Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Postcolonial feminist literature'

ABSTRACT OF THE THESIS RE-IMAGINING THE VICTORIAN CLASSICS: POSTCOLONIAL FEMINIST REWRITINGS OF EMILY BRONTË by Yannel M. Celestrin Florida International University, 2018 Miami, Florida Professor Martha Schoolman, Major Professor Through a post-structural lens, I will focus on the Caribbean, specifically Cuba, Guadeloupe, Marie-Galante, and Roseau, and how the history of colonialism impacted these islands. As the primary text of my thesis begins during the Cuban War of Independence of the 1890s, I will use this timeframe as the starting point of my analysis. In my thesis, I will compare Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heightsand Maryse Condé’s Windward Heights. Specifically, I will examine Condé’s processes of reimagining and rewriting Brontë’s narrative by deconstructing the notions of history, race, gender, and class. I will also explore ways in which Condé disrupts the hegemonic and linear notions of narrative temporality in an attempt to unsilence the voices of colonized subjects. I argue that Condé’s work is a significant contribution to the practice of rewriting as well as to the canon of Caribbean literary history. I argue that the very process of rewriting is a powerful mode of resistance against colonizing powers and hegemonic discourse.

Subjugated groups studied by discourses of feminism and postcolonialism are commonly oppressed by white, male, imperial power systems. As different marginalized groups are exploited by the same dominant ideology the disparate discourses should collaborate in an attempt to fight the powers of oppression en masse. This thesis will explore not only how feminism and postcolonialism should collaborate, but that they have already been doing so for hundreds of years. In the seventeenth century the playwright Aphra Behn was already exploring the discourses as inseparable, and three-hundred-years later, playwright Caryl Churchill continues to do the same. By studying conventions of drama throughout various theatre movements, such as Restoration and Epic theatre, I will show how class, gender, and race have always been cultural issues as long as Britain has had imperial status.

This dissertation explores postcolonial fiction that reflects the structural situation of a genocidal number of third-world women who are being trafficked for sexual purposes from postcolonial countries into the global north—invariably, gender, class and race play a crucial role in their exploitation. Above all, these women share a systemic disposability and invisibility, as the business relies on the victim’s illegality and criminality to generate maximum revenues. My research suggests that the presence of these abject women is not only recognized by ideological and repressive state apparatuses on every side of the trafficking scheme (in the form of governments, military establishments, juridical systems, transnational corporations, etc.) but is also understood as necessary for the current neoliberal model to thrive undisturbed by ethical imperatives. Beginning with the turn of the twentieth century, then, I analyze sexual slavery transnationally by looking at James Joyce’s “Eveline,” Therese Park’s A Gift of the Emperor, Mahasweta Devi’s “Douloti the Bountiful,” Amma Darko’s Beyond the Horizon, Chris Abani’s Becoming Abigail, and Roberto Bolaño’s 2666, concentrating on the political, economic, and social discourses in which the narratives are immersed through the lens of Marxist, feminist, and postcolonial theory. By interrogating these postcolonial narratives, my project reexamines the sex slave-trafficker-consumer triad in order to determine the effect of each party’s presence or absence from the text and the implications in terms of the discourses their representations may tacitly legitimize. At the same time, this work investigates the type of postcolonial stories the West privileges and the reasons, and the subjective role postcolonial theory plays in overcoming subaltern women’s exploitation within the current neocolonial context. Overall, I interrogate the role postcolonial literature plays as a means of achieving (or not) social change, analyze the purpose of artists in representing exploitative situations, identify the type of engagement readers have with these characters, and seek to understand audiences’ response to such literature. I look at authors who have attempted to discover fruitful avenues of expression for third-world women, who, despite increasingly constituting the bulk of the work force worldwide, continue to be exploited and, in the case of sex trafficking, brutally violated.

My dissertation maps the "scattered hegemonies" of the British Empire in the nineteenth-century British feminist utopian tradition. Beyond recovering this significant tradition of feminist thought and women's writing, my project considers the way these works both contest and replicate the dominant hegemony of the Victorian period. In the first chapter, "A Feminist Satirical Disutopia, Elizabeth Burgoyne Corbett's New Amazonia," I argue that New Amazoniais a satirical disutopiathat bears witness to the dystopic reality of women's status in nineteenth-century Britain. Through elliptical critiques of her own feminist utopia, Corbett creates a hybrid genre, enabling a multifaceted critique of her present and the space for theorizing a feminist future. The second chapter, "The Extinction of Patriarchy: F.E. Mills Young's War of the Sexes as a Parody of Patriarchy," considers the function of the gendered role-reversal in Young's feminist utopia. War of the Sexes, like New Amazonia, is less concerned with imagining an ideal future and focuses instead on exposing and investigating gendered oppression in the Victorian period. Through role-reversal, Young critiques the separate spheres doctrine that constructs gender difference and shows that the doctrine has deleterious effects on the nation's development. While both New Amazoniaand War of the Sexescritique gender inequality through role-reversal, Florence Dixie's Glorianadirectly addresses inequality through sustained gender performance. In "From Reform to Revolution: Gender Subversion in Florence Dixie's Gloriana," I aver that Dixie uses the title character's cross-dressing to undermine the gender roles created by the separate spheres doctrine. Throughout Gloriana, Dixie illustrates that gender is a social construction and that gendered oppression has a complex relationship to other intersecting forms of oppression, especially classism and imperialism. In "India as Feminist Utopia: Gender, Identity, and Nation in Amelia Garland Mears' Mercia," I demonstrate that Mears unlike Dixie, sees the scattered hegemonies of Victorian culture as too embedded to correct. Whereas Dixie's heroine starts a feminist revolution in Britain, Mears' heroine abandons England to find feminist utopia in India. Yet even as Mears replicates stereotypes and exoticizes the Other, she, like Dixie, recognizes the value of intersectional feminist critique. All four of these chapters highlight the heterogeneity of feminist thought to be found in nineteenth-century feminist utopias. Yet, even the most disparate visions of a feminist future respond to the same scattered hegemonies of the British Empire. In the conclusion, I bring two feminist utopias not traditionally categorized as British into the conversation: Annie Denton Cridge's Man's Rightsand Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain's Sultana's Dream. I include Cridge and Hossain as necessary components to complicate my analysis of the transnational flows of knowledge and the ways in which the scattered hegemonies of Empire continue to be replicated in Victorian literary studies and contemporary feminist thought in the Global North. I argue that the exclusion of works like Cridge's and Hossain's from the study of British literature further illustrates the persistent adherence to imperialistic nationalism in the Global North and point to a Global Anglophone feminist utopian tradition.

Abstract   The aim of this essay is to explain why Caryl Phillips presents Joyce as "the adopted daughter of Africa" at the end of Crossing the River (1993). This will be done by performing a close reading. This essay will focus on Joyce’s actions and behaviour. Aspects of feminism and postcolonial theory will act as the theoretic basis for the analysis. The analysis of Joyce’s character will be put in relation to the whole of Phillips’ “Black Atlantic” narrative and to gender and third wave feminist theories. The analysis will show that Joyce, by breaking racial norms, renouncing her faith, defying her mother, divorcing her husband, and falling in love with Travis, is the person who defines hope in the novel. Her character, together with her son Greer, shows a path to reconciliation between races in the aftermath of colonialism.

The purpose of this thesis is to examine the psychological development of South Asian masculinity in a diaspora that is depicted in Hanif Kureishi’s The Buddha of Suburbia and V.S. Naipaul’s The Mimic Men. Together, Kureishi and Naipaul construct a complete understanding of masculinity through childhood, adolescent, young adult, and adulthood. Chapter 1 explores the need to displace their father’s masculinity and seek better masculine models that align with the social norms of the diaspora. Chapter 2 establishes the motivation behind seeking peers to define the meaning of masculinity in a diaspora and the disadvantage of this pathway. Chapter 3 demonstrates two possible outcomes for South Asian men attempting to construct a secure masculinity. The difficulties these characters encounter when developing their identity is both a product of their diasporic environment and the lingering effect of colonization through the presence of hegemonic masculinity. They attempt to rectify the inadequacies in their masculinity by refuting a portion of their identity tied to being South Asian in order to better assimilate to the ideals of their diaspora. Ultimately, there are two possible consequences for South Asian men in a diaspora: one is to attempt to negotiate their position as a mixture of both the ideals of the diaspora and South Asian culture and the second is to continue to live a fragmented life of denying aspects of their identity tied to either the diaspora or South Asian culture.

Essa dissertação tem como objetivo analisar três livros de Lee Maracle, autora canadense de origem indígena, com base nas teorias autobiográficas, pós-coloniais e feministas, visitando brevemente a história canadense, para contextualizar a produção literária desta autora. A primeira publicação de Maracle ocorreu em 1975, com o lançamento de sua autobiografia Bobbi Lee Indian Rebel. Esta dissertação, entretanto, visa discutir a segunda edição desse livro, ampliada em 1990. A narrativa autobiográfica permite-nos conhecer as lutas, dificuldades e corrente situação dos povos indígenas canadenses, para que, no próximo momento possamos analisar a evolução da escrita de Maracle, na publicação de seus romances. Sundogs (1992) foi o primeiro romance da autora. Por meio de sua narradora em primeira pessoa, Marianne, Sundogs desdobra a trilha da jovem protagonista na busca de sua identidade indígena. O mais recente romance de Maracle, Daughters are Forever (2002), apresenta uma introdução mitológica da formação de Turtle Island, a América, baseada nas tradições orais indígenas. O romance narra a trajetória de Marilyn, uma assistente social, por volta de seus quarenta e cinco anos, que sofre pelo seu distanciamento de suas filhas, causado por sua própria maternidade inadequada. O nítido aperfeiçoamento das técnicas literárias ao longo dos anos, transforma Lee Maracle em uma das vozes de uma minoria oprimida que quebra o silêncio através da literatura indígena, denunciando a realidade de seu povo marginalizado há séculos
This dissertations objective is analyzing three books by Lee Maracle, First Nations Canadian author, based on postcolonial and feminist theories, briefly visiting the Canadian history, in order to contextualize Maracles literary production. Maracles first publication took place in 1975, with the release of her autobiography Bobbi Lee Indian Rebel. This dissertation, however, intends to discuss the second edition of this book, enlarged in 1990. The autobiographical narrative allows us to become familiar with the struggles, difficulties and actual situation of Canadian Indigenous peoples, which permits our subsequent analysis of the evolution of Maracles writing at the publication of her novels. Sundogs (1992) was the authors first novel. By the first-person narrator, Marianne, Sundogs unfolds the young protagonists search for her Indigenous identity. The latest novel by Maracle, Daughters are Forever (2002), presents a mythological introduction to the formation of Turtle Island, America, based on Native oral traditions. The novel narrates Marilyns trajectory, a mid-fifties social worker that suffers from her daughters distancing, due to her poor motherhood. The clear improvement of literary techniques along the years transforms Lee Maracle in one of the oppressed voices that breaks the silence through Indigenous literature, denouncing the reality of her, for centuries, marginalized people

This essay examines the use of literary theory when teaching literature before higher education. The objective isto see how and if the integration of literary theory facilitates students’ engagement with and understanding of literature. The study is conducted with the qualitative method of interviews. Four teachers, certified for upper secondary school, were deemed appropriate to interview about their current use of literary theory, as well as their attitudes towards an increased use of literary theory. Besides the data collected through interviews, this study finds its theoretical foundation in the literary theories feminist, Marxist and postcolonial theory as well as in the Swedish curriculum for English at upper secondary level. Presently, the teachers do not use literary theory distinctly; however, they do consider the use of literary theory together with literature to be beneficial for the students’ understanding of literature and the world around them. Teachers stated that while some students only will grasp the idea of the theories, other students will be able to use and apply them. The curriculum supports the use of literary theory in the core values for students of upper secondary level.

Canada has seen a veritable explosion in the production and popularity of historical fiction in recent decades. Works by women that present a feminist revision of national narratives have played a key part in this phenomenon. This thesis discusses three contemporary Canadian historical novels: Gil Adamson’s The Outlander (2007), Ami McKay’s The Birth House (2006), and Margaret Atwood’s Alias Grace (1996). By examining these novels through a settler colonial lens and with a specific interest in the critique of settler feminism, this thesis offers readings that can reveal how feminism operates within the confines of the settler fantasy. These readings suggest that women’s historical fiction offers an opportunity to consider different aspects of feminism in the settler setting and to consider different aspects of critiques of patriarchy in settler contexts. This thesis suggests that these novels present a settler women’s history that cannot be properly understood through the simplistic logic of male/female or colonizer/colonized oppositions, and that the ways the novels depict women’s interactions with patriarchal settler structures and institutions can contribute to critical understandings of a colonial history with which Canada continues to reckon.

This essay analyses Burnt Shadows (2009) by Kamila Shamsie from a postcolonial feminist perspective, with a focus on agency of women, representation and re-presentation, and cultural stereotypes. The degree of agency in the main characters Hiroko, Elizabeth and Kim is discussed, followed by an analysis of the re-presentation of Indian, Pakistani and Arab Muslim women characters in the text, with a focus on homogenisation and voice. Moreover, suggestions of how to teach Burnt Shadows with a postcolonial (and) feminist lens within the course English 6 in the Swedish upper secondary school EFL classroom are discussed. It is concluded that Hiroko, Elizabeth and Kim have voice and agency to various degrees. Moreover, it is stated that Indian, Pakistani and Arab Muslim women are re-presented in a stereotypical and homogenising way, and their lack of voice obstruct the possibilities of regarding these characters from a contextual, historical, and cultural perspective. The pedagogical framework concludes that Burnt Shadows can be used to study postcolonial feminist theory in the EFL classroom. Given that the teacher is open-minded, inclusive and objective, the teaching can pursue equality and solidarity in line with the fundamental values of the Swedish upper secondary school.

This dissertation examines how postcoloniality affects identity formation in contemporary women's immigrant literature. In order to do so, it must interrogate the critical fields that are most interested in issues of national and cultural identities, migration, and the appropriation of women by both Western and postcolonial projects. By examining the fiction of Bharati Mukherjee, Elizabeth Nunez, and Jhumpa Lahiri through the triple lens of ethnic American studies, postcolonial theory, and transnational feminism, I will argue that theorizing postcolonial women's writing in the United States involves sustained analysis of how particular socio-political experiences are translated into the context of American identity. I am particularly interested in the manner in which female subjects in these texts navigate between the various and often contradictory demands placed on them by their respective homeland cultures and their new immigrant positions in the United States. Although each of these writers depict immigrant women protagonists who adapt to these demands in their own particular ways, a study of these characters' gendered and cultural identities reveals a powerful relationship between the manner in which women are figured into the preservation of the postcolonial nation-state and the ways in which these women utilize immigration as an occasion to appropriate and subvert this role in the establishment of a new, negotiated identity. This project draws on three important and current fields of interest to both cultural and literary studies. Postcolonial studies, which has been central to the study of literature by minority writers, provides a useful foundation for understanding hybrid identities, dislocation, and the ways in which empire gave rise to nationalisms that utilized women in the formation and preservation of the nation-state. Transnational feminist theories are critical to understanding the implications of nationalism's appropriation of women and their bodies in it projects, and are especially useful in establishing feminisms that are not limited by American or European definitions and that defy homogenizing the experiences of postcolonial women. They affirm that there are many strategies for employing female agency, and that we must consider the particular circumstances (economic, cultural, racial, national, gender) that allow women of color to favor one strategy over another. Finally, U.S. Ethnic studies will inform my readings of texts that are, at their core, narratives of immigration to the United States and the seeking out of the American Dream. However, this dissertation suggests, the precarious position of immigrants in a nation whose ideals and dominating mythology are marred by a dark history of racism and exclusionary practices plays an important role in the establishment of an ethnic American identity in the United States.

As the title suggests, this essay is a feminist and postcolonial literary analysis of the main character Okonkwo´s downfall and demise in acclaimed author Chinua Achebe´s 1958 novel, Things Fall Apart. A recurrent theme within the narrative is the concept of gender differences and gender roles, in the strict traditional and patriarchal system which serves as the setting of the narrative. Okonkwo, who is a traditional and proud Igbo man, has an aversion toward what is considered to be weak and feminine. Okonkwo is therefore struck with depression when he finds himself in a weak and helpless position, as well as emasculated emotional state of mind. Furthermore, Okonkwo becomes a victim to colonialism in the latter part of the narrative, which consequently adds to his already helpless and emasculated state of mind. The purpose with this essay is therefore to investigate if feelings of emasculation are the cause for Okonkwo´s final decision to end his own life. Based upon the analysis included in this essay, one of the conclusions that could be drawn was that the helplessness and feelings of emasculation Okonkwo experiences within the narrative are too much for him to cope with and therefore cause his downfall and demise.

Cette étude de la littérature kenyane, qui concerne principalement des auteurs féminins, a comme postulat que les écrivaines du Kenya, bien que prolifiques, ont été pendant très longtemps négligées par la critique littéraire et souvent étudiées dans le cadre de la littérature feminine du soi-disant “tiers monde.” Leur spécificité était ainsi occultée. Cette étude entreprend de remédier à cette situation en faisant une analyse détaillée de quelques romans représentatifs tout en utilisant le genre romanesque comme document social reflétant la position de la femme dans la société kenyane. Le roman, qui est ici le document principal, est donc examiné en tant qu’outil culturel. Etant donné le nombre élevé de romans écrits par des auteures kenyanes, cette étude utilise une méthodologie orientée vers des cas, sélectionnant les romans les plus représentatifs de la littérature féminine kenyane. Ces textes recouvrent une longue période allant des premières publications romanesques dans les années 60, juste après l’indépendance du Kenya, jusqu’au début du millénaire.Les théories utilisées dans cette analyse émanent des études postcoloniales, des “cultural studies,” et des études de genre. Cette étude fournit donc un survol détaillé du roman féminin kenyan, qui ambitionne de susciter des études semblables sur les écrivaines du Kenya mais également d’autres pays de l’Afrique de l’Est et, de manière plus large, du continent africain
This study of Kenyan literature, which focuses specifically on female writers, is based on the premise that female writers, though prolific, have for a long time been neglected by literary critics, and even when focused upon, are lumped together with other so-called ‘Third world’ female writers. Thus, the idiosyncrasies in their particular works are very often overlooked. This study seeks to correct this by undertaking an in-depth study of each of the novels explored, while at the same time using each of them to undertake a study of the Kenyan society with particular attention to the situation of the woman as depicted in the texts. The novel, which is here the primary source, is examined as a cultural tool. Given the large number of novels that have been written by Kenyan women writers, this study uses a case-oriented methodology to select a few novels that are used as representative samples for Kenyan writing by women. The texts selecte! d cover a long time period; published from the mid-sixties just after Kenya’s independence, to the outset of the present millennium. The study is guided by theories that are drawn from postcolonial studies, cultural studies, and gender studies. It is our hope that this study gives a comprehensive state of the art survey on the Kenyan novel, with a specific focus on the state of the Kenyan woman, thus clearing the way for similar studies to be carried out on women writers not only in Kenya, but in the other countries in the East African region and the African continent at large

Created at the end of the nineteenth century, Sherlock Holmes has remained a regular feature of popular culture for now more than a century. However, versions of the detective that have appeared in recent years are strikingly different from the character created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, while some characteristics remain similar. This dissertation examines the persistence of Holmes as a function of copyright management that matched shifting literary expectations, following this with an exploration of three categories of discourse in which contemporary Holmes texts participate: feminism, postcolonialism, and neurodiversity. It first locates Holmes's difference from prior detectives in his humanist characteristics and then demonstrates that a restrictive character management strategy shared by Conan Doyle and his sons, the subsequent rights-holders, constructed a base version of the character. When the copyright passed out of their hands, the new owners' more permissive attitudes toward using Holmes matched popular interest in deconstructing characters and ideas, allowing for a variety of new approaches to the detective. The second half of the dissertation explores some of these new approaches, beginning with critiques of Holmes's masculinist, misogynist science that are exposed and repaired through new texts. Following that, a pair of postcolonial texts demonstrates contrasting styles of handling the detective's imperial associations, and a final discussion of Holmes as a neurologically different individual brings him to both neurodiversity and disability studies. Authors' deployment of the detective can contain complex narratives, and while these texts are fascinating the dissertation will conclude with a note of concern regarding their continuing popularity.

This essay investigates Jamaica Kincaid´s the book Annie John (1985) and its protagonist Annie John´s search for a coherent self-and/or a de-colonized identity through a subject transformation. Using postcolonial feminism, including theorists such as Homi K. Bhabha and Stuart Hall, I suggest that the protagonist Annie John does not perform a subject transformation as she is unable to embrace the state of hybridity needed to perform such a transformation. Annie John is a colonial subject drawn to the two worlds in which she resided, the East and West- and cannot create herself in the presence of them both. I conclude that Annie John´s mother, under the influence of colonialism and patriarchy, is part reason as to why Annie John is unable to perform this transformation. With the help of postcolonial feminism, I find that as Annie John cannot recover her mother from this double oppression of colonialism and patriarchy. The conclusion of this essay proposes that the protagonist Annie John does not manage to create a subject formation as she is not able to reside in a state of hybridity between her own culture and that of her colonizer.

In my thesis, I examine Aminata Sow Fall's sixth novel Douceurs du bercail "The Sweetness of Home" through three lenses: race, gender, and nature. I analyze the way Sow Fall approaches each of these three areas in terms of paradox to emphasize her understanding of the complexity of these issues and her reluctance to outline them rigidly. Instead of putting forth hard opinions about how race, gender, or nature should be understood, Sow Fall exhibits a propensity to allow each area to remain complicated. I study why she allows racial, gendered, and environmental paradoxes to circulate around one another in her text rather than attempting to resolve them, concluding that she uses this strategy both as an organizing principle and as an invitation to her readers to question the extant theories surrounding these three issues. Sow Fall's use of language in all three areas signals an underlying fascination with the paradoxes inherent in each. In the chapter on race, I discuss the contrasting narrative styles Sow Fall uses to describe European airport officials versus the protagonist Asta's best friend, a French woman named Anne. Sow Fall's language is significant here because she contrasts two white Europeans, one characterized as systematic and cold, the other warm and open, respectively. I also discuss the way Sow Fall uses an informal and lethargic narrative voice to characterize a black secretary living in Senegal, further highlighting the disconnect between the two racial groups. In the chapter on feminism, I discuss a shift in Asta's language as she becomes more assertive. I also analyze the various aspects of femininity in Douceurs du bercail which have led some scholars to carry out feminist readings of the text, such as Asta's decision to leave her domineering and abusive husband, but recognize the more traditional aspects of the novel, such as Asta's marriage to Babou at Naatangué, as problematic to a purely feminist reading of the text. In the chapter on nature, I study Sow Fall's problematic use of Westernized language to describe the development of the untouched land of Naatangué into a lucrative farm. Throughout the chapters, I interpret Naatangué as the ultimate paradoxical space which is at once wrought with complicated language and conflicting ideals yet acts as a quasi-paradise where Asta and her friends balance the conflicting forces of tradition and modernity. Naatangué also acts as an organizing principle where all three areas of my study intersect.

Uloga žena u postkolonijalnoj književnostiprilično je složena: svojim delima one dovode upitanje kako imperijalni tako i patrijarhalnisistem vrednosti i viziju sveta. Kako je iskustvožena u patrijarhatu umnogome nalik iskustvukolonizovanog subjekta, i postkolonijalna ifeministička teorija bave se sličnim pitanjima,pre svega razobličavanjem mehanizama kojimase žena i kolonizovani konstruišu kao inferiorniDrugi. Obe teorije bave se pitanjemreprezentacije kao ključnog fenomena uformiranju identiteta, kao i idejom vraćanjaglasa marginalizovanima i ućutkanima. Cilj ovestudije je da ukaže na način na koji suknjiževnice poreklom iz bivših kolonijadoživele lik žene u književnosti XIX i XX veka,kao i na ulogu književnosti, posebno evropskihklasika, u formiranju ženskog subjektiviteta. Odposebnog značaja je i razmatranje iskustvadvostruke kolonizacije žena koje upostkolonijalnom svetu postaju žrtve kakokolonijalne, tako i rodne represije. Džin Ris,Doris Lesing, Džamejka Kinkejd, Arundati Roj,Ivon Vera i Đampa Lahiri razbijaju mitove oženskom identitetu i progovaraju o ropskomkarakteru nametnutih stereotipa o majčinstvu,ženskom telu i seksualnosti, o polu, rasnoj iklasnoj pripadnosti, kao i o značajnimaspektima društveno-političke realnostipostkolonijalnog sveta. Razlike u njihovojnacionalnoj, klasnoj i rasnoj pripadnostiomogućavaju široku analizu društvenopolitičkogmiljea postkolonijalnih društava iuloge koju ta društva namenjuju ženi.
Uloga žena u postkolonijalnoj književnostiprilično je složena: svojim delima one dovode upitanje kako imperijalni tako i patrijarhalnisistem vrednosti i viziju sveta. Kako je iskustvožena u patrijarhatu umnogome nalik iskustvukolonizovanog subjekta, i postkolonijalna ifeministička teorija bave se sličnim pitanjima,pre svega razobličavanjem mehanizama kojimase žena i kolonizovani konstruišu kao inferiorniDrugi. Obe teorije bave se pitanjemreprezentacije kao ključnog fenomena uformiranju identiteta, kao i idejom vraćanjaglasa marginalizovanima i ućutkanima. Cilj ovestudije je da ukaže na način na koji suknjiževnice poreklom iz bivših kolonijadoživele lik žene u književnosti XIX i XX veka,kao i na ulogu književnosti, posebno evropskihklasika, u formiranju ženskog subjektiviteta. Odposebnog značaja je i razmatranje iskustvadvostruke kolonizacije žena koje upostkolonijalnom svetu postaju žrtve kakokolonijalne, tako i rodne represije. Džin Ris,Doris Lesing, Džamejka Kinkejd, Arundati Roj,Ivon Vera i Đampa Lahiri razbijaju mitove oženskom identitetu i progovaraju o ropskomkarakteru nametnutih stereotipa o majčinstvu,ženskom telu i seksualnosti, o polu, rasnoj iklasnoj pripadnosti, kao i o značajnimaspektima društveno-političke realnostipostkolonijalnog sveta. Razlike u njihovojnacionalnoj, klasnoj i rasnoj pripadnostiomogućavaju široku analizu društvenopolitičkogmilјea postkolonijalnih društava iuloge koju ta društva namenjuju ženi.

I den här studien analyseras 16 kvinnors självframställningar i antologin Sverige – en (o)besvarad kärlekshistoria ur ett postkolonialt feministiskt perspektiv där mellanförskap och identitet är centrala teman. Syftet med analysen är att finna hur den besvarade alternativt obesvarade kärleken till Sverige blir synliga i författarnas texter och hur det har påverkat dem. Texterna har jämförts med varandra för att finna olika mönster. Framträdande mönster är kritiken av dikotomiskt tänkande, ett tankesätt som har försatt kvinnorna i ett mellanförskap där majoriteten av dem inte känner en besvarad kärlek från Sverige. Kvinnorna har haft olika sätt att hantera sitt mellanförskap. För somliga av dem har det inneburit problem med att känna tillhörighet och för andra har mellanförskapet varit positivt eftersom det har blivit en styrka att se sin identitet som mångkulturell. Vidare ger studien förslag på hur undervisningen på olika sätt kan stärka elever i mellanförskap genom bland annat gemensam litteraturläsning med postkolonial feministisk teori som utgångspunkt.

Fokus för avhandlingen, Att uttrycka det mänskliga: narrativ etik i Nuruddin Farah’s trilogier, är de nio romaner publicerade mellan 1979 och 2011 som tillsammans utgör Nuruddin Farah’s tre trilogier: ”Variations on the Theme of an African Dictatorship,” bestående av Sweet and Sour Milk (1979), Sardines (1981), Close Sesame (1983); “Blood in the Sun,” bestående av Maps (1986), Gifts (1993), Secrets (1998); samt “Past Imperfect,” bestående av Links (2003), Knots (2007), Crossbones (2011). Tematiska och stilistiska skillnader till trots så är dessa trilogier och romaner märkbart sammanhängande i sitt fokus. De är inte bara tydligt förankrade i en somalisk verklighet som spänner över mer än tre decennier – en resa som inbegriper landets skifte från kommunisitstyre, via diktatur, till inbördeskrig, och 2010-talets version med islamistiskt styre och pirater som härjar kustregionen – men dessa romaner pekar genomgående bortom sin tydliga socio-politiska kontext mot djupt etiska, tid- och rumsoberoende frågeställningar: Hur förhåller sig individen till kollektivet? Vilket etiskt ansvar har jaget för den andre? Vad utgör grunden för människans gemensamma varande? Hur bevara sin mänsklighet under omänskliga levnadsförhållanden? Hur göra motstånd i en diktatur utan att bli en del i det maskineri av våld och tyranni man söker bekämpa? Trots det tydligt etiska anslaget så har dessa trilogier nästan uteslutande lästs utifrån sina politiska implikationer. Utan att undervärdera decennier av rikt och varierande kritiskt mottagande så har denna tendens till politiska läsningar ofta genererat förvånansvärt entydiga läsningar av verk kända för sin mångtydighet och komplexitet. Avhandlingen avser därför att påvisa djupet och bredden i Farah’s gestaltningar genom att tydligt belysa hur det etiska gestaltar sig på flera nivåer – tematiskt, berättartekniskt, i mötet mellan läsare och text, samt i föreställningar om författarens moraliska ansvar. Därutöver diskuteras även de etiska dimensionerna av litteraturkritik: vad innebär en etiskt hållen läsemetodik? Arbetets unika bidrag kan formuleras i fyra steg. För det första utgör avhandlingen det ända kända arbete – utöver Fiona F. Moola’s Reading Nuruddin Farah: The Individual, the Novel, and the Idea of Home (2014) – som inbegriper Farah’s alla trilogier, vilket möjliggör mer långtgående och genomgripande analyser än vad som hittills publicerats. Avhandlingens fokus på den senaste trilogin fyller dessutom en viktig lucka i det kritiska mottagandet av Farah’s romaner eftersom väldigt lite publicerats utöver recensioner. Förutom nya läsningar av Farah så utgör min emfas på det etiska i Farah’s etisk-politiska skrivande ett viktigt bidrag till det vidare fält av (afrikansk) (postkolonial) litteraturkritik där man ofta betonat det politiska över det etiska, snarare än att läst dessa två som oskiljaktiga entiteter. Trots att anledningarna till politiska läsningar av Farah’s trilogier kan härledas såväl till verkens starkt politiska nerv som författarens egna uttalanden i intervjuer och artiklar, så pekar privilegieringen av det politiska framför det etiska på en mer generell tendens inom postkolonial kritik att inrymma det etiska under det politiska. Trots att kopplingen mellan fiktion, politik och författaransvar inte kan avfärdas, hävdar jag i denna avhandling att ett ensidigt politisk angreppssätt hotar att såväl underskatta komplexiteten i romanernas gestaltningar, som att reducera konceptuellt vad författare som Farah faktiskt åstadkommer. För det andra så vidgar avhandlingen befintlig forskning kring det etiska i Farah’s romaner genom att inte endast fokusera på tematik och berättartekniska grepp, men också diskutera läsandet och skrivandet – det som i avhandlingen beskrivs som fyra sammanlänkande ”ethical moments of the told, the telling, the act of writing, the act of reading.” Utan att undervärdera tidgare kritiska läsningar så tycks många diskussioner kring Farah’s trilogier fokusera författarens centralitet på ett vis som emellanåt tar fokus från i övrigt tankeväckande läsningar av tematik och narrativa strategier. Min högst textcentrerade utgångspunkt visar som kontrast att läsningen av Farah’s trilogier genererar spörsmål som kräver ett mer holistiskt perspektiv, inte minst tydliga diskussioner kring den etiska dialog som uppstår i mötet mellan läsare och text. Förutom att bidra till befintlig forskning på Farah’s författarskap, så bidrar avhandlingens holistiska inställning till narrativ etik med fem sammanlänkade perspektiv till det vidare fältet av etisk litteraturkritik. Dels beror detta på det faktum att en sådan modell förutsätter användandet av multipla tolkningsmodeller; i mitt fall kontinental filosofi, postkolonial teori, samt narratologiska teorier kring läsande och mottagande. Denna interdisciplinära modell för narrativ etik är dock inte begränsad till min specifika sammansättning utan kan fungera som modell även för andra litteraturforskare, med alternativa kombinationer av tänkare och teoretiker. Till sist; trots att det inte varit ett uttalat mål från projektets början så har arbetet med det etiska i Farah’s trilogier generarat många funderingar kring den egna läsningen som efterhand lett till formulering av nya narratologiska perspektiv. Här utgör mötet mellan text och läsare en central del i avhandlingen. Genom att betona de etiska elementen i mötet mellan text och läsare närmar jag mig spörsmål som i förlängningen kan ses som byggstenar i en mera etiskt hållen läsemetodik. I stället för att tolka ”störande” element som exempel på estetiska brister, alternativt brister i författarens moraliska ansvarstagande (!) så menar jag att de aspekter som irriterar läsaren, försvårar eller rent av omöjliggör förståelse mycket väl kan vara de ting i texten som tvingar läsaren till en mera engagerad och därmed etiskt mer välgrundad läsning. Att läsa textens ”krux” i termer av ”ethical resource” utgör ett viktigt bidrag till såväl litteratur-filosofisk som narratologisk litteraturforskning, eftersom man ofta hamnat i endera värderande samtal kring ”god litteratur” eller i resonemang kring vilka narrativa element/strategier som väcker läsarens engagemang, empati, etc – och vilka som inte gör det.
This study explores the multiple ethical dimensions of the nine novels published between 1979 and 2011 that together constitute Nuruddin Farah’s three trilogies Variations on the Theme of an African Dictatorship, including Sweet and Sour Milk (1979), Sardines (1981), and Close Sesame (1983); Blood in the Sun, including Maps (1986), Gifts (1993), and Secrets (1998); and Past Imperfect, including Links (2003), Knots (2007), and Crossbones (2011). For all that separate these trilogies and novels thematically and stylistically, they are remarkably consistent in their enquiry. While firmly rooted in the geo-political particulars of Somalia, these novels stage human experience in ways that cut across time and place, inviting the reader to ponder a plethora of questions of profoundly ethical import: How can one remain human in the face of extreme adversities? How can one resist oppression in all its forms without becoming a perpetrator of that which one seeks to resist? What role may violence or non-violence have in seeking to see justice done? How far does responsibility for the other reach? How may dehumanizing forces be resisted in ways that preserve and even restore human dignity? By privileging the ethical in Farah’s ethico-political writing, the study draws attention to voices and perspectives that have gone unnoticed in previous readings, where political perspectives have dominated. Not only does a sustained analytical focus on how human dignity is valued, protected, preserved and even restored call for re-assessments of concepts such as ‘freedom,’ ‘resistance,’ and ‘moral responsibility.’ but the thesis’ highly text-centered approach has in the process of writing proved that Farah’s trilogies generate questions that demand a fuller exploration than what has hitherto been possible with a more limited emphasis on themes and narrative strategies. The use of a model in which five ‘ethical moments’ are explored thus allows for more extensive conclusions to be drawn, both regarding the ethics emerging in the trilogies themselves (‘ethics of the told,’ ‘ethics of telling’ and ‘ethics of writing’), in reading practices and critical reception (‘ethics of reading’), and my own research practice (‘ethics of method’). Ultimately, the study’s explorations of themes, narrative strategies, author’s responsibilities and critical response elucidate how Farah’s trilogies escape any narrow definition of what (African) (postcolonial) literature is or should be. By privileging the ethical trajectory – without losing sight of the strong political impetus of Farah’s writing – significant stories and perspectives surface that are no less political in their outlook than more conventional readings of “resistance writing.” By drawing on continental philosophy (Lévinas, Cavarero and Butler), narrative theory and postcolonial studies, this study brings fresh perspectives to bear on both familiar and less well-known material, while also contributing to new methodological frameworks within narrative ethics and new theoretical perspectives within narrative theory, not least as reflected in the final chapter’s discussion of imaginative challenges.

L'esclavage constitue le chronotope de "Tituba" de M. Condé et de "Beloved" de T. Morrison. Il est un héritage paradigmatique dans les autres œuvres de ces auteures, ainsi que chez Alice Walker et Gisèle Pineau, déterminant les rapports raciaux contemporains. La fragmentation du corps esclave convoque le motif de la couture, entre tissage conteur, re-membrement du corps social, et reconfiguration d'une tâche traditionnellement féminine. La mise en exergue du pouvoir performatif des mots des maîtres rappelle l’historicité et la dimension politique de l'invention du racisme dans le régime plantocratique. L'exemple de la beauté féminine et de sa racialisation illustre l'intrication complexe de la construction du genre et de la race. Mais le récit du passé esclavagiste, s'il peut éclairer et expliquer le présent, n'est fait qu'au prix d'un combat douloureux contre divers processus de refoulements, individuels et collectifs. Si "Beloved" et "La couleur Pourpre" rappellent le rôle essentiel de la réminiscence, "Paradis", "Morne Câpresse" et "Heremakhonon" mettent en scène des hypertrophies mémorielles problématiques ou drolatiques. La critique de la prétention historienne à l'objectivité y participe d'une remise en cause globale de la scientificité et de l'héritage des Lumières. Les ambivalences de la postmémoire s'opposent à la sacralisation contemporaine de la littérature mémorielle ou testimoniale, et la hantise postcoloniale se donne à voir sous un jour nouveau, ironique. L'analyse des maternités dialectiques dans "Beloved", "Tituba" ou "Rosie Carpe" permet de réfléchir le lien entre narration de la nation, racialisation de la maternité et contrôle du corps des femmes. Une lecture des œuvres du corpus à l'aune du concept d'intersectionnalité permet d'envisager une déconstruction globale de la féminité libérée de l'injonction à la sexualité reproductive. Au croisement du pouvoir de donner la vie et de son refus, le personnage de la sage-femme est récurrent. Souvent accusée de sorcellerie, elle nourrit une mythologie féminine qui peut retourner le stigmate magique. Fruit de rivalités dans les champs médicaux et religieux, la figure de la sorcière chez Toni Morrison, Maryse Condé ou Marie NDiaye est une invention interculturelle dont la force performative et parodique ébranle les catégories littéraires. Issus du traumatisme de l'esclavage, les romans étudiés esquissent les contours d'utopies concrètes. Leur dimension totalitaire et séparatiste cependant se révèle dans le visage grimaçant de l'espérance eschatologie contemporaine : la secte. Si la projection dans le futur semble ainsi dérisoire, le retour en un espace premier, refuge utérin et remontée dans le temps, s'abîme dans l'impossibilité du retour en Afrique. La Négritude césairienne est ainsi mise à distance, tandis que les espoirs de la Créolité semblent battus en brèche par une littérature récusant l'utopie post-raciale. Les migrations contemporaines et les douleurs de la condition exilique sont narrées sans idéalisation de la mobilité, tandis que les stratégies narratives des auteures diffèrent, tout en se retrouvant dans un désir de révéler en même temps que de dépasser la ligne de couleur
Slavery is the chronotope of "Tituba" by M. Condé and "Beloved" by T. Morrison. Slavery is a paradigmatic heritage in other novels by these authors, as well as in Alice Walker's and Gisèle Pineau's art ; it determines the contemporary racial relationships. The splitting up of the slave's body calls to mind the pattern of sewing, narrative weaving, re-membering of the social body, and reinventing a traditionally feminine work. The highlighting of performative power of the master's words reminds us the historicity and the politic aspect of the invention of racism in the plantation system. The example of women's beauty and its racialization illustrates the complicated co-construction of gender and race. The writing of past history of slavery points out and explains the present time, but it requires a painful fight against various processes of individual and collective repression. "Beloved" and "The Color Purple" remind us of the importance of rememory, while "Paradise", "Morne Câpresse" and "Heremakhonon" tell about memory in excess. The criticism of historian claim for objectivity belongs to a global questioning of science on the one hand, and of the heritage of Enlightenment on the other. The ambivalences of postmemory confront the contemporary sacralization of memorial and testimonial literature. Postcolonial haunting is seen in a nex light, quite ironic. The analysis of dialectic motherhood in "Beloved", "Tituba" or "Rosie Carpe" allows us to conceptualise the link between national storytelling, racialization of motherhood and political control of women's bodies. Reading and analysing the novels with the concept of intersectionality shows a global deconstruction of womanhood, freed from the stress of reproductive sexuality. At the crossroad of women's power to give birth and death, the midwife is a recurring character. The midwife is often accused of being a witch, and she belongs to a feminine mythology that can turn the stigma around. The witch is born from rivalry in both religious and medical fields. In Toni Morrison's, Maryse Condé's or Marie Ndiaye's novels, the witch is an intercultural invention ; her parodic and performative strength undermines literary categories. Born from the trauma of slavery, the novels outline the pattern of concrete utopias. The totalitarian and separatist aspect of these utopias appears in the grinning face of the contemporary eschatological hope: the sect. Therefore any hope of a better future seems to be ridiculous ; when the return to a primary space, turning back in time, is dying in the impossible way back to Africa. The "Négritude" of Aimé Césaire is dismissed, and so are the hopes of "Créolité", by a literature that rejects post-racial utopia. There is not any idealization of movement in these novels, which tell contemporary migrations and pains of exile condition. Although the narrative strategies are different, they all intend to expose and overcome the color line

With evidence ranging from visual representations by scanning tunneling microscopes to the fluid and dynamic language of poetry, my research shows that we are shifting from a culture primarily based on ‘sight’ to one that is involved with ‘touch,’ metaphorically and literally speaking. Recent developments in theory and technology, especially quantum physics and post-structuralism, have redefined representation to encompass the necessary reflex of the representer. To be sure, my research has also found feminist and postcolonial criticisms to echo this theory: both have sought to challenge representations due to the objectivity normally attributed to the representer, the Cartesian logic of which quantum theory has destabilized. Thus, by reading poetry with a quantum theoretical lens, specifically the works of Gertrude Stein, Marianne Moore, Anne Carson, and Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, I show how ‘touch’ plays into our language, consequently affecting how we think through language.
Master of Arts

This dissertation comprises an exploration of the concept of home and its link to propriety as it was imposed on women, focussing specifically on Jane Eyre and Villette by Charlotte Bronte. These novels share a preoccupation with notions of 'home' and what this means to the female protagonists. The process of writing on the part of the author, Charlotte Bronte, and the act of first-person narration on the part of the two female protagonists, Jane Eyre and Lucy Snowe, is significant in that the "muted culture" of women (Showalter 1999: xx) of the nineteenth century was given authorial and authoritative power in their stories. Questions of identity and location developed from Jane Eyre's and Lucy Snowe's being orphans, penniless and without homes. Subsequently issues of ownership and self-sufficiency emerged in their stories, all of which found particular focus in the home. This "muted culture", examined through the theories of marxism and new historicism, is also illuminated by a feminist analysis of Jane Eyre and Villette which reveals that the marginal female figures are entitled to, or deserving of, the privileges of home and selfhood only once they have made some sacrifice for this "unthinkable goal of mature freedom" (Gilbert & Gubar 2000:339). The exploration of 'home' finds resonance in a post-colonial context, as Bronte encompassed marginal figures in her society who remained homeless, bereft of their stories due to the effect of drastically "interrupted experiences" (Ndebele 1996: 28) in the process of identity formation. The situated analysis of the concept of home operates in two contexts in this thesis, that of nineteenth-century Britain and twentieth-century South Africa. Njabulo Ndebele states that South Africans have been marked by the experience of homelessness, "The loss of homes! It is one of the greatest of South African stories yet to be told" (1996: 28-9). By drawing on Bronte to illuminate the concept of home, a South African reader is able to further an understanding of the multi-faceted nature of this concept and to see that the new possibilities claimed for marginal figures at the periphery may have their origins in the representation of an earlier woman writer's "double-edged" (Eagleton 1988: 73) representation of 'home' .
Thesis (M.A.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, 2005.

This is an investigation into the ways that postmodern theories and feminist theories have both failed to learn from each other and yet also reveal the blindness' implicit in each other. Postmodern theory has consistently failed to engage gender in any significant way and feminist theory has consisted failed to find the usefulness of the methods and questions posed by postmodern theorists. Both approaches have failed to address the very real and important perspectives of the post colonial others who have been addressing the questions of race, gender, history, and agency for hundred of years. The second half of this investigation looks specifically at the work of three African American women writers, Toni Morrison, Gloria Naylor and Gayle Jones, in their most recent work. All three novels, Beloved, Mama Day and Corregidora are historical novels concerned with the legacy of slavery, and these narratives themselves exceed all the expectation for postmodern theory and feminist theory in inviting us to understand the relationship between history, memory and the now. In effect the work of these writers succeeds in "theorizing the present" in ways that both feminism and postmodernism fail.

The Subaltern Clinic explores a certain legacy of unreason that Sigmund Freud identified throughout the course of his writings as the "death drive," or the compulsion to repeat. In Freud's work, the death drive is often thought as the opposite of the pleasure principle, which situates the pleasure-unpleasure binary at the center of psychoanalytical thinking and Freud's conceptualization of the psyche as well as morality, ethics, and civilization. The Subaltern Clinic traces a legacy of the death drive and a series of thematic concerns that emerge from it, specifically the instability of the pleasure-unpleasure binary that ostensibly upholds the "principle of reason," through a colonial-postcolonial archive. In doing so, the dissertation attends to those subaltern figures who are constituted as the "unreason" of society, particularly the mentally ill, women, and homosexuals.

In particular, the dissertation looks to the intersection of psychoanalysis and deconstruction, specifically to Jacques Derrida's engagements with Freud's "Beyond the Pleasure Principle," to argue that deconstruction needs to be thought of as a marginal and politicized form of psychoanalytic thinking, the stakes of which emerge through Derrida's readings of Freud's death drive. The dissertation follows the thread of these readings to consider the problems of difference, violence, sadism and masochism, and anxiety in the work of colonial and postcolonial practitioners of psychoanalysis as well as postcolonial artists and novelists. The Subaltern Clinic makes the argument that an attention to the legacy of the death drive in the postcolonial archive allows for a more robust critique of postcolonial reason, which would attend to questions of ethics and aesthetics.

Dissertation

This dissertation explores how the contemporary Anglophone novel asks its readers to imagine and respond to disposable life as it emerges in our present-day biopolitical landscape. As the project frames it, disposable life is not just life that is disposed of; it is life whose disposal is routine and unremarkable, even socially and legally sanctioned for such purposes as human consumption, scientific knowledge-production, and economic and political gain. In the novels considered, disposability is tied to excess--to the "too many" who cannot be counted, much less individuated on a case-by-case basis.

This project argues that the contemporary novel forces a global readership to confront the mechanisms of devaluing life that are part of everyday existence. And while the factory-farmed animal serves as the example of disposable life par excellence, this project frames disposability as a form of normalized violence that has the power to operate across species lines to affect the human as well. Accordingly, each chapter examines the contemporary condition of disposability via a different figure of disposable life: the nonhuman (the animal in J. M. Coetzee's The Lives of Animals and Disgrace), the replicated human (the clone in David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas and Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go), the woman (in Margaret Atwood's MaddAddam trilogy), and the postcolonial subject (the victim of industrial disaster in Indra Sinha's Animal's People and political violence in Michael Ondaatje's Anil's Ghost). Chapter by chapter, the dissertation demonstrates how the contemporary novel both exposes the logic and operations of disposability, and, by mobilizing literary techniques like intertextual play and uncanny narration, offers up a set of distinctively literary solutions to it.

The dissertation argues that the contemporary novel disrupts the workings of disposability by teaching its audience to read differently--whether, for instance, by destabilizing the reader's sense of mastery over the text or by effecting paradigm shifts in the ethical frameworks the reader brings to bear on the encounter with the literary work. Taken together, the novels discussed in this dissertation move their readership away from a sympathetic imagination based on the potential substitutability of the self for the other and toward a form of readerly engagement that insists on preserving the other's irreducible difference. Ultimately, this project argues, these modes of reading bring those so-called disposable lives, which are abjected by dominant social, economic, and political frameworks, squarely back into the realm of ethical consideration.

Dissertation

This dissertation critically evaluates the issue of the `silencing' of the subaltern woman in the 1988 version of Gayatri Spivak's essay `Can the Subaltern Speak?' The conclusions reached are then related to the novel The Purple Violet of Oshaantu by the Namibian woman writer Neshani Andreas. Chapter 1 deals with the essay `Can the Subaltern Speak?' and the `silenced' subaltern woman, examining both Spivak's theory on this issue as well as criticism of this theory by different postcolonial theorists. Chapter 2 presents aspects of both the creative and political practice of women, specifically the woman writer, in certain countries in Africa. Chapter 3 deals with the novel The Purple Violet of Oshaantu by Neshani Andreas and explores issues like the `silencing' of the subaltern women in the novel, opposition to patriarchal oppression and the engendering of agency by both the writer and the characters in the novel.
English Studies
M. A. (English)

This dissertation explores the presence of the divine feminine in Indic river myths of the Ganga, the Narmada, and the Meenachil as represented in the three novels: Amitav Ghosh’s The Hungry Tide, Gita Mehta’s A River Sutra, and Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things. It challenges masculinist nationalistic narratives, and identifies itself as a feminist revisionist work by strategically combining Indian debates on religious interpretations with Western phenomenological and psychoanalytical perspectives to open up productive lines of critical enquiry. I argue that the three postcolonial novelists under survey resurrect the power of the feminine by relocating this power in its manifestation as the turbulent and indomitable force of three river goddesses. In their myths of origin, the goddesses are “unchaste,” uncontainable, and ambiguous. Yet, Mahatma Gandhi and the Indian patriarchy manipulated and coerced women for their political purposes. They denied female agency in order to promote a brand of nationalism bordering on religious zeal and subjugation through imposed paradigms of chastity. The patriarchy conflated the imaginary chastity of the mother goddess in her multiple manifestations--including but not limited to the River Ganga--with the exalted position forced upon the young Indian widow. Popular art of the colonial period in India dismantled the irrepressible sexual ambiguity of the divine feminine for the Indian population, and reinvented her as a chaste, mother figure (Bharat Mata, or Mother India), desexualized her, and held her up as an iconic, pervasive figurehead of the Motherland. Ironically though, the makeover of the uncontrollable, “chaotic” feminine into this shackled entity during and after the Indian freedom struggle is just the kind of ambiguity that appears in discourses of nation building. By reaffirming the archaic myths of the feminine, Ghosh, Mehta, and Roy dislodge the colonial project and the patriarchal Indian independence movement that sought to “chastise” the divine feminine. I suggest that in these three novels pre-colonial images of the river goddesses--presented in all their ambiguous, multiple, and fluid dimensions--are a challenge to the Indian nationalist project that represents the goddesses one dimensionally as an iconic figure, unifying the geo-body of India and symbolically projecting her as the pure, homogenous Bharat Mata.

This dissertation aims to create a scholarly space where a seventy-five-year-old “special relationship” (1945-2020) between the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the United States is examined from an interdisciplinary comparativist perspective. I posit that a comparative study of Saudi and American fiction goes beyond the limitedness of global geopolitics and proves to uncover some new literary, sociocultural, and historical dimensions of this long history, while shedding some light on others. Saudi writers creatively challenge the inherently static and monolithic image of Saudi Arabia, its culture and people in the West. They also simultaneously unsettle the notion of homogeneity and enable us to gain new insight into self-perception within the local Saudi context by offering a wide scope of genuine engagements with distinctive themes ranging from spatiality, identity, ethnicity, and gender to slavery, religiosity and (post)modernity. On the other side, American authors still show some signs of ambivalence towards the depiction of the Saudi (Muslim/Arab) Other, but they nonetheless also demonstrate serious effort to emancipate their representations from the confining legacy of (neo)Orientalist discourse and oil politics by tackling the concepts of race, alterity, hegemony, radicalism, nomadism and (un)belonging.

Defined as a stage of history that began in the Western world before spreading around the world, modernity has proven to be a controversial concept for many scholars and critics. This thesis revisits the treatment of modernity in Francophone postcolonial Africa through the novels of three Francophone African women authors: Ken Bugul, Werewere Liking and the late Angèle Rawiri. Drawing on a corpus of ten novels (Orphée Dafric, Elle sera de jaspe et de corail, La Memoire amputée by Werewere Liking ; G'amarakano, Fureur et cris des femmes by Angèle Rawiri ; Le Baobab fou, De l'autre côté de regard, Rue Felix Faure, La Folie et la mort, Mes Hommes à moi, by Ken Bugul) ; I explore how these literary texts position modernity as a central question in the present and future of Africa. My analysis examines how, in their novels, these authors represent current problems for African identity. Where modernity entails a discontinuity between past and present that creates emptiness, memory emerges as an important chain of transmission of knowledge. Ken Bugul and Werewere Liking also highlight the madness of those with postcolonial political power, and the consequences for the people, who themselves become mad because of the actions of leaders. Angèle Rawiri's novels emphasize the dislocation of self amid the paradoxes of modernity in Africa, through the fragmentation of her writing and her depiction of a suffering female body. These authors depict the postcolonial space as a problematic environment. Affecting young women and men most directly, it features an unending quest for identity that is exemplified most strikingly by Ken Bugul's depictions of estranged, wandering protagonists. My study ends with a discussion of gender issues as these authors explore the traps and pitfalls of modernity through their female characters' dilemmas. In the process, they point out how the use of a Western feminist approach to read African women's novels may be another paradox of modernity. My alternative reading takes into account the realities of African women in order to rethink social problems. It also makes deeper understanding of African identity a matter of viewing through local lenses.

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI)
The fragmented bodies and lives of postcolonial Caribbean women examined in Caribbean literature beget struggle and psychological ruin. The characters portrayed in novels by postcolonial Caribbean writers Edwidge Danticat, Michelle Cliff, and Shani Mootoo are marginalized as “Other” by a Western patriarchal discourse that works to silence them because of their gender, color, class, and sexuality. Marginalization participates in the act of fragmentation of these characters because it challenges their sense of identity. Fragmentation means fractured; in terms of these fictive characters, fragmentation results from multiple traumas, each trauma causing another break in their wholeness. Postcolonial scholars have identified the causes and effects of fragmentation on the postcolonial subject, and they argue one’s need to heal because of it. Danticat, Cliff, and Mootoo prove that wholeness is not possible for the postcolonial Caribbean woman, so rather than ruminate on that truth, they examine the journey of the postcolonial Caribbean woman as a way of making meaning of the pieces of her life. This project contends that fragmentation – and the fracture it produces – does not bind these women to negative existences; in fact, the female subjects of Danticat, Cliff, and Mootoo locate power in their fragmentation. The texts studied include Danticat’s "Breath, Eyes, Memory" (1994) and "The Farming of Bones" (1999), Cliff’s "Abeng" (1984) and "No Telephone to Heaven" (1987), and Mootoo’s "Cereus Blooms at Night" (1996) and "He Drown She in the Sea" (2005).

MA (English)
Department of English
The prevalence of patriarchal norms and the privileging of the African man in African literary works gradually led to an erasure of women‘s identities, thereby leaving them to hold peripheral positions. This has motivated African women critics to engage in linguistic and performative methodologies to restructure African women‘s status in postcolonial writings. Using feminist literary theory, Marxist literary criticism and postcolonial theory, among others, this study explores the changing images of women as depicted in a selection of Yvonne Vera‘s works, namely: Butterfly Burning (1998); Under the Tongue (1996); Without a Name (1994) and Nehanda (1993). Close reading and textual analysis are employed in examining the strategies devised by Vera to assess patriarchal attitudes that suppress women as well as reconfiguring their identities. This study is inspired by the desire to investigate the techniques employed by an African woman writer in speaking against marginalisation, exploitation and oppression of women in a postcolonial literary environment. Of primary concern to this study, is an examination of how Vera unleashes, re-writes and re-negotiates the potential of an African woman in her novels. This study distinctly shows that, as a subaltern writer, Vera reconfigures her female characters‘ identities through social and economic liberalisation. It is clear in this study that economic liberty has a great impact on the life of an African woman. This study contributes to the growing body of works that appreciates women writers‘ efforts in transforming, reifying and reinstating the image of African women in fictional works.
NRF

Cette thèse de doctorat renouvelle les réflexions autour du « carcéral » afin de le repenser comme un instrument politique et social coercitif, qui saisit et emprisonne des sujets, des collectivités, des alternatives émancipatrices et des capacités imaginatives. S’appuyant sur des récits de femmes du « tiers monde » (We Lived to Tell : Azadeh Agah, Sousan Mehr, Shadi Parsi, 2007 ; Memoirs from the Women’s Prison : Nawal El Saadawi, 1984 ; Imaginary Maps : Mahasweta Devi, 1994 ; Zoo City : Lauren Beukes, 2010 ; Moxyland : Lauren Beukes, 2008), nous explorons de multiples tropes et sites d’emprisonnement, d’enfermement, de sujétion et d’immobilisation, qui renforcent les logiques carcérales et qui entravent l’agence collective. Nous présentons une critique genrée des mécanismes locaux et mondiaux, micropolitiques et macropolitiques de la violence contre les sujets captifs et les communautés précaires. Ce dispositif de déconstruction se base sur une analyse multidisciplinaire des arrangements carcéraux, qui incluent des institutions punitives, des États-nations hétéronormatifs, des discours patriarcaux, le trafic sexuel, la servitude pour dettes, le capitalisme, la surveillance numérique, la privation économique et la déshumanisation politique. Ce travail de recherche invite également à une relecture de récits carcéraux qui permettent la réinvention des vocabulaires, des pratiques et de l’éthique de résistance, ainsi que l’émergence de projets collectifs de libération qui transgressent les confins politiques, sociaux, discursifs et épistémologiques de l’agenda néolibéral. À travers ses différents cadres théoriques, notre lecture s’engage dans un dialogue critique entre les études littéraires, féministes, postcoloniales et matérialistes, afin d’élucider de nouvelles façons de penser la carcéralité, la liberté et la résistance.
This dissertation seeks to produce new understandings of the “carceral” as a mode of subject formation and social production that captures and contains subjects, collectivities, emancipatory alternatives, and imaginative capacities. Drawing on “Third-World” women’s narratives (We Lived to Tell : Azadeh Agah, Sousan Mehr, Shadi Parsi, 2007 ; Memoirs from the Women’s Prison : Nawal El Saadawi, 1984 ; Imaginary Maps : Mahasweta Devi, 1994 ; Zoo City : Lauren Beukes, 2010 ; Moxyland : Lauren Beukes, 2008), this dissertation investigates multiple tropes and sites of imprisonment, enclosure, subjection, and immobilization that reinforce carceral logics and impede collective agency. Through a multidisciplinary examination of carceral arrangements that include punitive institutions, heteronormative nation states, patriarchal discourses, sexual trafficking, debt bondage, global capital, political dehumanization, digital surveillance, and corporate violence, this dissertation offers a gendered critique of the local and global, micropolitical and macropolitical mechanisms of violence against captive subjects and precarious communities. The dissertation also invites a rereading of carceral narratives that enable the reinvention of vocabularies, ethics, and practices of resistance and the emergence of collective liberatory projects that transgress the political, social, discursive, and epistemological confines of the neoliberal agenda. Through its different theoretical frameworks, this dissertation engages in a critical dialogue between literary, feminist, postcolonial, and materialist studies in order to elucidate new ways of thinking about carcerality, freedom, and resistance.

Contemporary Canadian prairie women poets write about the mother figure to counter maternal suppression and the homogenization of maternal representations in literature. Critics, like Marianne Hirsch and Andrea O’Reilly, insist that mothers tell their own stories, yet many mothers are unable to. Daughter and mother stories, Jo Malin argues, overlap. The mother “becomes a subject, or rather an ‘intersubject’” in the text (2). Literary depictions of daughter-mother or mother-child intersubjectivities, however, are not confined to auto/biographical or fictional narratives. As a genre and potential site for representing maternal subjectivities, poetry continues to reside on the margins of motherhood studies and literary criticism. In the following chapters, I examine the writing strategies of selected poets and their representations of mothers specific to three transformative occasions: mourning mother-loss, becoming a mother, and reclaiming a maternal lineage. Several daughter-poets adapt the elegy to remember their deceased mothers and to maintain a connection with them. In accord with Tanis MacDonald and Priscila Uppal, these poets resist closure and interrogate the past. Moreover, they counter maternal absence and preserve her subjectivity in their texts. Similarly, a number of mother-poets begin constructing their mother-child (self-other) relationship prior to childbirth. Drawing on Lisa Guenther’s notions of “birth as a gift of the feminine other” and welcoming the stranger (49), as well as Emily Jeremiah’s link between “‘maternal’ mutuality” and writing and reading practices (“Trouble” 13), I investigate poetic strategies for negotiating and engaging with the “other,” the unborn/newborn and the reader. Other poets explore and interweave bits of stories, memories, dreams and inklings into their own motherlines, an identification with their matrilineage. Poetic discourse(s) reveal the limits of language, but also attest to the benefits of extra-linguistic qualities that poetry provides. The poets I study here make room for the interplay of language and what lies beyond language, engaging the reader and augmenting perceptions of the maternal subject. They offer new ways of signifying maternal subjectivities and relationships, and therefore contribute to the ongoing research into the ever-changing relations among maternal and cultural ideologies, mothering and feminisms, and regional women’s literatures.
May 2016