoniste. L’espace dans lequel évolue ce dernier peut être interprété comme une transteritorialité dans laquelle se moule la création littéraire marquée du sceau de l’altérité et traduit la « transidentité » du personnage évoluant dans cet espace. La perspective thématique renforce cette idée de l’altérité mondiale structurant le récit africain contemporain. Elle s’engage dans la voie des mutations et des transgressions caractéristiques de la mise en relation de l’africanité et de la mondialisation comme lieu de l’écriture/lecture du roman contemporain.

Le mode d’écriture nous offre un cadre linguistique et stylistique dans lequel se joue l’altérité africanité-mondialisation. Le romancier de la nouvelle génération retravaille la langue française à l’aide des ingrédients des langues et des cultures dans lesquelles il baigne. Cette manipulation linguistico-stylistique est rendue possible par le jeu interlinguistique et le registre humoristico-ironique qui produisent une esthétique du « risible » face aux défis de l’altérité. L’écrivain africain contemporain, décomplexé par ces manipulations linguistique et stylistique, exploite les ressources de l’oralité en vue de concilier la pluralité des formes d’expression et des pratiques langagières de son environnement. Cette stratégie d’écriture produit une esthétique de l’oraliture, celle-là même qui, tout en exaltant les vertus de l’écriture, recourt aux différents procédés offerts par l’oralité, versant de l’africanité du texte contemporain, pour marquer une opposition contre l’écriture et l’Occident qui l’incarne./The African novel by the new generation is made at the meeting point of languages and cultures. In its theoretical and paratextual orientation, the fiction discourse by the new generation can be summed up as a « universality-oriented modernity », a place of dialectic link between africanity and globalization. The ideological context of creation of this literature and the identity questioning bring us to consider africanity as a dynamic notion and the literary globalization as a way to competition and literary legitimacy.

The peritextual discourse, which is a high place of readability/visibility, initiates the strategies of this otherness which the novelist develops largely in textual enunciation.

Reshaping the enunciation shows the motivation of a new writing characterized by a breaking up narration, a multiple area coverage and a thematic innovation. Narrative transgression is integrated in the rank of discourses of deconstruction characterizing postmodernity. It is to be read as a reflection of the being in the space between, this is the migrant writer as well as his protagonist. The space in which the latter evolves can be interpreted as a transterritoriarity in which is moulded literary creation sealed by otherness and shows « transidentity » of the character evolving in that space. The thematic perspective reinforces this idea of global otherness structuring the African contemporary narration. It moves into mutations and transgressions characterizing the relationship between africanity and globalization as a place of writing/reading of contemporary novel.

The writing mode gives us a linguistic and stylistic framework in which takes place the otherness africanity-globalization. The new generation novelist works on the French language he uses by means of ingredients of languages and cultures surrounding him. This linguistic and stylistic manipulation is made possible by an interlinguistic game and the humoristic and ironic register which produce aesthetics of the “funny” in front of otherness challenges. The contemporary African writer, encouraged by these linguistic and stylistic manipulations, exploits the oral ressources in order to reconcile the plurality of forms of expression and of language practices of his environment. This writing strategy produces aesthetics of orality, the one which, in addition to exalting the virtues of writing, has recourse to different procedures of orality, showing thus africanity of contemporary text, to mark an opposition against writing and the Western world which embodies it.

Doctorat en Langues et lettres
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Cette étude porte sur le fait littéraire afro-antillais de l’ère coloniale (1920-1960). Il s’agit d’examiner les stratégies des agents à partir des cas de René Maran, Léopold Sédar Senghor, Aimé Césaire, Édouard Glissant et Mongo Beti et de percevoir comment ils se définissent leur identité littéraire et sociale.

Pour ce faire, notre démarche s’articule en deux temps :(1) examiner les conditions de possibilité d’un champ littéraire afro-antillais à Paris (colonisation française et ses effets, configuration d’un champ littéraire pré-institutionnalisé, etc.) ;(2) analyser les processus de consolidation du champ, ainsi que les luttes internes qui opposent deux tendances émergentes représentées d’abord par Senghor et Césaire, ensuite par Beti et Glissant, dont les prises de position littéraires mettent en œuvre des « modèles empiriques » ;ceux-ci régulent et unifient leurs rapports au monde et à l’Afrique.

This study relates to afro-carribean literature in colonial period (1920-1960). We want to examine the strategies of agents like René Maran, Léopold Sédar Senghor, Aimé Césaire, Édouard Glissant and Mongo Beti ;and we want to understand how they invente literary and social identity.

Our approach is structured in two steps: we shall analyse (1) the conditions for an afro-carribean literary field to appear in Paris (french colonialism and its consequences, configuration of literay field.) ;(2) the consolidation of this field and the internal struggles between two tendances represented by Senghor and Césaire, by Glissant and Beti whose literary practice shows the “empirical model” that regularizes and consolidates their relation with the world and Africa.
Doctorat en philosophie et lettres, Orientation langue et littérature
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Most current studies on 'African' and/or 'Black' literature in South Africa appear to ignore the contradictions underlying the valuative concepts 'African' and 'Black'. This (Jamesonian) unconsciousness has led, primarily, to a situation where writers and critics assume generally that the concepts 'African' and 'Black' are synonymous and interchangeable. This study argues that such an attitude either unconsciously represses an awareness of the distinctive aspects of the worldview connotations of these concepts or deliberately suppresses them. The theoretical and pragmatic approach which this study adopts to explore the distinctive aspects of the worldview connotations of these concepts takes the form, initially, of a critique of such assumptions and their connotations. It is argued that any misconceptions about the relations between the concepts 'African' and 'Black' can only be elucidated through a rigorous and distinct definition of each of these concepts and the respective world views embodied in them. Each of the variables of these definitions is also examined thoroughly through an application of, inter alia, Frederick Jameson's 'dialectical' theory of textual criticism, Pierre Macherey's 'theory of literary production' and also through the post-colonial notions of 'hybridity' and 'syncreticity' propounded by Bill Ashcroft et.al (eds). In this way the study examines the dialectical interplay between, for instance, such oppositional notions as 'African' and 'Western' (place-conscious), 'Black' and 'White' (race-conscious), and other forms of ideological 'dominance' and 'marginality' reflected in the 'African' and/or 'Black' writers' motivations for the acquisition, appropriation and uses of the language of the 'other' (i.e. English) and its literary discourse in South Africa, Africa and elsewhere in the world. A close textual reading of the stories in Mothobi Mutloatse's (ed) Forced Landing, Mbulelo Mzamane's (ed) Hungry Flames underlies an examination of the processes of anthologisation and their implications of aesthetic collectivism, reconstruction and world view monolithicism which repress the distinctive world outlooks of the stories in these anthologies. The notions of aesthetic monolithicism implicit in each of these anthologies are interrogated via the editors' truistic assumptions about the organic nature of the relations between the concepts 'African' and 'Black'. The notion of a monolithic 'African' and 'Black' aesthetic is further decentred through a close textual reading of the uses of the 'African' and 'Black' valuative concepts in the short story collections The Living and the Dead and In Corner B by Es'kia (formerly Ezekiel) Mphahlele. The humanistic pronouncements in Mphahlele' s critical and short story texts suggest various ways of resolving the racial demarcations in both the 'Black' and 'White' South African literary formations. According to Mphahlele, a predominant racial consciousness inherent in the racial capitalist mode of economic production has deprived South African literature and culture an opportunity of creating a national humanistic and 'Afrocentric' form of aesthetic consciousness. The logical consequence of such a deprivation has been that the racial impediments toward the formation of a single national literature will have to be dismantled before the vision of a humanistic and 'Afrocentric' aesthetic can be realised in South Africa. The dismantling of both the 'Black' and 'White' monolithic forms of consciousness may pave the way toward the attainment of a synthetic and place-centred humanistic aesthetic. Such a dismantling of racial monolithicism will, hopefully, stimulate a debate on the question of an equally humanistic economic mode of production.

“Black Mothers and the Nation” tracks the ways that texts produced by United States women throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries position the black maternal body as subversive to the white patriarchal power structure for which it labored and that has acted in many ways to abject it from the national body. This study points to the ways in which the black mother’s subversive potential has been repeatedly, violently, and surreptitiously circumscribed in some quarters even as it succeeds in others. Several important thematic threads run throughout the chapters of this study, sometimes appearing in clear relationship to the texts discussed and sometimes underwriting their analysis in less obvious ways: the functioning of the black maternal body to both support the construction of and undermine white womanhood in slavery and in the years beyond; the reclamation of the maternal body as a site of subversion and nurturance as well as erotic empowerment; the resistance of black mother figures to oppressive discourses surrounding their bodies and reproduction; and, finally, the figurative and literal location of the black mother in a national body politic that has simultaneously used and abjected it over the course of centuries. Using these lenses, this study focuses on a grouping of women’s literature that depicts slavery and its legacy for black women and their bodies. The narratives discussed in this study explore the intersections of the issues outlined above in order to get at meaningful expressions of black maternal identity. By their very nature as representations of historical record and regional and national realities, these texts speak to the problematic placement of black maternal bodies within the nation, beginning in the antebellum era and continuing through the present; in other words, these slavery, Reconstruction, and segregation narratives connect personal and physical experiences of maternity to the national body.
The subordination of embodied power : sentimental representations of the black maternal body in Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's cabin and Harriet Jacobs's Incidents in the life of a slave girl -- Recuperating the body : the black mother's reclamation of embodied presence and her reintegration into the black community in Pauline Hopkins's Contending forces and Toni Morrison's Beloved -- The narrative power of the black maternal body : resisting and exceeding visual economies of discipline in Margaret Walker's Jubilee and Sherley Anne Williams's Dessa Rose -- Mapping black motherhood onto the nation : the black maternal body and the body politic in Lillian Smith's Strange fruit and Alice Randall's The wind done gone -- Michelle Obama in context.
Access to thesis permanently restricted to Ball State community only
Department of English

Thesis (Ph.D. (English studies)) -- University of Limpopo, 2011
This thesis explores the theme of identity in Es’kia Mpha-hele’s fictional and autobiographical novels, with special attention given to the quest for the lost identity of Afri-can cultural and philosophical integrity. In other words, the revival of the core African experience and the efforts to preserve and promote things African. Mphahlele wrote most of his novels during the time when Africa was under colonial influence. His native land was under the abhorred apartheid system which sought to relegate the African expe-rience to the background. In this sense, he was the voice of the people, reminding them of their past and giving them direction for the future. Chapter One of the thesis outlines the background to the study, defines concepts and gives a survey of African lit-erary identity. It also probes salient aspects which have influenced Mphahlele’s perspective on African identity dur-ing his early years as a writer and socio-cultural activ-ist. Approaches and methodology employed to examine Mphahlele’s writings are also outlined. Chapter Two synthesises the theoretical underpinnings of the study. The thesis adopts Afrocentricity as the basis of analysis, looking at aspects such as the African worldview, humanism (ubuntu) and collectivism. Views by different Af-rican literary critics on what African literature should entail in its distinctive definition are also discussed. Two main literary traditions, orality and the contemporary tradition, which give African literature its unique charac-ter as well as its phases are identified and brought to the fore.Identity in African literature is discussed in detail in Chapters three and four where Mphahlele’s literary works are closely examined. Chapter Five concludes the study and recommends that in order for Africa to forge ahead in her attempt to reclaim and promote her cultural identity, a new perspective must be cultivated and Mphahlele proposes hy-bridity, which is a harmonious co-existence of two or more cultural beliefs without one oppressing the other.
The University of Limpopo

In a comparison of two novels, Ways of Dying (1995) and Black Diamond (2009), this dissertation examines Zakes Mda's ongoing use of fiction in presenting incisive social commentary in the post-apartheid literary context. Mda's debut novel is a complex magic realist tale of Toloki, the professional mourner, who journeys from the village to the urban township. It is markedly different from his post-millennial satire, which invokes the social realist form, constructing a rapidly unfolding plot of urban gangsters, crime and sex, in which the characters are more representational than well-developed. While Ways of Dying has been praised as Mda's thought-provoking novel of the transition, Black Diamond has sometimes been criticised as being less able to comment significantly on the state of post-millennial South Africa. Subsequently, this dissertation evaluates the potential of Mda's most recent fictional portrayal of post-apartheid society to provide a meaningful interpretation of and commentary on post-apartheid South Africa, alongside his earlier novel.

The main thesis of this dissertation is that even a casual analysis of African writing reveals that contemporary African literature has and is still undergoing a distinctive metamorphosis. This change, which amounts to a significant departure from the early fifties, derives its creative impulse from demonic anger and cynical iconoclasm and is triggered by the mind-shattering disillusion that followed independence. The proclivity towards tyranny and the exploitation of the ruled in modern Africa is traced by radical African creative writers to an ancient source: the legendary and god-like rulers of precolonial Africa. Ouologuem's Bound to Violence and Armah's Two Thousand Seasons and The Healers hypothesize that past sins begot present sins. The legendary warrior heroes of the past, whose glory and splendour were once exalted in African writing, are now ruthlessly disentombed and paraded as miscreants and despots, who not only brutalized and sold their people into slavery but also ideologically fabricated their own legends and myths in order to maximize their tyrannical power. The preoccupation of these works is, therefore, to divest the ancient heroes of their false glory. contemporary critics tend to perceive this anti-traditional posture purely as a modern trend in African literature. The truth of the matter, however, is that the literary foundations of this anti-nativist/anti-Afrocentric literary tradition were laid by Thomas Mofolo and Sol Plaatje, whose Chaka (1925) and Mhudi (1930) are the precursors. The five primary works in this study parody and veer away from the generally accepted traditional African epic heroism and recorded history towards a communal heroic ideal which celebrates the larger community instead of the single epic heroes normally romanticized in African legendary tradition. These novelists, while dismantling the European and African myths about Africa's Golden Age, also disfigure the often glorified ancient historical landmarks and the fabled heroes of Africa's oral and recorded history. The rationale behind this investigation is the fact that though these works have innovated, assimilated, and parodied the African oral arts, particularly traditional African epic heroism, no detailed study has been made to explore the literary transformation these texts have undergone as written works. Treating African texts only as appendages of Western literature may undermine the ability of the critical evaluations which go into the heart of these texts and unravel their deeper meanings. The outcome of this kind of approach is that pertinent issues of style and theme originating from negro-African metaphysics, oral traditions, and iconography could thereby be left unexplored. Besides, the bulk of the current body of criticism on African literature, particularly on colonial Africa, tends to concentrate on colonialist Christian values and Western literary production models. One of the overriding concerns of this research, therefore, is to veer away from merely rehashing Eurocentric pronouncements on European influences and literary modes parodied by these works, by taking a fresh. look at the texts from the perspective of Afrocentrism and in particular from the point of view of the traditional African oral bards. To this end, therefore, the dissertation is divided into six main chapters and a short concluding chapter: Chapter 1, A Survey of Black Representations of Pre-colonial Africa, functions as an introduction, sketches the European image versus the Black counter-discourse, and locates the study within the current debate on the concept of pre-colonial Africa's Golden Age. Chapter 2, Thomas Mofolo's "Inverted Epic Hero", the nucleus of the study I analyzes the anti-epic and ironic modes manipulated by the text and also maps out the epic generic framework which structures the whole dissertation. Chapter 3, Traditional African Epic Heroism Revised, discusses Plaatje's Mhudi, paying special attention to the text's deployment of the African epic genre as well as the caricaturist and the anti-heroic modes. In Chapter 4, Yambo Ouologuem's Bound to Violence is examined under the title A World Trapped in an Orgy of Violence, Barbarism and Servitude. African oral art is used as the hermeneutic key in unlocking the complexities of Ouologuem's novel. Chapter 5, The African Anti-Legendary Creative Mythology, scrutinizes Armah's Two Thousand Seasons, highlighting, among other topics, Armah's daring innovative stylistic experimentation. Chapter 6, entitled The Akan Iconic Forest of Symbols, deals with Armah' s The Healers, concentrating on the Akan iconographic backdrop which shapes and informs this work. And finally, The Metamorphosis of Traditional African Epic Heroism, the title of the concluding chapter, sums up this dissertation.

This dissertation re-examines an era in the production and reception of English language poetry in South Africa by black writers. Intellectually the 1970's was the Black Consciousness phase of South African history and very few aspects of life in the country were untouched by the intellectual movement led by Steve Biko and other young black student leaders. The aesthetic and literary output of the time, like all other facets of South African life, exhibited the influence and pressures brought to bear by Black Consciousness. Moreover, the Black Consciousness poets introduced the most vibrant and innovative phase for English language poetry produced in South Africa. It is my contention, however, that such vibrancy and innovation has consistently been compromised by unsympathetic, often hostile, and almost-always ill-informed criticism. The dissertation offers a critique of the academic and journalistic practice of criticism in South Africa. I argue that critical practice in South Africa has been engaged throughout the twentieth century in the discursive enforcement of ‘discipline’. In his Discipline and Punish (1977) the French post-structuralist philosopher Michel Foucault demonstrated how power is wielded against oppressed/suppressed groups through self regulated proscriptions, and argued that power is a discursive rather than a corporeal phenomenon. My dissertation follows Foucault in reading the critical reception of Black Consciousness poetry as the practice of disciplinary power. The dissertation also engages critically with the poetry of Oswald Mtshali, Mongane Serote and Sipho Sepamla, and argues that their work is the inscription of black subjectivity into the literary and cultural mainstream. It situates their work within wider 6 societal debates and definitions of ‘blackness’. In this regard use is made again of Michel Foucault’s insights and methodology of discourse analysis as shown in The Archaeology of Knowledge (1972). I argue that Oswald Mtshali’s work is a failed attempt at a dissection of apartheid and colonialism from a broadly Christian and humanist perspective. In my reading of Mongane Serote I explore the relationship between women’s bodies and the practice of representation. It is my contention that Serote is most concerned with claims of belonging, and this is shown through his extensive use of the trope of ‘Mother’. My discussion of the poetry of Sipho Sepamla focuses on language and (self- )representation, particularly the use of practices of naming in constructing subjectivity. My contention is that Sepamla ultimately abandons attempts at representation in favour of oppositional self-construction in language. In the concluding chapter I defend the thesis that the politics of discipline have prevented the broad critical establishment from gaining access to these discursive constructions of blackness in the committed poetry of South Africa.

The specific instances of R.H.W. Shepherd and H.I.E. Dhlomo are used in this thesis to investigate some of the many factors that influence the formation of a colonial literature, such as politics, social structures and personal ideals. By isolating the Lovedale Mission Press ~s a "contact zone" - a·place where the cultures of the colonizer and the colonized come into direct contact with each other - it is possible to trace how the interaction between these cultures shaped the writing of a particular African writer, H.I.E. Dhlomo. This is done through an analysis of historical factors that shaped the policy of the Lovedale Mission Press in the twentieth century: the development of liberalism in South Africa, the·role of the missionary in African education, the function ofa liberal magazine such as The South African Outlook and the appointment of an ambitious missionary, R.I.W. Shepherd, to the position of Director of Publications. This necessarily included a study of Shepherd's vision of African literature. On the other hand, this study takes cognisance of the factors that shaped Herbert Dhlomo's vision of literature: the development of African nationalism, the entrenchment of segregation as a politial doctrine, and most importantly, his struggle to have his creative writing published by the Lovedale Press. It is shown how Shepherd's vision of what African literature should entail contrasted with Dhlomo's, and how, as a result, Dhlomo deliberately structured his critical writing as a response to Shepherd's Eurocentric approach to African literature.

Bibliography: pages 217-232.
Yali-Manisi, a Xhosa writer, performs and writes traditional praise poetry (izibongo) and modern poems (isihobe) and can, therefore, be regarded as a bard because he also performs his poetry. One can safely place him in the interphase as he combines performance and writing. The influence of oral poems and other oral genres can be perceived in his works as some of his works are a product of performances which were recorded, transcribed and translated into English. The dissertation, among other things, examines the way in which Yali-Manisi's work has been influenced by such manipulations. In this study we examine lzibongo Zeenkosi ZamaXhosa, lmfazwe kaMianjeni, Yaphum'igqina and other individually recorded poems. His poetry is characterised by an interaction between tradition and innovation. The impact of traditional poetic canon on the poet, the way of exploiting traditional devices are the most outstanding characteristics concerning his poetry. His optimistic disposition towards the future of the South African political situation leaves one with the impression that he envisages an end to the Black-White political dichotomy. Yali-Manisi manipulates literary forms to articulate specific socio-political and cultural attitudes which are dominant among the majority of South Africans. His writings coincide with some of the major political changes in South Africa. In his recent works, he is explicit and protests against Apartheid structures especially in Transkei and Ciskei. In his earlier works he could not articulate the feelings of his people as an imbongi because of the fear of censorship and themes of protests had to be handled with extreme caution if one's manuscripts were to be published at all. He often alludes to national oppression of the majority by the minority and instigates the former to be politically conscious. In some instances (e.g. in his historical poems) he seeks to correct inaccuracies which are presented in history books. Thus showing the listener/reader another side of the coin. He displays very keen interest and deep knowledge of natural phenomena such as seasons of the year and the behaviour of animals during each period. Poems about historical figures are characterised by certain allusions which refer to realities and events in the life of the 'praised one' or his forefathers. This helps to shed light on the present situation. Although fictitious adaptations of genuine events have been done, an element of reality is still prevalent.

L’Adaptation cinématographique des romans de Tahar Ben Jelloun :“L’Enfant de sable”, “La Nuit sacrée“, “La prière de l’absent”

Trois volumes, pp. 429 + 220 (Annexes).

Cette thèse porte sur l’analyse des tenants et des aboutissants de deux longs-métrages de fiction inspirés par l’œuvre de l’écrivain Tahar Ben Jelloun, à savoir La Nuit sacrée (1993) du Français Nicolas Klotz et La Prière de l’absent (1994) du Marocain Hamid Bénani.

Compte tenu du fait que le 7e Art s’est intéressé depuis toujours à tous les genres littéraires, l’auteur s’est attaché à explorer la dynamique intrinsèque des romans et des films qui font l’objet de ce travail, tout en mettant en relief les rapports que le cinéma entretient avec les représentations socioculturelles issues de ce croisement. Plutôt que se s’enfermer dans une seule démarche méthodologique, le choix a été opéré de s’ouvrir à plusieurs types d’investigation, de façon à mieux prendre en considération les spécificités des œuvres abordées.

Le premier volume de la thèse s’ouvre sur un survol de l’histoire de la littérature maghrébine d’expression française, en général, et marocaine, en particulier, et retrace son évolution, de même que les obstacles qu’il lui a fallu surmonter pour tenter de s’imposer, et qu’elle doit du reste encore surmonter de nos jours.

Après quoi, il est procédé à la définition des différents paramètres des trois romans de Tahard Ben Jelloun, à travers les fonctions et fonctionnements des composantes paratextuelles que sont les titres, les incipits et les clausules des corpus en question. Il s’agit, à ce stade, de démontrer qu’il existe une forte motivation entre ces éléments – souvent considérés comme marginaux – et le texte proprement dit.

Le travail se penche ensuite sur l’étude de chaque roman séparément, selon une approche correspondant à la nature particulière qui s’en dégage.

Après un panorama historique de la cinématographie marocaine et une brève présentation du parcours respectif des cinéastes Nicolas Klotz et Hamid Bénani, le deuxième volume se concentre, pour sa part, sur l’approche des films annoncés dans le cadre de cette étude.

L’analyse du travail d’adaptation débute par la distinction qui s’impose entre la littérature et le cinéma, aussi bien du point de vue productif que réceptif, via la mise en lumière des caractéristiques propres à ces moyens d’expression artistique. S’il apparaît légitime de confronter le cinéma et la littérature, il faut éviter de s’enfermer dans un comparatisme valorisant l’un au détriment de l’autre, sans jamais perdre de vue tout ce qui différencie ces deux formes d’écriture et les publics auxquels elles s’adressent.

Le moteur principal du travail étant l’étude du processus d’adaptation cinématographique, l’auteur s’engage par ailleurs à mettre en perspective les expériences adaptatives retenues dans ces pages, afin de les saisir sous plusieurs angles et divers niveaux de sens imbriqués, mêlant fait culturel et activité artistique.

Toute adaptation n’étant jamais que l’une des nombreuses interprétations possibles du texte originel, l’essentiel est ici d’observer, au-delà des convergences et des divergences existant entre le film et le roman, quels sont les enjeux et les objectifs de La Nuit sacrée de Klotz et de La Prière de l’absent de Bénani. À cet effet, l’accent est mis sur le concept de transfert historico-culturel cher à Michel Serceau, où le contexte sociohistorique et les conditions de fabrication jouent un rôle déterminant pour l’appropriation de l’œuvre littéraire.

Ainsi, parallèlement à l’élucidation des techniques de fabrication des films, une grande importance est accordée aux contextes historique, culturel et artistique dans lesquels ils ont vu le jour, afin de mettre en lumière la singularité du regard que chacun des réalisateurs porte sur la production du romancier. La thèse montre par là comment ces adaptations, qui émanent d’approches et de transferts bien distincts, au niveau du contexte comme des codes culturels, ont donné lieu à deux films aux différences très marquées, tant sur le plan thématique que qualitatif.

Outre la bibliographie, la filmographie et un index des noms figurant à la fin du manuscrit principal, les annexes qui composent le troisième volume offrent un fac-simile des scénarios originaux de La Nuit sacrée et de La Prière de l’absent, suivi du découpage séquentiel des deux films et de la transcription d’entretiens inédits avec les réalisateurs Nicolas Klotz et Hamid Bénani, ainsi qu’une sélection d’articles de presse.

Doctorat en Information et communication
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This dissertation discusses Gayl Jones’s and Toni Morrison’s characterisation of black women’s journeying towards empowered subjectivity and agency.

Through comparative analysis of eight fictional works, I explore the writers’ idea of female freedom and emancipation, the structures of power affecting the transition from oppressed towards liberated subject positions, and the literary techniques through which the authors facilitate these seminal trajectories.

My research addresses a corpus comprised of three novels and one book-long poem by Gayl Jones, as well as four novels by Toni Morrison. These two writers emerge in the US literary scene during the 1970s, one of the decades of the second black women’s renaissance (1970s, 1980s). This period witnessed unprecedented developments in US black literature and feminist theorising. In the domain of African American letters, it witnessed the emergence of a host of black women writers such as Gayl Jones and Toni Morrison. This period also marks a turning point in the reconfiguration of African American literature, as several unknown or misplaced literary works by pioneering black women writers were discovered, shifting the chronology of African American literature.

Moreover, the second black women's renaissance marks a paradigmatic development in black feminist theorising on womanhood and subjectivity. Many black feminist scholars and activists challenged what they perceived to be the homogenising female subject conceptualised by US white middle-class feminism and the androcentricity of the subject proclaimed by the Black Aesthetic Movement. They claimed that, in focusing solely on gender and patriarchal oppression, white feminism had overlooked the salience of the race/class nexus, while focus by the Black Aesthetic Movement on racism had overlooked the salience of gender and heterosexual discrimination.

In this dissertation, I discuss the works of Gayl Jones and Toni Morrison in the context of seminal debates on the nature of the female subject and the racial and gender politics affecting the construction of empowered subjectivities in black women's fiction.

Through the metaphor of journeying towards female empowerment, I show how Gayl Jones and Toni Morrison engage in imaginative returns to the past in an attempt to relocate black women as literary subjects of primary importance. I also show how, in the works selected for discussion, a complex idea of modern female subjectivities emerges from the writers' re-examination of the oppressive material and psychological circumstances under which pioneering black women lived, the common practice of sexual exploitation with which they had to contend, and the struggle to assert the dignity of their womanhood beyond the parameters of the white-defined “ideological discourse of true womanhood” (Carby, 1987: 25).

Doctorat en philosophie et lettres, Orientation langue et littérature
info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

The central assumption of this study is that the awareness of a historically constructed, culturally sanctioned condition of subalternity is at the heart of the fictional production of Francophone African women writers. Subalternity here is viewed as a narrative and spatial continuum inside which African women have to negotiate issues relating to subjecthood and identity, both marked by gender and colonialism. Various definitions of 'the subaltern' are relevant, ranging from Antonio Gramsci's to those of the South Asian Subaltern Studies group, and to John Beverley's and Fredric Jameson's discussions. Jameson's emphasis on subalternity as "the feelings of mental inferiority nad habits of subservience and obedience which... develop in situations of domination - most dramatically in the experience of colonized peoples" (Jameson, 1981) is crucial, because it demonstrates the constructedness of that ontological condition. The approach adopted here aims to include gender as a category in a discourse that often excludes it, and to bring social science-oriented concepts into dialogue with literary theory and criticism. Combined with a discussion of Africa-influenced versions of feminist theory (stiwanism, negofeminism, motherism), Subaltern studies provides a space for the emergence of a south-south postcolonial debate that can throw new light on writing by African women. Fictional works by Therese Kuoh-Moukoury, Mariama Ba, Aminata Maiga Ka, Angele Rawiri, Philomene Bassek, Evelyne Mpoudi-Ngolle, Regina Yaou, Fatou Keita, and Abibatou Traore are read as conveying the various stages of consciousness on the part of the subaltern. Kuoh-Moukoury's Rencontres essentielles (1969), Maiga Ka's La voie du salut (1985), and Bassek's La tache de sang (1990) exemplify a first stage of consciousness in which the subaltern woman submits passively to oppressive patriarchal, cultural and religious prescriptions. Ba's Une si longue lettre (1979), Mpoudi Ngolle's Sous La cendre le feu (1990) and Rawiri's Fureurs et cris de femmes (1989) present a more assertive, rebellious heroine whose efforts are undermined by a resilient social context. Finally, Traore's Sidagamie (1998), Kei'ta's Rebelle (1998) and Yaou's Le prix de la revoke (1997) address the possibility of a sustained African women's struggle resulting not only in transient personal and isolated victories but also in an enduring social transformation governed by the ethos of gender equality.

M.A.
In this dissertation an examination is made of the different strands of contemporary South African protest and resistance poetry. This is done by way of analysing selected poems to highlight the relationship which exists between politics and aesthetics and to illustrate that the two concepts are not mutually exclusive. A brief history of written African protest and resistance poetry is provided in an attempt to put this poetry within its historical context and to trace its influences and development. The poems are then examined with the express aim of identifying and understanding their themes and the socio-political contexts from which they emanate. These contexts are then shown to have important implications in so far as the aesthetics of protest and resistance poetry is concerned. The dissertation highlights the fact that for this poetry to be fully appreciated, there is a need to recognize the particular circumstances which surround it. This recognition is essential because these circumstances are instrumental in the shaping of the poetry and the formation of an aesthetics of protest and resistance. An examination of whether this type of poetry has any socio-political relevance and literary significance to contemporary South Africa is made.

This thesis discovers the spiritual and aesthetic vision of poet-journalist Robert Grendon (c. 1867–1949), a man of Irish-Herero parentage. It situates him in the wider Swedenborgian discourse regarding African ‘regeneration’. While preserving the overall diachronic continuity of a literary biography, it treats his principal thematic preoccupations synchronically. The objective has been to show the imaginative ways in which he employs his rich and diverse religio-philosophical background to account for South Africa’s social problems, to pass judgement upon the principal players, and to point out an alternative path to a brighter future. Chapter 1 looks at Emanuel Swedenborg’s mystical revelations on the heightened spiritual proclivity of the ‘celestial’ African, and the consequences of New Jerusalem’s descent over the heart of Africa, which Swedenborg believed to be taking place, undetected by Europeans, around 1770. It also examines how those pronouncements were received in Europe, America, and—most particularly—in Africa. Chapter 2 examines the circumstances surrounding Grendon’s birth and childhood in what is today Namibia. It takes note of a family tradition that Joseph Grendon married a daughter of Maharero, a prominent Herero chief, and it looks at Robert Grendon’s views on ‘miscegenation’. Chapter 3 deals with Grendon’s schooling at Zonnebloem College, Cape Town. Chapter 4 describes his cultural, sporting, and political activities in Kimberley and Uitenhage in the 1890s, bringing to light his editorship of Coloured South African in 1899. It also considers his conception of ‘progress’. Chapter 5 looks at some early poems, including the domestic verse-drama, ‘Melia and Pietro’ (1897–98). It also contextualizes a single, surviving editorial from Coloured South African. Chapter 6 treats Grendon’s tour de force, the epic poem, Paul Kruger’s Dream (1902), as well as his personal involvement in the South African War, and his spiritualized account of the ‘Struggle for Supremacy’ in South Africa. Chapter 7 relates to Grendon’s fruitful Natal period, 1900–05: his headmastership of the Edendale Training Institute and of Ohlange College, and his editorship of Ilanga’s English columns during the foreign absence of the editor-in-chief, John L. Dube, from February 1904 to May 1905. Chapter 8 analyzes some of the shorter and medium-length poems written in Natal, 1901–04. Chapter 9 is a close examination of the poem, ‘Pro Aliis Damnati’, showing its Swedenborgian basis, and how it dramatizes Swedenborg’s concept of ‘scortatory’ love. Chapter 10 describes Grendon’s early years in Swaziland from 1905. Chapter 11 deals with his period as editor of Abantu-Batho in Johannesburg, 1915–16. Chapter 12 describes his last years in Swaziland, and his relationship with the Swazi royal family.
Thesis (Ph.D.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2007.

This thesis represents the first extended study of South African poetry in English from a gender perspective. It is conceived in two parts: firstly, a deconstructive analysis of the dominant tradition of South African English poetry in order to reveal its masculine or androcentric base; and secondly, the reconstruction of an alternative gynocentric tradition that gives primacy to women and the feminine in poetry. The first section consists of an examination of the ways in which the feminine has been. excluded from the poetic tradition in historical terms by means of social and economic constraints on women. The study begins with a brief reference to the beginnings of cultural gender discrimination in British poetry, from which South African English poetry derives, and then moves to a more extended consideration of the ways in which this discrimination has manifested itself in the South African context in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This is followed by an analysis of the "poetics of exclusion", the ways in which the tradition genders itself as masculine by defining its central speaking position or subjectivity as male and masculine, and so excludes women and the feminine. The second section commences with the reconstruction or recovery of a gynocentric tradition of women's poetry in English in South Africa by means of a gynocritical "map" or survey, followed by a discussion of the nature of the feminine discourse or "poetics" required to provide the critical context for this poetry. The preliminary "map" is given greater detail by in-depth discussion of the women poets considered to be major contributors to the gynocentric tradition: Mary Morison Webster, Elisabeth Eybers, Tania van Zyl, Adele Naude, Ruth Miller, Ingrid Jonker and Eva Bezwoda. The study ends with an examination of the work of contemporary women poets in South Africa, especially the black women poets of the 1970s and '80s, and the poets - both black women and white women - who wrote from exile in the 1980s.
Thesis (Ph.D.)-University of Natal, Durban, 1993.

In this thesis, I examine a critical procedure appropriate to Black South African autobiography of the 1950s and early 1960s. In particular, I examine these autobiographies as examples of counterhegemonic writing in which the self counters the hegemonic apartheid notion of identity, based on racial and cultural purity, and I propose that the hybrid selves encoded in these narratives have the capacity to inform a new South African nationhood. Chapter One necessitates an autocritique, in which I locate my own discourse within the intersecting discursive strands of Western and local theory, an effort that is guided by the imperatives that emerge from the autobiographies themselves. In Chapter Two, I suggest that the postcolonial autos displaces Humanist, and appropriates postmodernist, conceptions of the "I". Rewriting the terms of the autobiographical pact, the authority of grapos is re-instated in counternarratives that give privileged status to the bios - to lives that claim "I AM!" and selves that reconstruct identity. A related concern is the relationship between autobiographical criticism in South Africa and hegemony. In the chapters that follow, I examine the various ways in which counterhegemonic selves are constructed in Tell freedom, Down Second Avenue, Drawn in colour: African Contrasts and The Ochre People. Peter Abrahams's autobiography is discussed largely in terms of Frantz Fanon's insights on identity construction and the notion of a "hybrid I". Es'kia Mphahlek's (re)writing of the self - whose main feature is ambivalence - forms the focus of Chapter Four. These notions are developed in the final chapter, which focuses on Noni Jabavu's narratives that encode an "in-between" cultural identity and, as in the autobiographies of Abrahams and Mphahlele, a metonymic "I".
English Studies
D. Litt. et Phil. (English)

Thesis (M.A. (English Studies)) -- University of Limpopo, 2014
This study discusses African identity as portrayed in Zakes Mda’s The Madonna of Excelsior (2002) and Bessie Head’s Maru (1971). It explores identity and its subcomponents within the South African context as asserted in these novels. Mda employs a retrospective communal voice that blends historical accounts with fiction in order to subvert and satirise apartheid nationalism. Head, on the other hand, constructs a positive image of feminine identity in the world characterised by tribalism, patriarchal system and stereotypical subjugation of women. She dismantles established racial and ethnic prejudice against minority groups and the underprivileged. The study applies a trilogy of theoretical framework to analyse and interpret selected data: Discourse Analysis, Text Analysis and Afrocentricity. It further examines a fluidity of identities in both social and political spheres and demonstrates how suppression of these identities affects individuals and nation states. It reveals that, as a microcosm of Africa, South Africa reflects atrocious injustices of the past, carried out in the form of colonisation and apartheid, bringing about a different kind of identity of the African people. These two novels take us back to the past so that we can understand the present and subsequently build Africa’s identity of the future. KEY CONCEPTS Afrocentricity; Identity; Discrimination; Miscegenation; Otherness; Hybridity; Animalistic Dehumanisation.

This is a comparative study of a selection of the works of H.I.E. and R.R.R. Dhlomo in an attempt to specify the ways in which both writers contributed to constructing a sense of African modernity. While the focus will be on the content of the writing, it will include an analysis of the form and style of the literature, as well as the historical and political setting of the work, and of the authors. By employing the theoretical work of Alain Locke, David Attwell and Tim Couzens, I will address the issue of how Herbert and Rolfes Dhlomo negotiate the issue of a Christian modernity, as well as the ambiguous relationship between tradition and modernity. Another matter that I will focus on is that of the differences and similarities of their writing, in terms of aesthetics and their positions vis-a-vis tradition, modernity and the role of the Black subject, among other topics. Some questions that I will address are whether they are both contributing to an African modernity, and in what sense, and whether Rolfes' work complements that of Herbert, and vice versa. This will be done through a close reading of selected works across a range of mediums, from literary texts such as plays, poems and short stories to the print media. In the Introduction I will outline the key theoretical work and definitions that I will make use of in my research, as well as give brief biographies of the two writers under examination. In Chapter One I will make a close reading of selected works of Herbert Dhlomo, and will attempt to show his changing role in the establishment of a sense of an African modernity. In Chapter Two the focus of my work will be selected prose fiction of Rolfes Dhlomo. I will examine the major themes of these works, and show how they pertain to a sense of an African modernity. In Chapter Three I will examine Rolfes Dhlomo's "R. Roamer Esq." column from the Bantu World. I have selected in particular the year 1941, and I will show how Rolfes Dhlomo used satire and topical issues to help in the creation of a sense of African modernity. The Conclusion deals with the findings of my research on the role that Herbert and Rolfes Dhlomo played in the creation of an African modernity in South Africa.
Thesis (M.A.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2004.

This study is a comparison of female characters portrayed by different authors in selected Venda novels. Chapter One comprises the aim of the study, approach, life history of authors, comments on their work, a short summary of the selected novels, cultural fulfilment of a Venda woman, and the scope and composition of chapters. Chapter Two deals with characterization. The definition and methods of characterization are discussed in this chapter. The merits and demerits of various methods of character portrayal are also examined in some detail. Chapter Three discusses the different female characters portrayed in the selected novels. Chapter Four comprises a comparison of female characters in the selected novels. Chapter Five is the general conclusion to this study
African Languages
M.A. (African languages)

Text in English
This thesis investigates the relationship between humans and the nonhuman world or natural environment in selected literary works by black female writers in colonial and post-colonial Namibia and Zimbabwe. Some Anglo-American scholars have argued that many African writers have resisted the paradigms that inform much of global ecocriticism and have responded to it weakly. They contend that African literary feminist studies have not attracted much mainstream attention yet mainly to raise some issues concerning ecologically oriented literary criticism and writing. Given this unjust criticism, the study posits that there has been a growing interest in ecocriticism and ecofeminism in literary works by African writers, male and female, and they have represented the social, political (colonial and anti-colonial) and economic discourse in their works. The works critiqued are Tsitsi Dangarembga’s Nervous Conditions (1988) and The Book of Not (2006), Neshani Andreas’ The Purple Violet of Oshaantu (2001) and No Violet Bulawayo’s We Need New Names (2013). The thrust of this thesis is to draw interconnections between man’s domination of nature and the subjugation and dominance of black women as depicted in different creative works. The texts in this study reveal that the existing Anglo-American framework used by some scholars to define ecocriticism and ecofeminism should open up and develop debates and positions that would allow different ways of reading African literature. The study underscored the possibility of black female creative works to transform the definition of nature writing to allow an expansion and all encompassing interpretation of nature writing. Contrary to the claims by Western scholars that African literature draws its vision of nature writing from the one produced by colonial discourse, this thesis argues that African writers and scholars have always engaged nature and the environment in multiple discourses. This study breaks new ground by showing that the feminist aspects of ecrocriticism are essential to cover the hermeneutic gap created by their exclusion. On closer scrutiny, the study reveals that African women writers have also addressed and highlighted issues that show the link between African women’s roles and their environment.
English Studies
D. Litt. et Phil. (English)

Es'kia Mphahlele's concept of African humanism was a seminal influence on Black Consciouness thought and provided the philosophical basis for a landmark body of South African criticism and aesthetics wilh roots in Africa. African humanism as a black ethos, combined with rich metaphoric speech, symbols, values and myths resurrected from the deep African past, afforded the author a powerful cultural weapon with which to criticize centuries of colonialism, racism, and state apartheid, related western industrial forces of economic exploitation and alienation. Moreover, the counterweights of African humanism and alienation in the dialogue of two selves -- one that is Western-educated and colonized and the other African -- contribute key elements of realism, vitality, humour, insight, cultural identity, and characterization to Mphahlele's most effective protest writing which, in turn, has helped to shape a black nationalist vision which has surprising relevance to South Africa in the 1990s.
English Studies
M.A. (English)

All bodies of critical discourse on any given literary canon seek visibility through self- celebration, subversion of competing critical ideas and identification with supposedly popular, scientific and incisive critical theories. Thus, the literary-critical quest for significance and visibility is, in essence, a quest for „space‟, „voice‟ and „authority‟ in the discussion of aspects of a given literary corpus. This research explores the politics of „space‟, „voice‟ and „authority‟ in „white critical thought‟ on „the black Zimbabwean novel‟. It unfolds in the context of the realisation that as a body of critical discourse on „the black Zimbabwean novel‟, „white critical thought‟ does not only emerge in an intellectual matrix in which it shares and competes for „space‟, „voice‟ and „authority‟ with other bodies of critical thought on the literary episteme in question; it also develops in the ambit of Euro-African cultural politics of hegemony and resistance. Thus, the research sets out to identify the ways in which „white critical thought‟ affirms and perpetuates or questions and negates European critical benchmarks and cultural models in the discussion of selected aspects of „the black Zimbabwean novel‟. The investigation considers the fissures at the heart of „white critical thought‟ as a critical discourse and the myriad of ways in which it interacts with competing critical discourses on the „the black Zimbabwean novel‟. It derives impetus from the fact that while other versions of critical thought on „the black Zimbabwean novel‟ have received extensive metacritical discussion elsewhere, „white critical thought‟ remains largely under-discussed. This phenomenon enables it to solidify into a settled body of critical thought. The metacritical discussion of „white critical thought‟ in this research constitutes part of the repertoire of efforts that will help check the solidification of critical discourses into hegemonic bodies of thought. The research makes use of Afrocentric and Postcolonial critical tenets to advance the contention that while „white critical thought‟ on „the black Zimbabwean novel‟ is fraught with fissures and contradictions that speak directly to its complexity and resistance to neat categorisation, it is largely vulnerable to identification as part of the paraphernalia of European cultural and intellectual hegemony in African literature and its criticism, given its tendency to discuss the literature outside the context of critical theories that emerge from the same culture and history with the literary corpus in question.
African Languages
D. Litt. et Phil. (African Languages)

This study examines representations of Southern African black women in the works' of two male and two female writers. A comparative approach is used to review the ways in which the writers characterise women who labour under intense restrictions in domestic situations, the workplace, and in political contexts. Some representations suggest that women have come to terms with social strictures and have learned to live fulfilled lives despite them. Other representations are contextualised in creative situations in which social roles are re-imagined. In the process, women are removed from conventional object-related gendered positions. These representations suggest that women have the capability to achieve personal transcendence rather than accept the immanence imposed by stereotyped gender relationships and repressive political structures. The suggestion is made that writers can change the image of women by centralising them as active subjects, challenging their exclusion and creating spaces for women to represent themselves
English Studies
M.A. (English)

This study is, by its intention at any rate, an attempt at assembling the scattered fragments of Can Themba’s life to make a composite being out of the various existing phenomena that shaped the contours of his life in both literary and literal senses. Given the disjunctive manner in which Can Themba and his work have been represented thus far, a combination of Historical and Biographical research methods will underpin the approach of this study. The resultant approach is the Historical-Biographical method of research. According to Guerin et al (2005, 22) the Historical-Biographical approach “sees the work chiefly, if not exclusively, as the reflection of author’s life and times or the life and times of the characters in the work.” This research is premised on the conviction that an individual is a constellation of multiple factors that play a pivotal role in the construction of their persona. These factors will be traced from his family background, early schooling, tertiary education, socio-economic conditions as well as his contribution to various newspapers and journals. While so much has been written about Themba and his work, there is no comprehensive biography of Can Themba as a person. Most importantly, the factors that contributed to his making as well as his breaking, or destruction, have not been interrogated in a form of comprehensive academic research. Rightly or wrongly, Themba’s meteoric rise into the South African literary canon is often traced from the moment he won the inaugural Drum Magazine short story competition. Themba became one of the most popular journalists and rose within the ranks of Drum to become the Assistant Editor. However, my research demonstrates that winning the Drum short story competition was the culmination of a literary talent that was developed and had been simmering for a number of years. Themba studied at the University of Fort Hare between 1945 and 1951 alongside the likes of Dennis Brutus, Ntsu Mokhehle, Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe, Mangosuthu Buthelezi, and many other prominent individuals. He was a regular contributor to The Fortharian, a university publication that published opinion pieces, poems and short stories. This is a vital component of Themba’s intellectual growth and it remains the least explored aspect of his life. As a result, what has been discursively documented by various scholars, writers and journalists, thus far, is a very parochial representation of Can Themba’s oeuvre.
English Studies
D. Litt. et Phil. (English Literature)

NOTE FROM THE LIBRARY: PLEASE CONTACT THE AUTHOR AT indisunflower@yahoo.com OR CONSULT THE LIBRARY FOR THE FULL TEXT OF THIS THESIS.... This thesis investigates the trajectory traced from Sarah Baartman, a Khoisan woman exploited in Europe during the nineteenth century, to a contemporary writing workshop with circumcised, immigrant West African women in Harlem New York by way of a selection of African women's memoirs. The selected African women's texts used in this work create a new testimony of speech, fragmenting a historically dominant Euro-American gaze on African women's bodies. The excerpts form a discursive space for reclaiming self and as well as a defiant challenge to Western porno-erotic voyeurism. The central premise of this thesis is that while investigating Eurocentric (a)historical narratives of Baartman, one finds an implicitly racist and sexist development of European language employed not solely with Baartman, but contemporaneously upon the bodies of Black women of Africa and its Diaspora, focusing predominantly on the "anomaly of their hypersexual" genitals. This particular language applied to the bodies of Black women extends into the discourse of Western feminist movements against African female circumcision in the 21st century. Nawal el Saadawi, Egyptian writer and activist and Aman, a Somali exile, write autobiographical texts which implode a western "silent/uninformed circumcised African woman" stereotype. It is through their documented life stories that these African women claim their bodies and articulate nationalist and cultural solidarity. This work shows that Western perceptions of Female Circumcision and African women will be juxtaposed with African women's perceptions of themselves. Ultimately, with the Nitiandika Writers Workshop in Harlem New York, the politicized outcome of the women who not only write their memoirs but claim a vibrant sexual (not mutilated or deficient) identity in partnership with their husbands, ask why Westerners are more interested in their genitals than how they are able to provide food, shelter and education for the their families, as immigrants to New York. The works of Saadawi, Aman and the Nitandika writers disrupt and ultimately destroy this trajectory of dehumanization through a direct movement from an assumed silence (about their bodies, their circumcisions and their status as women in Africa) to a directed, historically and culturally grounded "alter" speech of celebration and liberation.
English Studies
D. Litt. et Phil.(English)