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1
McClelland, Roderick William. "White discourse in post-independence Zimbabwean literature." Master's thesis, University of Cape Town, 1994. http://hdl.handle.net/11427/18261.
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Literally hundreds of novels were written by white Rhodesians during the U.D.I. era of the 1960s and 1970s. Since Independence, however, not much more than a handful of literary texts have been produced by whites in Zimbabwe. This dissertation, therefore, involves an interrogation of both white discourse and the (reduced) space for white discourse in postcolonial Zimbabwean society. In addition to the displaced moral space, and the removal of the economic and political power base, there has been an appropriation of control over the material means of production of any discourse and white discourse, which has become accustomed to its position of superiority due to its dominance and dominating tendencies, has struggled to come to terms with its new, non-hegemonic 'space'. In an attempt to come to some understanding of the literary silence and marginalisation of white discourse in post-independence Zimbabwe there has to be some understanding of the voice that was formed during the British South Africa Company's administration and which reached a crescendo of authoritarian self-assertion at the declaration of unilateral independence. Vital to this discussion (in Part I) is an uncovering of the myths that were intrinsic to white discourse in the way that they were created as justification for settlement and to propagandise the aggressive defence of that space that was forged in an alien landscape. These myths have not been easily cast aside and, hence, have made it so difficult for white discourse to adapt to post-colonial society. Most Rhodesian novels were extremely partisan and promulgated these myths. Part II, discusses ex post facto novels about the war (from the white perspective) to investigate whether white discourse is recognising the lies that make up so much of its belief system. This investigation of this particular perspective of the war, then, will help to define at what stage white Zimbabweans are at in the development of a national culture. Part III takes this discussion of acculturation and national unity further. Furthermore, through the discussion of a number of novels in this chapter, it is argued that white discourse is struggling to come to terms with its non-hegemonic position and is continuing to attempt to assert its control. The 'space' available to the early settlers' discourse for appropriation, however, has been removed and, in the reduced space available to white discourse, one continued area of possible control is that of conservation.
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Nyambi, Oliver. "Nation in crisis : alternative literary representations of Zimbabwe Post-2000." Thesis, Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2013. http://hdl.handle.net/10019.1/85652.
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Thesis (PhD)-- Stellenbosch University, 2013.ENGLISH ABSTRACT: The last decade in Zimbabwe was characterised by an unprecedented economic and political crisis. As the crisis threatened to destabilise the political status quo, it prompted in governmental circles the perceived 'need‘ for political containment. The ensuing attempts to regulate the expressive sphere, censor alternative historiographies of the crisis and promote monolithic and self-serving perceptions of the crisis presented a real danger of the distortion of information about the situation. Representing the crisis therefore occupies a contested and discursive space in debates about the Zimbabwean crisis. It is important to explore the nature of cultural interventions in the urgent process of re-inscribing the crisis and extending what is known about Zimbabwe‘s so-called 'lost decade‘. The study analyses literary responses to state-imposed restrictions on information about the state of Zimbabwean society during the post-2000 economic and political crisis which reached the public sphere, with particular reference to creative literature by Zimbabwean authors published during the period 2000 to 2010. The primary concern of this thesis is to examine the efficacy of post-2000 Zimbabwean literature as constituting a significant archive of the present and also as sites for the articulation of dissenting views – alternative perspectives assessing, questioning and challenging the state‘s grand narrative of the crisis. Like most African literatures, Zimbabwean literature relates (directly and indirectly) to definite historical forces and processes underpinning the social, cultural and political production of space. The study mainly invokes Maria Pia Lara‘s theory about the ―moral texture‖ and disclosive nature of narratives by marginalised groups in order to explore the various ways through which such narratives revise hegemonically distorted representations of themselves and construct more inclusive discourses about the crisis. A key finding in this study is that through particular modes of representation, most of the literary works put a spotlight on some of the major talking points in the political and socio-economic debate about the post-2000 Zimbabwean crisis, while at the same time extending the contours of the debate beyond what is agreeable to the powerful. This potential in literary works to deconstruct and transform dominant elitist narratives of the crisis and offering instead, alternative and more representative narratives of the excluded groups‘ experiences, is made possible by their affective appeal. This affective dimension stems from the intimate and experiential nature of the narratives of these affected groups. However, another important finding in this study has been the advent of a distinct canon of hegemonic texts which covertly (and sometimes overtly) legitimate the state narrative of the crisis. The thesis ends with a suggestion that future scholarly enquiries look set to focus more closely on the contribution of creative literature to discourses on democratisation in contemporary Zimbabwe.
AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Die afgelope dekade in Zimbabwe is gekenmerk deur ‗n ongekende ekonomiese en politiese krisis. Terwyl die krisis gedreig het om die politieke status quo omver te werp, het dit die ‗noodsaak‘ van politieke insluiting aangedui. Die daaropvolgende pogings om die ruimte vir openbaarmaking te reguleer, alternatiewe optekenings van gebeure te sensureer en ook om monolitiese, self-bevredigende waarnemings van die krisis te bevorder, het 'n wesenlike gevaar van distorsie van inligting i.v.m. die krisis meegebring. Voorstellings van die krisis vind sigself dus in 'n gekontesteerde en diskursiewe ruimte in debatte aangaande die Zimbabwiese krisis. Dit is gevolglik belangrik om die aard van kulturele intervensies in die dringende proses om die krisis te hervertolk te ondersoek asook om kennis van Zimbabwe se sogenaamde 'verlore dekade‘ uit te brei. Die studie analiseer literêre reaksies op staats-geïniseerde inkortings van inligting aangaande die sosiale toestand in Zimbabwe gedurende die post-2000 ekonomiese en politiese krisis wat sulke informasie uit die openbare sfeer weerhou het, met spesifieke verwysing na skeppende literatuur deur Zimbabwiese skrywers wat tussen 2000 en 2010 gepubliseer is. Die belangrikste doelwit van hierdie tesis is om die doeltreffendheid van post-2000 Zimbabwiese letterkunde as konstituering van 'n alternatiewe Zimbabwiese 'argief van die huidige‘ en ook as ruimte vir die artikulering van teenstemme – alternatiewe perspektiewe wat die staat se 'groot narratief‘ aangaande die krisis bevraagteken – te ondersoek. Soos met die meeste ander Afrika-letterkundes is daar in hierdie literatuur 'n verband (direk en/of indirek) met herkenbare historiese kragte en prosesse wat die sosiale, kulturele en politiese ruimtes tot stand bring. Die studie maak in die ondersoek veral gebruik van Maria Pia Lara se teorie aangaande die 'morele tekstuur‘ en openbaringsvermoë van narratiewe aangaande gemarginaliseerde groepe ten einde die verskillende maniere waarop sulke narratiewe hegemoniese distorsies in 'offisiële‘ voorstellings van hulself 'oorskryf‘ om meer inklusiewe diskoerse van die krisis daar te stel, na te vors. 'n Kernbevinding van die studie is dat, d.m.v. van spesifieke tipe voorstellings, die meeste van die letterkundige werke wat hier ondersoek word, 'n soeklig plaas op verskeie van die belangrikste kwessies in die politieke en sosio-ekonomiese debatte oor die Zimbabwiese krisis, terwyl dit terselfdertyd die kontoere van die debat uitbrei verby die grense van wat vir die maghebbers gemaklik is. Die potensieel van letterkundige werke om oorheersende, elitistiese narratiewe oor die krisis te dekonstrueer en te omvorm, word moontlik gemaak deur hul affektiewe potensiaal. Hierdie affektiewe dimensie word ontketen deur die intieme en ervaringsgewortelde geaardheid van die narratiewe van die geaffekteerde groepe. Nietemin is 'n ander belangrike bevinding van hierdie studie dat daar 'n onderskeibare kanon van hegemoniese tekste bestaan wat op verskuilde (en soms ook openlike) maniere die staatsnarratief anngaande die krisis legitimeer. Die tesis sluit af met die voorstel dat toekomstige vakkundige studies meer spesifiek sou kon fokus op die bydrae van kreatiewe skryfwerk tot die demokratisering van kontemporêre Zimbabwe.
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Shaw, Drew Campbell. ""X-rays" of self and society : Dambudzo Marechera's avant-gardism and its implications for debates concerning Zimbabwean literature and culture." Master's thesis, University of Cape Town, 1997. http://hdl.handle.net/11427/18469.
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This thesis discusses Dambudzo Marechera's avant-gardism and its significance in the context of Zimbabwean literature and culture. I use the term avant-garde to describe Marechera's defiance of hegemonies, traditions, and prescriptions for writing, as well as his innovations with form and style. In the context of Zimbabwe, Marechera's avant-gardism involves a rejection of cultural nationalism, and an eschewal of traditional realist criteria for writing. The thesis locates Marechera in a socio-historical context, and in the framework of black Zimbabwean literature (written in English). It discusses his rejection of the nationalist tradition set by his literary predecessors; and it compares him with his contemporaries, Stanley Nyamfukudza and Charles Mungoshi, who also reject the concept of a 'pure', homogeneous, national culture in their writings. Marechera's writing explores new (and often taboo) subject matter, and it thus illustrates the diverse, complex nature of the Zimbabwean experience. It also abandons the unified, linear narrative; and it has been sharply censured by nationalist critics -- largely on the grounds of its transgression of traditional narrative form. Nationalist critics have tended to privilege traditional realist criteria in their discussions of Zimbabwean literature, and Marechera, as an avant-gardist, has been marginalized and denigrated for his non-conformity. In this thesis, I challenge the privileged status of traditional realism, question the prescriptions of nationalist/realist critics, and attempt to demonstrate the value of Marechera's non-realist writing. While many nationalist critics allege that Marechera's writing is 'unAfrican', I argue that it is a fallacy to assume his work is 'Europeanized' while nationalist/realist writing is not. Moreover, I contend that Marechera's avant-gardism is in direct response to a set of extraordinary socio-historical, political and cultural conditions -- which are specific to Zimbabwe. In analyzing Marechera's alternatives to realism (such as expressionism, stream of consciousness, surrealism, grotesque realism, the carnival, magical realism, and Menippean satire), I maintain that his experiments are not without strategy, but that they address pertinent literary, social, political, and cultural issues. The thesis furthermore attempts to show how the 'individualism' -- for which Marechera has been roundly condemned -- is paradoxically transformed into sharp and poignant social commentary. This is particularly evident in two texts which I focus on: "House of Hunger" -- his irreverent pre-independence vivisection of Zimbabwean society; and Mindblast, his much neglected anti-realist post-independence compilation, which I discuss in some detail.
4
Mabweazara, Hayes. "New technologies and print journalism practice in Zimbabwe : an ethnographic study." Thesis, Edinburgh Napier University, 2010. http://researchrepository.napier.ac.uk/Output/5884.
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This study uses an ethnographic approach (participant observation in conjunction with indepth group and individual interviews) to closely examine how Zimbabwean print journalists in the state-controlled and private press deploy new K'Ts (the Internet; email; and the mobile phone) in their everyday professional practices. It explores how immediate conditions of practice and broader social circumstances set conditions for distinctive forms of new technology use, as well as how the technologies are impacting on traditional journalistic standards, values, and practices. The study rejects deterministic approaches to technology and argues that to understand the impact of new technologies on journalism practice in Africa, we must put journalists into a critical analytical context that takes into account contextual factors that coalesce to structure and constrain the uses of the technologies. To conceptualise the structuring impact of context and the degree of agency available to journalists in their deployment of new technologies, the study reinvigorates the sociology of journalism and social constructivist approaches to technology. The findings of the study offer insider perspectives of the practices and cultures around new technology use in the newsrooms and point to complex individual and socially patterned explanations of the appropriations of the technologies. While newsroom practices and cultures examined here broadly affirm early studies by showing: how new technologies impact on journalists' work routines; the news content they produce; the structure of their work environment; and their relationships with sources and readers, a closer analysis points to a number of contextual factors that collectively shape and constrain the uses of the technologies. These factors result in 'local context' appropriations that move beyond a simple substantiation of early studies. Thus, while the technologies offer journalists a wide range of resources and technological possibilities to work with, they also pose ethical and professional challenges. These and other findings highlight the deficiencies of deterministic or 'technicist' approaches to technology and their claims for a straightforward causal connection between technology and society. The study should thus be read as a challenge to the popular and utopian assumptions about the impact of new technologies on African journalism and as a dialogue with constructivist approaches that see technologies as inherently open to interpretive flexibility.
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Bolzt, Kerstin. "Women as artists in contemporary Zimbabwe /." Eckersdorf, Germany : Breitinger, 2007. http://www.loc.gov/catdir/toc/fy0804/2008400471.html.
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Butale, Phenyo. "Discourses of poverty in literature : assessing representations of indigence in post-colonial texts from Botswana, Namibia and Zimbabwe." Thesis, Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2015. http://hdl.handle.net/10019.1/96749.
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Thesis (PhD)--Stellenbosch University, 2015ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This thesis undertakes a comparative reading of post-colonial literature written in English in Botswana, Namibia and Zimbabwe to bring into focus the similarities and differences between fictional representations of poverty in these three countries. The thesis explores the unique way in which literature may contribute to the better understanding of poverty, a field that has hitherto been largely dominated by scholarship that relies on quantitative analysis as opposed to qualitative approaches. The thesis seeks to use examples from selected texts to illustrate that (as many social scientists have argued before) literature provides insights into the ‘lived realities’ of the poor and that with its vividly imagined specificities it illuminates the broad generalisations about poverty established in other (data-gathering) disciplines. Selected texts from the three countries destabilise the usual categories of gender, race and class which are often utilised in quantitative studies of poverty and by so doing show that experiences of poverty cut across and intersect all of these spheres and the experiences differ from one person to another regardless of which category they may fall within. The three main chapters focus primarily on local indigence as depicted by texts from the three countries. The selection of texts in the chapters follows a thematic approach and texts are discussed by means of selective focus on the ways in which they address the theme of poverty. Using three main theorists – Maria Pia Lara, Njabulo Ndebele and Amartya Sen – the thesis focuses centrally on how writers use varying literary devices and techniques to provide moving depictions of poverty that show rather than tell the reader of the unique experiences that different characters and different communities have of deprivation and shortage of basic needs.
AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Hierdie tesis onderneem ‘n vergelykende studie van post-koloniale letterkunde in Engels uit Botswana, Namibië en Zimbabwe, om sodoende die ooreenstemmings en verskille tussen letterkundige uitbeeldings van armoede in hierdie drie lande aan die lig te bring. Die tesis ondersoek die unieke manier waarop letterkunde kan bydra tot ‘n beter begrip van armoede, ‘n studieveld wat tot huidiglik grotendeels op kwantitatiewe analises berus, in teenstelling met kwalitatiewe benaderings. Die tesis se werkswyse gebruik voorbeelde uit gelekteerde tekste met die doel om te illustreer (soos verskeie sosiaal-wetenskaplikes reeds aangevoer het) dat letterkunde insig voorsien in die lewenservarings van armoediges en dat dit die breë veralgemenings aangaande armoede in ander (data-gebaseerde) wetenskappe kan illumineer. Geselekteerde tekste uit die drie lande destabiliseer die gewone kategorieë van gender, ras en klas wat normaaalweg gebruik word in kwantitatiewe studies van armoede, om sodoende aan te toon dat die ervaring van armoede dwarsdeur hierdie klassifikasies sny en dat hierdie tipe lewenservaring verskil van persoon tot persoon ongeag in watter kategorie hulle geplaas word. Die drie sentrale hoofstukke fokus primêr op lokale armoede soos uitgebeeld in tekste vanuit die drie lande. Die seleksie van tekste in die hoofstukke volg ‘n tematiese patroon en tekste word geanaliseer na aanleiding van ‘n selektiewe fokus op die maniere waarop hulle armoede uitbeeld. Deur gebruik te maak van ‘ die teorieë van Maria Pia Lara, Njabulo Ndebele en Amartya Sen, fokus hierdie tesis sentraal op hoe skrywers verskeie literêre metodes en tegnieke aanwend ten einde ontroerende uitbeeldings van armoede te skep wat die leser wys liewer as om hom/haar slegs te vertel aangaande die unieke ervarings wat verskillende karakters en gemeenskappe het van ontbering en die tekort aan basiese behoefte-voorsiening.
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Graham, James John George. "Writing the land : representations of 'the land' and nationalism in Anglophone literature from South Africa and Zimbabwe 1969-2002." Thesis, University of Warwick, 2006. http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/54215/.
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As a material possession and as an imagined space of belonging, land was the principle draw for European settlers in southern Africa from the 17th century onwards. The legacy of racial dispossession and conflict that ensued still resonates in the 21 st century, as post-colonial nation-states face up to the daunting task of redistributing land between newly enfranchised peasants, commercial farmers and displaced communities. Representations of 'the land' in literature signal not only geographical entities but also a variety of social and cultural landscapes. In literature written in English from southern Africa the semantic terrain of 'the land' is thus constituted by a diverse range of experiences, encounters and ideologies, testifying to the manifold contradictions that settler colonialism produced. The primary concern of this thesis is to examine how writers from Zimbabwe and South Africa have engaged with these experiences and articulated them as historical 'structures of feeling' (Williams 1978) in their work. In particular, it explores the relationship between representations of 'the land' and the articulation of nationhood and nationalism in selected novels. It argues that certain structures of feeling rival official nationalist discourses in varied and subversive ways. As a comparative project, it focuses on literature produced at important historical moments both before and after the transition to majority rule in South Africa (1994) and Zimbabwe (1980). A transition between two major structures of feeling is identified within this comparative horizon. This thesis explores how representations of 'the land' both propagate and question an ideology of (revolutionary) repossession in the 1970s, but also of (reconciliatory) reform in the 1990s.
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Tagwirei, Cuthbeth. "Should I stay or should I go : Zimbabwes white writing, 1980 to 2011." Thesis, Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2014. http://hdl.handle.net/10019.1/95815.
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Thesis (PhD)--Stellenbosch University, 2014.ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This thesis finds its epistemological basis in two related motives: the re-conceptualisation of white writing in Zimbabwe as a sub-category of Zimbabwean literature, and the recognition of white narratives as necessarily dialogic. The first motive follows the realization that writing by Zimbabwean whites is systematically marginalized from “mainstream” Zimbabwean literature owing to its perceived irrelevance to the postcolonial Zimbabwean nation. Through an application of Even-Zohar’s polysystem theory, this thesis argues for a recognition of white writing as a literary sub-system existing in relation to other literary and non-literary systems in Zimbabwe’s polysystem of culture. As its second motive, the thesis also calls for a critical approach to white Zimbabwean narratives built on the understanding that the study of literature can no longer be left to monologic approaches alone. Rather, white narratives should be considered as multiple and hence amenable to a multiplicity of approaches that recognize dialogue as an essential aspect of all narratives. The thesis attempts, by closely reading nine white-authored narratives in Zimbabwe, to demonstrate that white Zimbabwean literature is characterized by multiplicity, simultaneity and instability; these are tropes developed from Bakhtin’s understanding of utterances as characterized by a minimum of two voices. To consider white writing in Zimbabwe as a multiplicity is to call forth its numerous dimensions and breadth of perceptions. Simultaneity posits the need to understand opposites/conflicts as capable of existing side by side without necessarily dissolving into unity. Instability captures the several movements and destabilizations that affect writers, characters and the literary system. These three tropes enable a re-reading of white Zimbabwean narratives as complex and multi-nuanced. Such characteristics of the literary system are seen to reflect on the experiences of “whiteness” in postcolonial Zimbabwe. The white narratives selected for examination in this thesis therefore exhibit crises of belonging that reflect the dialogic nature of existence. In sum, this thesis is meant as a dialogue, culminating in the proposition that calls for a decentred and redemptive literary experience.
AFRIKKANSE OPSOMMING: Hierdie tesis vestig sy epistemologiese basis in twee verwante motiewe: die herkonseptualisering van skryfwerk deur wit skrywers in Zimbabwe as ’n sub-kategorie van Zimbabwiese letterkunde, en die erkenning van wit narratiewe as onontkombaar dialogies in aard en wese. Die eerste motief volg die argument dat die skryfwerke van wit Zimbabwieërs stelselmatig gemarginaliseer is uit “hoofstroom” Zimbabwiese literatuur, as gevolg van dié skryfwerke se beweerde irrelevansie tot die koloniale Zimbabwiese nasie-staat. Deur Even-Zohar se polisisteem teorie toe te pas, pleit hierdie tesis vir die erkenning van letterkunde deur wit skrywers as ’n literêre sub-stelsel wat bestaan in verhouding tot ander literêre en nie-literêre sisteme in Zimbabwe se polisisteem van kultuur. As sy tweede motief, vra die tesis ook vir ’n kritiese benadering tot wit Zimbabwiese narratiewe, gebou op die verstandhouding dat die studie van letterkunde nie meer suiwer aan monologies benaderings oorgelewer behoort te word nie. Inteendeel, wit narratiewe moet as veelsydig beskou word, en dus vatbaar vir ’n verskeidenheid benaderings wat dialoog as ’n noodsaaklike aspek van alle verhale erken en verken. Deur nege wit outeurs se verhale in Zimbabwe noukeurig te lees, dui hierdie tesis aan dat wit Zimbabwiese literatuur gekenmerk word deur veelvuldigheid, gelyktydigheid en onstabiliteit; hieride is teoretiese konsepte wat ontleen is aan Bakhtin se begrip van uitsprake (“utterances”) as bestaande uit ’n minimum van twee stemme. Om wit lettere in Zimbabwe as veelvuldig te verklaar is om die talle dimensies en breedtes van persepsie in letterkundige korpus te erken. Gelyktydig postuleer die tesis die moontlikheid dat teenoorgesteldes/konflikte langs mekaar kan en móét bestaan, sonder om noodwendig in ’n eenheid te ontaard. Onstabiliteit, soos dit hier verstaan word, omvat die verskillende bewegings en ontstuimige roeringe wat skrywers, karakters en die literêre sisteem beïnvloed. Hierdie drie konsepte laat ’n herlees van wit Zimbabwiese verhale toe wat as kompleks en multi-genuanseerd bestempel kan word. Sulke kenmerke van die literêre sisteem moet in ag geneem word om die ervaring van “witheid” in post-koloniale Zimbabwe effektief uit te beeld. Die wit verhale wat gekies is vir herlees in hierdie tesis beeld dus krisisse van bestaan uit wat die dialogiese aard van die menslike bestaan omvat. Ter afsluiting is hierdie tesis bedoel as ’n dialoog wat kulmineer in ’n oproep vir gedensentraliseerde en verlossende ervarings van die letterkunde in sy geheel.
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Pattison, David. "From Rhodesia to Zimbabwe via Oxford and London : a study of the career of Dambudzo Marechera." Thesis, University of Hull, 1998. http://hydra.hull.ac.uk/resources/hull:3859.
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[From the introduction] : In my first chapter I will offer a review of Marechera's reputation and the critical reception given to his work, both during his life and since his death. In Chapter Two I Will outline the major theoretical issues raised by Marechera's work: Art versus psychological catharsis; the artist-as-communal-spokesman versus the artist-as-Romantic-individualist; nationalism versus literary universalism. Chapters Three, Four, Five and Six will then consider in sequence, the work produced in Oxford, in London and in Harare, tracing the writer's physical and psychological deterioration through his evolving prose style. Each of these chapters will also focus on a major relevant critical issue. Thus Chapter Three will examine The House of Hunger, written following Marechera's arrival in Oxford, in the context of 'culture clash', 'the African heritage' and Postcolonialism which so preoccupied its original reviewers. Chapter Four will examine Black Sunlight and The Black Insider, written while the author was destitute in London, in terms of Jung's 'neurosis or art' debate. Chapter Five will examine Mindblast and Chapter Six will examine Scrapiron Blues, both containing material written after Marecheras' return to Harare, making reference to the historical and socio-political context of post-colonial Zimbabwe and to the writer's unsuccessful attempts to establish a role with the nation builders. I will conclude in Chapter Seven by discussing Marechera's place within the Zimbabwean literary canon, the current relevance and influence of his work and the implications this holds for the future of Zimbabwean writing.
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Brito, Gustavo Santana Miranda. "Grandes casas de pedra: o corpo, a terra e a memória na ficção de Chenjerai Hove." Universidade Federal de Goiás, 2013. http://repositorio.bc.ufg.br/tede/handle/tede/7708.
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The present dissertation will analyze the relations established between the Body, the Land and the Memory in three novels of the Zimbabwean poet and novelist Chenjerai Hove: Bones (1988), Shadows (1991) e Ancestors (1996). The study of the novels revealed the deep relation that the natives of Rhodesia, nowadays called Zimbabwe, had with their lands and their ancestors. The objective of this paper is to present the profound changes that happened in the culture of the Shona ethnicity after the arrival of the colonizers and the missionaries in the end of the XIX Century. The perspective adopted to this criticism observes in each of the novels the characters’ native bodies in a intense struggle between two misbalanced forces that used to be the fundaments of the ancient Zimbabwean reality. In one side there is the Land, considered holy because of its mystical aspect. The Land carries the umbilical cords of every newborn and the bones of all deceased, and it is the home of the ancestors, called Pasí. On the other side rest the Ancestors, responsible for the accumulation of knowledge. The Ancestors represent the collective memory of the Shona people; they connect the individuals to nature due to their transcendence. With the Ancestors each Shona can talk to the land and be heard through the religious ears of their ancient forefathers. However, when the colonizers arrived, called those without knees because of their pants, they imposed, with violence, a whole new culture to that ancient model of existence. This work will evaluate the consequences of the imposition of the colonizer’s culture, present in every page of each novel; what caused the loss of local religious traditions, deeply rooted moral behaviors, farming techniques and so many other aspects of the colonized culture. For the Body, the physical violence, the imposition of the English language and the prohibition of the local dialects; for the Land, the new and imported profit-driven farming cultures; for the Memory, the imposition of Christianity. Because of those material and immaterial wounds the new generations are forced to recover their ancestors’ memory by recreating an updated version of their past. Following this track, this study also dedicates its pages to the observation of the subaltern and peripheral position of the black Zimbabwean woman, being sexually and intellectually discriminated by the patrilinear system in a society that must evolve to solve their own cultural problems of discrimination as well as those created by the colonization.
A presente dissertação irá analisar as relações estabelecidas entre o Corpo, a Terra e a Memória em três romances do poeta e romancista Zimbabuense, Chenjerai Hove: Bones (1988), Shadows (1991) e Ancestors (1996). O estudo dos romances revelou a profunda relação que os habitantes da antiga Rodésia, hoje Zimbábue, tinham com suas terras e com seus ancestrais. O objetivo deste trabalho é apresentar as profundas mudanças que ocorreram na cultura da etnia Shona, depois da chegada dos colonizadores e missionários, no final do século XIX. A perspectiva adotada por esta crítica observa em cada um dos corpos dos personagens nativos uma intensa luta entre duas forças desequilibradas, que costumavam ser o fundamento da realidade ancestral do Zimbábue. De um lado tem-se a Terra, considerada sagrada por seu aspecto místico. A Terra carrega os cordões umbilicais de todos os recém-nascidos e os ossos de todos os que já se foram, ela é a casa dos ancestrais, chamada por eles de Pasí. Do outro lado estão os ancestrais, responsáveis pelo acúmulo de conhecimento. Os ancestrais representam a memória coletiva do povo Shona; eles conectam os indivíduos à natureza através de sua transcendência. Com os Ancestrais, cada Shona pode conversar com a terra e ser escutado através dos ouvidos místicos de seus pais espirituais. No entanto, quando chegam os colonizadores, chamados de aqueles sem joelhos, por causa de suas calças, eles impuseram, através da violência, uma cultura totalmente nova para aquele modelo ancestral de existência. Esta dissertação avalia as consequências da imposição da cultura do colonizador, presente em cada página de todos os romances, o que causa a perda das tradições religiosas locais, comportamentos morais profundamente enraizados, técnicas de manejo da terra, e tantos outros aspectos da cultura colonizada. Para o Corpo, a violência física, a imposição da língua inglesa e a proibição dos dialetos locais. Para a Terra, nova técnicas de cultivo do solo e de manejo de animais, direcionadas para o lucro. Para a Memória, a imposição do Cristianismo. Por causa dessas feridas materiais e imateriais, as novas gerações são forçadas a recuperar sua memória ancestral através de uma recriação atualizada de seu passado. Seguindo essa trilha, este estudo também se dedica a observação da mulher negra zimbabuense, sendo discriminada sexual e intelectualmente por um sistema patrilinear em uma sociedade que deve resolver seus próprios problemas culturais de discriminação, assim como aqueles legados pela colonização.
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Nyoni, Triyono Johan. ""The Buttocks of a Snake" : Oral tradition in NoViolet Bulawayo's We Need New Names." Thesis, Karlstads universitet, 2019. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:kau:diva-70824.
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Mongiat, Timothy. "Confronting heteronormativity in postcolonial Zimbabwean literature." Thesis, University of Kent, 2017. https://kar.kent.ac.uk/66341/.
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This project addresses the settler colonial context of Rhodesia and postcolonial Zimbabwe, and investigates the nature of, and relationship between, gender and sexual norms and colonialism through early postcolonial literary responses. Literature is not merely examined as a source of representation, but as an element of discourse which reflects and shapes norms. I analyse how writers police and reiterate heteronorms, whether voluntarily or involuntarily, and how they resist and contest the realities and logic of heteronormativity. Robert Mugabe's now infamous homophobic outbursts in 1995 dehumanised homosexuals through references to dogs and pigs, and associated same-sex sexuality with American and European contexts. His rhetoric articulated a form of heteronormative nationalism which politicised the memory of colonialism, but also represented a significant discursive change in Zimbabwean society. Homosexuality, previously submerged by a culture of discretion and repression, had moved from the domain of the unspoken to the spoken, and from an invisible to a visible presence. Previously, references to homosexuality had been absent from public discourse in the postcolonial and much of the colonial period, and in Zimbabwean literature until the 1990s. Yet Dambudzo Marechera's controversial and progressive writing provided an exception - he explicitly represented the same-sex sexuality suggested by homoerotic depictions in other writing, but which was not portrayed. This offers an example of the way I approach literature in this thesis - I view writing as a means of representation, but also as an element of discourse which reflects, shapes, and contests ideas and norms. Discourse, following the work of multiple poststructural theorists, is conceived of as a constitutive form which produces and limits subjects and expression, but which is subject to a persistent threat of reconstitution. My project, which explores the articulation of heteronormativity in postcolonial writing until the 1990s, is intersectional, and documents the relation between modes of oppression. Accordingly, gender constructions are examined and related to the articulation of normative heterosexuality, and to other signifiers, especially notions of race and ethnicity integral to the settler colonial context of Rhodesia and to Zimbabwean society. Colonialism is discussed throughout, and I examine and problematise the represented relationship between heteronormativity and the violent material, discursive, and psychological products of colonialism, and postcolonial nationalisms. My project aims to satisfy the need for a composite intersectional study examining heteronormativity in Zimbabwean literature.
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Mancuveni, Melania. "Urbanisation, Shona culture and Zimbabwean literature." Master's thesis, University of Cape Town, 2011. http://hdl.handle.net/11427/10782.
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This thesis examines the impact of urbanisation on Zimbabwean culture, particularly the Shona culture as it is represented in Zimbabwean literature. My main argument in this thesis is that Zimbabwean literature suggests that urbanisation is harmful and destructive to the Shona culture and the way of life of the Shona people.
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Shaw, Drew Campbell. "Transgression and beyond : Dambudzo Marechera and Zimbabwean literature." Thesis, Queen Mary, University of London, 2003. http://qmro.qmul.ac.uk/xmlui/handle/123456789/28585.
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Recent criticism has claimed Marechera's unconventionality represents an anomaly in Zimbabwean literature. Problematically, this implies a fundamental separation of the author from the concerns, styles and strategies of other writers. In this thesis I argue, on the contrary, that Marechera demonstrates a propensity for dialogue with other Zimbabwean writers. Moreover, such a dialogue is crucial to the development of a critical discourse capable of addressing elements of contradiction. Returning Marechera to the heart of debate in Zimbabwean literature, the thesis focuses on the meaning of his transgressions, alongside selected texts by other Zimbabwean authors. These include Doris Lessing, Charles Mungoshi, Shimmer Chinodya, Yvonne Vera, Tsitsi Dangarembga, Nevanji Madanhire, Chenjerai Hove, and Stanley Nyamfukudza. I also consider the relevance of lesser-known women's writing and queer narratives, and Marechera's meaning to anti-racist, feminist, and gay liberation initiatives. As a background to my analysis, I ascertain discursive links in an historical sequence of sexual regulation. I argue that the 'black peril' panics in settler society (fear of interracial sex), the rounding-up of single women deemed to be prostitutes in the 1980s, and the anti-gay campaigns of the mid-1990s are all underpinned by a moral discourse which continuously reproduces an ideology of racial, social and sexual hygiene. Marechera's writing refuses this ideology, I claim, but his transgressions are rarely straightforward and frequently misunderstood. His treatment of interracial sexuality deeply problematises conventional concepts and representations of racial identity: his controversial characterisations of women subvert traditional patriarchalist iconographies of womanhood; and his treatment of queer issues (unprecedented in Zimbabwean literature) destabilises assumptions of heteronormativity. Despite such radicalism, however, Marechera's writing, moving beyond transgression. remains notoriously inconsistent and therefore resistant, I argue, to assimilation by progressive political projects. Although Marechera complicates debates, dialogue with the author is crucial, I nevertheless maintain, precisely for this reason.
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Muchemwa, Kizito Zhiradzago. "Imagining the city in Zimbabwean literature 1949 to 2009." Thesis, Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2013. http://hdl.handle.net/10019.1/85579.
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Thesis (PhD)-- Stellenbosch University, 2013.ENGLISH ABSTRACT: My thesis is on the literary imagining of the city in Zimbabwean literature that emerges as a re-visioning and contestation of its colonial and postcolonial manifestations. Throughout the seven chapters of the thesis I conduct a close reading of literary texts engaged in literary (re)creations of the city. I focus on texts by selected authors from 1949 to 2009 in order to trace the key aspects of this city imagining and their historical situatedness. In the first chapter, I argue the case for the inclusions and exclusions that are evident. In this historical span, I read the Zimbabwean canon and the city that is figured in it as palimpsests in order to analyse (dis)connections. This theoretical frame brings out wider relationships and connections that emerge in the (re)writing of both the canon and city. I adopt approaches that emphasise how spaces and temporalities ‗overlap and interlace‘ to provoke new ways of thinking about the city and the construction of identity. I argue for the country-city connection as an important dynamic in the various (re)imaginings of the city. Space is politicized along lines of race, ethnicity, gender and class in regimes of politics and aesthetics of inclusion and exclusion that are refuted by the focal texts of the thesis. I analyse the fragmentation of rural and urban space in the literary texts and how country and city house politico-aesthetic regimes of domination, exclusion and marginalisation. Using tropes of the house, music and train, I analyse how connections in the city are imagined. These tropes are connected to the travel motif found in all the chapters of the thesis. Travel is in most of the texts offered as a form of escape from the country represented as a site of essentialism or nativism. Both settlers and nationalists, from different ideological positions, invest the land and the city with symbolic political and cultural values. Both figure the city as alien to the colonised, a figuration that is contested in most of the focal texts of the thesis. Travel from the country to the city through halfway houses is presented as a way of negotiating location in new spaces, finding new identities and contending with the multiple connections found in the city. The relentless (un)housing in Marechera‘s writing expresses a refusal to be bounded by aesthetic, nationalist and racial houses as they are constructed in the city. In Vera‘s fiction, travel – in multifarious directions and in a re-racing of the quest narrative in Lessing – becomes a critical search for a re-scripting of gender and woman‘s demand for a right to the city. The nomadism in Vera‘s fiction is re-configured in the portrayal of the marginalised as the parvenus and pariahs of the city in the fiction of Chinodya and Tagwira. In the chapter on Chikwava and Gappah, in the contexts of spatial displacement and expansion, the nationalist nativist construction of self, city and nation comes under stress. I interrogate how ideologies of space shape politico-aesthetic regimes in both the country and the city throughout the different historical phases of the city. In this regard I adopt theoretical approaches that engage with questions of aesthetic equality as they relate to the contestation of spatial partitioning based on categories of race, gender and class. In city re-imaginings this re-claiming of aesthetic power to imagine the city is invoked and in all the texts it emerges as a reclaiming of the right to the city by the colonised, women, immigrants and all the marginalised. I adopt those approaches that lend themselves to the deconstruction of hegemonic figuration, disempowerment and silencing of the marginalised, especially women, in re-imagining the city and their identities in it.
AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: My tesis se onderwerp is die literêre voorstellings van die stad in Zimbabwiese letterkunde wat ontstaan as ‗n herverbeelding van en teenvoeter vir beide koloniale en postkoloniale manifestasies. Regdeur die sewe hoofstukke van die tesis voer ek deurtastende interpretasies van literêre tekste aan, wat die stad op nuwe maniere uitbeeld. My fokus val op tekste deur geselekteerde skrywers van 1949 tot 2009 ten einde die sleutelelemente van hierdie proses van stadverbeelding en die historiese gesitueerdheid daarvan te ondersoek. In die eerste hoofstuk bied ek die argument aan betreffende die voor-die-hand liggende in- en uitsluitings van tekste. Deur hierdie historiese strekking lees ek die Zimbabwiese kanon en die stad wat daarin figureer as palimpseste, ten einde die (dis-)konneksies te kan analiseer. Hierdie teoretiese beraming belig die wyere verhoudings en verbindings wat na vore kom in die (her-) skrywe van beide die kanon en die stad. Ek gebruik benaderings wat benadruk hoe ruimtes en tydelikhede oormekaarvloei en saamvleg om sodoende nuwe maniere om oor die stad en oor identiteitskonstruksie te besin, aanmoedig. Ek argumenteer vir die stad-platteland konneksie as ‗n belangrike dinamika in die verskillende (her-)voorstellings van die stad. Ruimte word só verpolitiseer met betrekking tot ras, etnisiteit, gender en klas binne politieke regimes asook ‗n estetika van in- en uitsluiting wat deur die kern-tekste verwerp word. Ek analiseer verder die fragmentasie van landelike en stedelike ruimtes in die literêre tekste, en hoe die plattelandse en stedelike ruimtes tuistes bied aan polities-estetiese regimes van dominasie, uitsluiting en marginalisering. Die huis, musiek en die trein word gebruik as beelde om verbindings in die stad te ondersoek. Hierdie beelde sluit aan by die motif van die reis wat in al die hoofstukke manifesteer. Die reis word in die meeste tekste gesien as ‗n vorm van ontsnapping uit die platteland, wat voorgestel word as ‗n plek van essensie-voorskrywing en ingeborenheid. Beide intrekkers en nasionaliste, uit verskillende ideologiese vertrekpunte, bekleed die platteland of die stad met simboliese politieke en kulturele waardes. Beide verbeeld die stad as vreemd aan die gekoloniseerdes; ‗n uitbeelding wat verwerp word in die fokale tekste van die studie. Reis van die platteland na die stad deur halfweg-tuistes word aangebied as metodes van onderhandeling om plek te vind in nuwe ruimtes, nuwe identiteite te bekom en om te leer hoe om met die stedelike verbindings om te gaan. Die onverbiddelikke (ont-)tuisting in die werk van Marechera gee uitdrukking aan ‗n weiering om deur estetiese, nasionalistiese en rassiese behuising soos deur die stad omskryf en voorgeskryf, vasgevang te word. In die fiksie van Vera word reis – in telke rigtings en in die her-rassing van die soektog-motif in Lessing – ‗n kritiese soeke na die herskrywing van gender en van die vrou se op-eis van die reg tot die stad. Die nomadisme in Vera se fiksie word ge-herkonfigureer in uitbeelding van gemarginaliseerdes as die parvenus en die uitgeworpenes van die stad in die fiksie van Chinodya en Tagwira. In die hoofstuk oor Chikwava en Gappah word die nasionalistiese ingeborenes se konstruering van die self, stad en nasie onder stremmimg geplaas in kontekste van ruimtelike verplasing en uitbreiding. Ek ondervra hoe ideologieë van spasie vorm gee aan polities-estetiese regimes in beide die platteland en die stad regdeur die verskillende historiese fases van die stad. In hierdie opsig maak ek gebruik van teoretiese benaderings wat betrokke is met vraagstukke van estetiese gelykheid met verwysing na kontestasies oor ruimtelike verdelings gebaseer op kategorieë van ras, gender en klas. In herverbeeldings van die stad word hierdie reklamering van die estetiese mag om die stad te verbeel, bygehaal in al die tekste as herklamering van die reg tot die stad deur gekoloniseerdes, vroue, immigrante en alle gemarginaliseerdes. Ek maak gebruik van benaderings wat hulself leen tot die dekonstruksie van hegemoniese verbeelding, ontmagtiging en die stilmaak van gemarginaliseerdes, veral vroue, in die herverbeelding van die stad en hul plek binne die stadsruimte.
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Musekiwa, Ivy Shutu. "Representations of post-2000 displacement in Zimbabwean women's literature." Master's thesis, University of Cape Town, 2012. http://hdl.handle.net/11427/12064.
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Includes abstract.This study examines literature by Zimbabwean women that explores evictions and migrations of people from 2000 to 2009 when the crisis subsided with the enactment of the Global Political Agreement (GPA).
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ARAÚJO, Cibele de Guadalupe Sousa. "Uma leitura da representação do feminino na ficção de Yvonne Vera." Universidade Federal de Goiás, 2010. http://repositorio.bc.ufg.br/tede/handle/tde/2381.
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Previous issue date: 2010-12-15The aim of this research and of the dissertation from it is the analysis of the fictional work of Yvone Vera, a prominent writer from Zimbabwe. Incribed in the African literature written in English, her works are well known and studied internationally, and they have been translated into many idioms such as Spanish, French, Italian and German. However, this work is not very known in Brazil. Therefore, this study observe the author´s treatment of cultural, social, political and gender questions, in a period that comprehend almost a century of the Zimbabwean history, since the intensification of the colonizer occupation and the First Chimurenga (the liberation movement) until the period after the Second Chimurenga (the war for indepence), after 1980. The main focus of the dissertation is the study of the feminine representation in Vera s work, as it appear in her short-story collection Why Don t You Carve Other Animals? (1993), and in her novels Nehanda (1993), Without a Name (1994), Under the Tongue (1996), Butterfly Burning (1998), The Stone Virgins (2002): the construction of the feminine identity, the struggle for women´s emancipation, the position of women in the colonial society and in the fight for the liberation of the country from the colonial Power, as well as the difference introduced by the independence of the country in the lives of Zimbawean women.
O objetivo desta pesquisa e da dissertação dela resultante é a análise da obra ficcional de Yvone Vera, proeminente escritora do Zimbábue. Inscritos na literatura africana de língua inglesa, seus trabalhos são bem divulgados e estudados internacionalmente, contando com traduções em diversos idiomas como o espanhol, o francês, o italiano e o alemão. Todavia, essa obra é ainda pouco difundida no Brasil. Assim, este estudo observa o tratamento dado pela autora às questões culturais, sócio-políticas e de gênero, num período que cobre praticamente um século da história do Zimbábue, desde a intensificação da ocupação colonizadora e a Primeira Chimurenga (movimento de libertação) até o período posterior à Segunda Chimurenga (guerra pela independência), depois de 1980. O foco principal da dissertação é o estudo da representação do feminino na obra de Vera, tal como aparece na coletânea de contos Why Don t You Carve Other Animals? (1992) e nos romances Nehanda (1993), Without a Name (1994), Under the Tongue (1996), Butterfly Burning (1998), The Stone Virgins (2002): a construção da identidade feminina, a luta pela emancipação da mulher na sociedade colonial e na luta pela libertação do país do poder colonial, assim como a diferença introduzida pela independência na vida das mulheres do Zimbábue.
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Neumann, Stephanie. "Gebrochenes Schweigen." Doctoral thesis, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Philosophische Fakultät III, 2003. http://dx.doi.org/10.18452/14973.
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In der zimbawischen Literatur sind die Themen Nation, Körper, Gewalt, Sprache und Erinnerung aufs engste miteinander verbunden. Durch den Einfluß von Yvonne Vera hat sich in den 90er Jahren das Bild des weiblichen Körpers und insbesondere die Diskussion um koloniale und postkoloniale Gewalt deutlich verändert. Im ersten Teil der Arbeit geht es um die Frage nach Nation. Unterschiedliche Darstellungen von Nehanda und den Kämpferinnen des 2. Chimurenga werden näher beleuchtet. Außerdem geht es um Veras "pastoral novel" in der sie von einer weißen Farmersfrau erzählt. Im zweiten Teil geht es um die Körperkonzepte in der zimbabwischen Literatur. Gewalt in der Familie und vor allem der weibliche Körper als Schlachtfeld steht hier im Mittelpunkt. Die Vergewaltigte und die Prostituierte sind auch weiterhin Symbole für den kolonisierten afrikanischen Kontinent. Vera versucht diese Frauen aus einer anderen Perspektive zu betrachten. Bei ihr geht es um die Erfahrung der Frauen selbst. Der dritte Teil der Arbeit befasst sich schließlich mit der Frage nach der Darstellbarkeit von Gewalt. Wie ist es möglich von Gewalt zu erzählen, ohne die Gewalt zu reproduzieren? Vera beantwortet diese Frage mit der Reflexion über des Erzählen. Bei ihr wirkt Sprache heilend.In Zimbabwean literature, the themes of nation, body, violence, language, and memory are closely connected. The dissertation analyses, how the treatment of these themes changed significantly during the 1990s. The focus lies on Yvonne Vera's work and its influence on the image of the female body and the debate about colonial as well as postcolonial violence. The first part deals with the question of nation at the example of various narratives about Nehanda and other female freedom fighters in the Second Chimurenga. Further material is drawn from Vera's "pastural novel", in which she tells about a white settler woman. The second part looks at body concepts in Zimbabwean literature. Special attention is paid to domestic violence and the image of the female body as battlefield. The raped woman and the prostitute are still widely used as symbols for the colonized African continent. Vera tries to break with this tradition by looking at such female characters from the perspective of their own experiences. The third part, finally, raises the issue of the representation of violence. How is possible to write about violence without reproducing it? Vera answers this question by reflecting about narration. Language thus works as a healing power in her texts.
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Dodgson-Katiyo, Pauline. "Gender, history and trauma in Zimbabwean and other African literatures." Thesis, Anglia Ruskin University, 2015. http://arro.anglia.ac.uk/582336/.
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Taking an interdisciplinary approach, this research explores Zimbabwean literary and other cultural texts within the broader context of the construction of identities and the politics of inclusion and exclusion in nationalist and oppositional discourses. It also analyzes two texts by major non-Zimbabwean African writers to examine the thematic links between Zimbabwean and other African writing. Through combining historical, anthropological and political approaches with postcolonial, postmodern and feminist critical theories, the thesis explores the ways in which African writing and performance represent alternative histories to official versions of the nation. It further investigates questions of gender and their significance in nationalist discourses and shows how writing on war, trauma and healing informs and develops readers’ understanding of the relationship of the past to the present. Considered together as a coherent body of work, the published items submitted in this thesis explore how Zimbabwean and other African writers, through re-visioning history and writing from oppositional or marginal positions, intervene in political debates and suggest new transformative ways of constructing and negotiating identities in postcolonial societies.
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Rathke, Annemarie. "Doris Lessing, Yvonne Vera: comparative views of Zimbabwe /." Heidelberg : Winter, 2008. http://d-nb.info/99103273X/04.
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Cumpsty, Rebekah Lindiwe Levitt. "'Lean[ing] into transcendence' : transformations of the sacred in South African, Zimbabwean and Nigerian literatures." Thesis, University of York, 2016. http://etheses.whiterose.ac.uk/13953/.
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Enchantment is a defining feature our postcolonial, globalised world and the literary is where much of this wonder is registered and celebrated. Thus this thesis attends to the postcolonial dynamic of sacred and secular experience as it is represented in contemporary African literatures. Debates around the secular and postsecular are long standing in the fields of religious studies, anthropology and philosophy, but as yet underappreciated in literary studies. I develop a hermeneutic of the imminent sacred as a way to read the constitutive and recuperative gestures subjects make as they assert a sense of belonging in spaces of globalised modernity. The texts are grouped thematically. In response to Chris Abani and Yvonne Vera’s work I articulate how the ritual dimensions of lyrical prose and ritual attention to the corporeal form sacralises the body. Phaswane Mpe and Teju Cole incorporate African epistemologies into the resignification of their cities and with Ivan Vladislavić, the streets are sacralised. Marlene van Niekerk and J. M. Coetzee convey the anxieties of settler colonialism and a love of land reinscribed as sublime. Collectively, the novels I discuss reflect patterns of existential anxiety that emerge from difficulties of belonging, and I trace the ritualised and sacralising strategies of incorporation that seek to locate the subject. These novels radically disrupt the epistemological and ontological modalities of globalised ‘secular’ literary production and intervene in the recuperation of the sacred as a mode of incorporation and resistance. Recent scholarship in African literatures has overlooked these distinctly postsecular negotiations and the ways in which the sacred is reinvested in contemporary African fiction in order to instantiate intimate, local alternatives to the teleology of secular modernity. Thus I use the imminent sacred as a reading strategy that foregrounds these postsecular negotiations and the interrelations of care and vulnerability that motivate sacralisation.
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Bamiro, Edmund Olushina. "The English language and the construction of cultural and social identity in Zimbabwean and Trinbagonian literatures." Thesis, National Library of Canada = Bibliothèque nationale du Canada, 1997. http://www.collectionscanada.ca/obj/s4/f2/dsk3/ftp04/nq23975.pdf.
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Berndt, Katrin. "Female identity in contemporary Zimbabwean fiction /." Bayreuth : Thielmann & Breitinger, 2005. http://bvbr.bib-bvb.de:8991/F?func=service&doc_library=BVB01&doc_number=013041976&line_number=0001&func_code=DB_RECORDS&service_type=MEDIA.
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Andrade, Nayara Cristina Rodrigues de. "“A casa tornou-se minha mente": a representação da realidade em The House of Hunger, de Dambudzo Marechera." Universidade Federal de Goiás, 2016. http://repositorio.bc.ufg.br/tede/handle/tede/6542.
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The aim of this research and of the dissertation resulting from it is the analysis of the construction of the representation of reality in the book The House of Hunger (1978), by Dambudzo Marechera. Prominent writer from Zimbabwe, inscribed in the African Literature in English, his works do not have yet translations into Portuguese. In his own country, he has suffered several accusations for refusing to write according to the Preand Post-Independence national call to the production of works under the 19th century Realism and the 20th century Socialist Realism. His rejection of these “traditions” has resulted in a critical fortune that sometimes vilifies his works for being antirealist and anti-mimetic. This work focuses primarily on tracing how the concept of mimesis already presented differences in Ancient Greece, through Plato’s and Aristotle’s ideas, and how the contribution of the theorist Erich Auerbach (2013) collaborates for the analysis and understanding of the construction of the representation of reality in the works by Dambudzo Marechera, which re-evaluates the charges against the author afore mentioned. For the development of this thesis, we decided to focus our attention on the novel “The House of Hunger” and the short stories “Burning in the Rain” and “The Transformation of Harry”, through the analysis of how the choice of the narrative point of view used in the works and how their narratives are constructed help for the construction of the representation of reality. In the Third Chapter, we made use of the postcolonial theories by Homi Bhabha (1998) and Frantz Fanon (2005) to help us analyze how mimesis is built in the short story “Black Skin What Mask”, through an identity crisis suffered by the protagonist-character. The short-story, which has in its title an obvious paraphrase of the title of Fanon’s Black Skin, White Masks (2008), has the construction of reality emerging through the tension between the fictional entity and the environment, which is a configuration of what Erich Auerbach understands mimesis is.
O objetivo desta pesquisa e da dissertação dela resultante é a análise da construção da representação da realidade no livro The House of Hunger (1978), de Dambudzo Marechera. Proeminente escritor do Zimbábue, inscrito na literatura africana de língua inglesa, suas obras ainda não têm traduções para a língua portuguesa. Dentro do seu país, o autor foi alvo de diversas acusações por se negar a escrever segundo a chamada nacional pré e pós-independência, que objetivava produzir obras que obedecessem à estética do realismo do século XIX ou do realismo socialista do século XX. Sua rejeição a essa “tradição” resultou em uma fortuna crítica que, por vezes, vilipendia suas obras por serem antirrealistas e antimiméticas. Esta dissertação tem como foco principal traçar o modo como o conceito de mímesis já apresentava divergências desde a Grécia antiga, com Platão e Aristóteles, e como as contribuições do teórico Erich Auerbach (2013) colaboram para a análise e entendimento do modo da construção da representação da realidade na obra de Dambudzo Marechera, o que reavalia a acusação mencionada anteriormente. Para o desenvolvimento desta dissertação, decidimos focar nossa atenção na novela “The House of Hunger” e os contos “Burning in the Rain” e “The Transformation of Harry”, para analisamos como a escolha do foco narrativo usado nas obras e o modo como suas narrativas são construídas ajudam na construção da representação da realidade. No capítulo terceiro, fizemos uso das teorias pós-coloniais de Homi Bhabha (1998) e de Frantz Fanon (2005) para analisarmos o modo como a mímesis é construída no conto “Black Skin What Mask”, através de uma crise identitária vivenciada pelo personagem-protagonista. O conto, que tem em seu título uma paráfrase evidente da obra Pele negra, máscaras brancas (2008), de Frantz Fanon, tem sua realidade construída em meio à tensão entre a entidade ficcional e o ambiente, o que é a configuração daquilo que Erich Auerbach considera seja a mímesis.
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Chihota, Clement. "Towards Marxist stylistics: incorporating elements of critical discourse analysis into Althusserian Marxist criticism in the interpretation of selected Zimbabwean fiction." Doctoral thesis, University of Cape Town, 2014. http://hdl.handle.net/11427/13117.
Full textAbstract:
Includes bibliographical references.The thesis - which locates itself at the interface between linguistic and literary studies - explores the possibility of developing a ‘Marxist- stylistic’ method of text interpretation, which primarily proceeds from Althusserian Marxist Criticism, but which also incorporates salient elements of Critical Discourse Analysis. In construction of the method, the thesis first investigates the need for Althusserian Marxist criticism to be mediated, and more specifically, the areas in which this mediation is required. The thesis then crosses over to the field of Critical Discourse Analysis where it identifies relevant theoretical and methodological resources that are capable of mediating the ‘gaps’ identified in Althusserian Marxist criticism. The construction of the Marxist stylistic method is then effected through the transfer of germane theoretical and methodological resources from Critical Discourse Analysis to Althusserian Marxist criticism. The distinctive properties of the emergent Marxist-stylistic method are delineated before the method is practically applied to the interpretation of at least four fictional texts – all written and set in Zimbabwe. The key outcome of the thesis is that a distinctive method of text interpretation, which meaningfully separates itself from Althusserian Marxist criticism, on the one hand, and Critical Discourse Analysis, on the other, emerges. The thesis concludes with a reflection on the application of the method and makes some suggestions for further research and development in the area herein labelled as ‘Marxist stylistics.’
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Gambahaya, Zifikile. "An analysis of the social vision of post-independence Zimbabwean writers with special reference to Shona and Ndebele poetry." Doctoral thesis, University of Cape Town, 1998. http://hdl.handle.net/11427/9678.
Full textAbstract:
Includes bibliographical references.This dissertation analyses creative trends in Shona and Ndebele poetry published after the attainment of political independence in 1980. The research tries to establish the close link between poems in the two national languages and post-independence Zimbabwean history in order to examine the link between creative writing and nationalism, which is the context in which creativity takes place, an attempt is made to outline major trends in nationalist history vis-a-vis colonialism. Having set the background for analysis, the research focuses on texts that are published in the context of the apparent cultural renaissance that is ushered by the apparent victory of African nationalism over colonialism. The texts are analysed in the context of the dialectic of nationalism and colonialism.
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Gonye, Jairos. "Representations of dance in Zimbabwean literature, post - 1960." Thesis, 2016. http://hdl.handle.net/11602/350.
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Musanga, Terrence. "The depiction of migration and identity in Zimbabwean Literature from 1980-2010." Thesis, 2015. http://hdl.handle.net/11602/317.
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Mlambo, Sheila Kanhukamwe. "Comparative analysis of household vulnerability derived through applying weights from literature and consultation with communities of place." Thesis, 2015. http://hdl.handle.net/11602/282.
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Taitz, Laurice. "Where once our heroes danced there is nothing but a hideous stain: nationalism and contemporary Zimbabwean literature." Thesis, 1996. https://hdl.handle.net/10539/26755.
Full textAbstract:
A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Arts, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg,
in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Art.This study demonstrates the relationship between nationalism and identity formation by exploring the ways in which Zimbabwean writers have constructed identities within the context of a nationalist struggle for independence. By focusing on the predominant themes of disease, alienation and disintegration, it explores how these identities emphasise difference and heterogeneity in response to the homogenising discourses of colonialism and nationalism. The disparity between the ways in which nationalism articulates itself and is apprehended, and the ways in which nationalism allows for the foregrounding of particular identities is illustrated by reference to the idea of a pact or alliance - an agreement reached on the basis of the necessity of defeating colonialism. WhiIe motivations are often disparate, this common goal allows for a show of unity, often mistaken as homogeneity. The achievement of independence entails a shift in priorities, where those differing identities that previously seemed homogenous, come to the fore precisely to emphasise their difference.
Andrew Chakane 2019
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Nyanda, Josiah. "The machinery of autobiography in selected political autobiographies from Zimbabwe." Thesis, 2016. http://hdl.handle.net/10539/22630.
Full textAbstract:
A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Humanities, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy
Johannesburg, June 2016The study explores the ways in which the self and other are constructed and represented in a wide range of Zimbabwean political autobiographical narratives from 1972 to 2011. In particular, it focuses on the machinery of autobiography and the various narrative strategies deployed by autobiographers of different races, gender, ethnic origins and political persuasions to construct the self and other. It also considers how these representations of the self and other, combined with the narrative strategies used, bear upon the history and politics of Zimbabwe. The argument is advanced that through strategic and careful deployment of narrative in transforming lives lived to lives told, the selected narratives not only reconstruct the self and other but also narrate the history and politics of the nation. Therefore, the deployment of different narrative strategies, which include the uses of: authentication, patronage of authorship, historical recurrence and narcissistic rage, erasure, palimpsest and collaborative voices, and hauntology has resulted in the emergence of a seemingly minor genre into a competing narrative that is threatening to take over the place of hegemonic grand narratives and histories of Zimbabwe. These have all along been largely nativist and based on racial, ethnic and patriarchal prejudices, especially in the manner in which they narrated the political history of Zimbabwe. The study thus argues that the machinery of autobiographies has been deployed as political weaponry to present bleached images of the self and other. This situates Zimbabwe’s political autobiographies as literary and political projects and archives that narrate the nation through the story of the self and other.
MT2017
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Rugwiji, Temba. "Appropriating Judean post-exilic literature in a postcolonial discourse : a case for Zimbabwe." Thesis, 2013. http://hdl.handle.net/10500/10549.
Full textAbstract:
The narratives about the postexilic Judean community are an ancient biblical account of the
socio-economic and political experiences of the Judeans when they were finally restored back to
Judah from Babylonian captivity. Although the Judean restoration was celebrated when they
were restored by King Cyrus’ decree, real freedom did not prevail in the Persian province of
Yehud; corruption, usury, greed, oppression, enslavement and loss of property impacted
negatively on the poor. The leadership expropriated from poor citizens land, vineyards, and
houses in exchange for food. In addition, the governors also charged heavy interest on money
borrowed by poor members of society. Parents and their children were subjected to enslavement.
In response to these corrupt practices, Nehemiah challenged the leadership to stop oppressing the
poor. Nehemiah went further to provide food to the starving Judeans and other people from
surrounding nations which served as a stimulus to strive towards alleviating poverty and starvation among communities.
By employing an approach known as hermeneutics of appropriation, this thesis
appropriates the experience of the postexilic Judean community to the post-independence
Zimbabwean context. Between the years 1999 and 2008 many people lost their lives due to
unemployment and lack of income, shelter, nutrition, and access to health-care facilities because
of the economic meltdown following the controversial fast-track land reform programme in
Zimbabwe. The majority of people are still experiencing the negative impact of the land reform
as people strive to make a living in the absence of jobs and income scarcity. Corruption by the
leadership has continued to further exacerbate starvation among the poor until today.This study attempts to employ the biblical Nehemiah’s social justice reforms (Neh 5) to
challenge the Zimbabwean leadership to focus on rebuilding the country which was ravaged by a
decade of both political and socio-economic crises. Lessons drawn from Nehemiah would be
used to stimulate the leadership in the Zimbabwean government and members of society at large,
to strive towards helping the poor and alleviating poverty.Old Testament & Ancient Near Eastern Studies
D. Litt. et Phil. (Biblical Studies)
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Mavesera, Miidzo. "Empowerment through language : exploring possibilities of using African languages and literature to promote socio-cultural and economic development in Zimbabwe." Thesis, 2009. http://hdl.handle.net/10500/2692.
Full textAbstract:
The study sought to explore possibilities of using African languages and their literature to enhance socio-cultural and economic development in Zimbabwe. In broad terms the study considered empowerment through language. Basically the research was an exploration of the different linguistic patterns and attitudes that prevail in the African continent in general and Zimbabwe in particular.
The descriptive survey research design was employed for its usefulness in exploratory studies. A total of 600 people participated in the research. Respondents were from across the breath of linguistic divides in the country. Questionnaires, interviews, observations and documentary reviews were used to gather data. Data gathered was subjected to both quantitative and qualitative analysis resulting in data triangulation for validation.
Major findings of the research indicated a disparity in the roles and functions allocated to languages in Zimbabwe. English is preferred and over valued in administration, education and wider communication as a carrier of modern knowledge in science and technology Zimbabwe’s dependence on English provides selective access to socio-cultural and economic services that results in the exclusion of a majority of indigenous people. Zimbabwe’s dependence on English therefore limits adequate exploitation of potential in socio-cultural and economic development.
The linguistic landscape of Zimbabwe is not adequately exploited. Zimbabwe is a multi-lingual and multi-cultural country without a clear defining instrument for the status and use of indigenous languages, (Gatawa, 1998; NLPAP, 1998 and Nziramasanga et al, 1999). A clear language policy that recognises that language is a resource is likely to be linguistically all-inclusive and facilitate socio-cultural and economic participation by all Zimbabweans Implementation of proposals for inclusion of African languages is retarded by centuries of linguistic marginalisation and fossilised attitudes in the belief that English carries modern knowledge, coupled with the lack of resources theory. Zimbabwe’s pursuance in the use of English is mainly for nationistic reasons.Proposals and recommendations to avoid reverse discrimination and come up with an all-inclusive multi-lingual policy that uplifts the status of indigenous languages and their literature without annihilating English were made. The level of development for English should illuminate and challenge the heights to which African languages can be developed.African languages
D.Litt. et Phil.
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Saneliso, Thambo. "Mobilities, Migration and Identities in Selected Zimbabwean Fictional Narratives." Diss., 2018. http://hdl.handle.net/11602/1156.
Full textAbstract:
MA (English)Department of English
This study examines the representation of the Zimbabwean migrant experiences in both regional and international migrations. It utilizes narratives that highlight the experiences of the Zimbabweans who migrate thereby exploring issues of mobility and identity. These narratives are Harare North (2010), An Elegy for Easterly (2010), Zebra Crossing (2013), We Need New Names (2014) and The Maestro, The Magistrate and The Mathematician (2014). These narratives have been utilized in the study to argue that migrants encounter traumatic experiences as they cross either the regional or international spaces they move to in search of better economic prospects. It further explores the kinds of trauma that they are subjected to, ranging from racism, the threat and reality of xenophobic attacks, the intricacy of negotiating an existence and a livelihood in these new spaces, searching for employment, to mention a few. The study argues that the migration experience has a catastrophic effect on the migrants’ psychological state, represented as partially being caused by the realization that the host country presents its own set of challenges and is also hostile, a different reality from the preconceived romanticized view of the countries they migrate to. The study argues that the selected novels foreground the inhospitable nature of the Zimbabwean post-2000 political instabilities and the socio-economic meltdown as fostering the forced trans-migrations of Zimbabweans in an effort to escape poverty and political challenges.
NRF
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Chitando, Anna. "Narrating gender and danger in selected Zimbabwe woman's writing on HIV and AIDS." Thesis, 2011. http://hdl.handle.net/10500/4707.
Full textAbstract:
This thesis investigates how selected Zimbabwean female writers narrate HIV and AIDS. It argues that, generally, the prevailing images of women in Zimbabwean society and literature are incapacitating. Male authors have been portraying women in disempowering ways as loose, dangerous, weak and dependent on men. This unjust portrayal of women has been worsened by the prevalence of HIV and AIDS. Women have been depicted as vectors in the spread of HIV, thus perpetuating sexist ideologies. Presuming that women authors can do better in their depiction of female characters, this research investigates whether female authors differ in their representation of female characters in contexts of HIV and AIDS. The works critiqued are Virginia Phiri’s Desperate (2002), Sharai Mukonoweshuro’s Days of Silence (2000), Valerie Tagwira’s The Uncertainty of Hope (2006), Tendayi Westerhof’s Unlucky in Love (2005) and Lutanga Shaba’s Secrets of a Woman’s Soul (2006). The study further explores the extent to which Zimbabwe female authors sanction, conform, undermine, assess critically or do away with unconstructive images of women in contexts of HIV and AIDS. This study emphasized the possibility of literature to offer a platform for the liberation of women, or a counter- platform for reactionary politics. Predicated on the notion of gender and danger, the study questions whether female authors perpetuate the stereotypes of women’s roles as destructive, or whether some view ‘dangerous’ images of women in literature as liberating. Overall, this thesis argued that contrary to the postulation of female authors being similar in their understanding and depiction of the concept of gender and danger, they are not. It is at this juncture that this study breaks new ground by utilizing the concept of agency to show how different female writers interpret and narrate gender and danger in contexts of HIV and AIDS. This study applies the notion of agency as a means of evaluating the extent to which women employ nonconformist acts in order to undercut patriarchy and other oppressive socially constructed ideologies.English Studies
(D. Litt et Phil. ( English Studies))
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Mbwera, Shereck. "Short stories for life : implications of the Canonisation of the Zimbabwe story-telling tradition, with special reference to selected Zimbabwean short stories." Thesis, 2016. http://hdl.handle.net/10500/22592.
Full textAbstract:
This study examines the myth of the surrogate power of canonicity by exposing the condition of liminality of the Zimbabwean short story genre within African literary canon. Building on the hypothesis that canonisation distorts literature the study postulates that literary canon produce predictable biases in construing the position of the short story. It fossilises and condenses the marginal genres to the extent that the existing canon repertoire hardly recognises them. The peripheral but de facto canon of the short story genre entertains a strong relationship of heteronomy to the mainstream/central canon. This thesis studies this relationship which determines canon formation within the African literary systems. It challenges the prevailing status quo in which the short story is polarised against other literary modes. The polarity creates a charged diametric force between the presumed canonical genres and the supposedly non-canonical short story mess. What lacks in this equation of conflicts is a sense of revival, reformation and continuity of the short story canon. The marginality of the short story canon is predicated on factors external to the genre itself, such as the influence of colonial institutions, collegiate institutions and publishers on writers. These factors pervade the dialectics of canonical marginality of the genre. The study, which argues that there is no unanimity on theory of canon, proposes Africulture, as both a theory and praxis of Afrocentricity, to function as an arbiter of short story literary reputation and consecration. The research reveres the autonomous value of African story-telling tradition which withstood the test and movement of time, in the process, surviving not only the historical-cum-cultural threat of colonial loss and canonical displacement, but also the throes and will power of new media and digital technologies. The ascendancy of the electronic short story genre to canonical status remains questionable. Critical controversies abound about the canonicity of electronic literature. The study employs Technauriture as a theoretical model for rethinking the transcendence of the electronic short story canon. The study concludes that, by virtue of its resilience, the short story ought to be treated as a wholesale and independent genre, worth of full scale appreciation.African Languages
D. Litt. et Phil. (African Languages)
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Smith, Neville James. "Theorizing discourses of Zimbabwe, 1860-1900 : a Foucauldian analysis of colonial narratives." Thesis, 1998. http://hdl.handle.net/10413/8668.
Full textAbstract:
This study seeks to understand colonial narratives of Zimbabwe 1860-1900
as a locus of transgression and opposition. I investigate the range and
complexity of discourses within the imperial project open to both European
male and female writers, their shifts over time or within one or more texts.
Narratives of the explorer, missionary, hunter and soldier are examined as a
literary genre in which attempts were made to re-imagine the Western self
through an encounter with Africans. I consider how positions from which
the European in the colonies could speak and write were reformulated. This
study will employ Foucauldian discourse theory in an analysis of the British
'civilizing mission' in Central Southern Africa.
The Introduction examines existing historical and theoretical
approaches in this field and argues for a particular use of Foucualt's insights
and vocabulary. Chapter One is concerned with the way European explorers
constituted notions of 'civilized nations' in Europe and 'primitive tribes' in
Africa . I then question how this process of division and exclusion was
reinforced by the mythography of an EI Dorado in the African interior. In
Chapter Two I consider how Colonial Man was constituted in different ways
by Victorian discourses of adventure, travel and conquest. I also attempt to
account for the effects that followed the activation, within colonial culture,
of structures of exclusion and division based on race or class. Chapter
Three focuses on the economic dimension of a dissident LMS missionary and
the sustained resistance to Western philanthropy among the Ndebele. I also
examine the later Mashonaland mission where the missionary-administrator
became instrumental in the division and control of Africans. In the final
chapter I consider discursive formations which sought to constrain African
resistance during the 1896-7 Chimurenga and the institutionalization of a
settler order in the post-Chimurenga era.Thesis (Ph.D.)-University of Natal, Durban, 1998.
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Javangwe, Tasiyana Dzikai. "Contesting narratives : constructions of the self and the nation in Zimbabwe polical auto/ Biography." Thesis, 2011. http://hdl.handle.net/10500/4838.
Full textAbstract:
This study is an interpretive analysis of Zimbabwean political auto/biographical narratives in contexts of changing culture, race, ethnicity and gender identity images of the self and nation. I used eclectic theories of postcolonialism to explore the fractured nature of both the processes of identity construction and narration, and the contradictions inherent in identity categories of nation and self. The problem of using autobiographical memory to recall the momentous events that formed the contradictory identities of self and nation in the creative imagination of the lives of Ian Smith, Maurice Nyagumbo, Abel Muzorewa, Joshua Nkomo, Doris Lessing, Fay Chung, Judith Garfield Todd, Tendai Westerhof and Lutanga Shaba have been highlighted. The study concluded that there are narrative and ideological disjunctures between experiencing life and narrating those experiences to create approximations of coherent identities of individual selves and those of the nation. The study argued that each of the stories analyzed in this study contributed a version of the multiple Zimbabwean narratives that no one story could ever tell without being contested by others. Thus the study explores how white Rhodesian auto/biographies depend on the imperial repertoire to construct varying, even contradicting, images of white identities and the Rhodesian nation, which are also contested by black nationalist life narratives. The narratives by women writers, both white and black, introduced further instabilities to the male authored narratives by moving beyond the conventional understanding of what is ‘political’ in political auto/biographies. The HIV and AIDS narratives by black women thrust into the public sphere personalized versions of self so that the political consequence of their inclusion was not only to image Zimbabwe as a diseased society, but one desperately in need of political solutions to confront the different pathologies inherited from colonialism and which also have continued in the post-independence period.English Studies
(D. Litt. et Phil. (English))
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Dube, Liketso. "Exploration of Ndebele carnival literature posted on Facebook walls and how it provides an escape route from censorship in Zimbabwe." Thesis, 2020. http://hdl.handle.net/10500/27415.
Full textAbstract:
This thesis is an exploration of tabooed literary creations that it terms carnival literature. To achieve the objective of establishing the effectiveness of posting material on Facebook walls of the selected group and individual accounts to escape censorship, the thesis compared traditional graffiti, particularly latrinalia, to ‗cyber‘ graffiti (social media) with Facebook as a case study.
Lev Vygotsky‘s Activity Theory helped the study link graffiti, vulgarities, humour and Facebook to the Ndebele society‘s response to tabooing of carnival literature. The thesis argued that participating in traditional graffiti production and coming up with posts on a Facebook wall is a
deliberate effort with a target audience just as other genres of literature have. However, society tends to condemn carnival literature as a rebellious genre that deserves exclusion from ‗normal‘
interaction. Carnival literature is therefore censored through tabooing its themes and language.
The term carnival literature is derived from medieval performances that were named the ‗carnivalesque‘ by Bakhtin and have equivalents in Africa as a continent and in Zimbabwe as a nation. The characteristics of carnivality are found in both traditional graffiti and ‗cyber‘ graffiti.
These, among others, include sex and sexuality as themes, obscenities, vulgarities, and all language that is considered offensive. Interestingly, these elements of carnivality evoke laughter
of one kind or another. Latrinalia from selected public toilets from the city of Bulawayo was photographed and subjected to Critical Discourse Analysis with attention being paid to carnivality, Bakhtinian dialogism and humour and its impact on the interaction process. Posts on
walls of the selected Facebook group and individual accounts were subjected to the same treatment that was given traditional graffiti. The thesis argues that social media can perform a
similar function to that of traditional graffiti with added advantages. Social media has created world communities that are brought together by common interests and platforms where they meet and share ideas. The study also established that messages have layers of meaning, making it unreasonable to ban certain messages since they serve a particular purpose. Social media, particularly Facebook, provides pockets of privacy for candid and unfettered interaction that
service specific audiences among the Ndebele; hence can function as the escape route for carnival literature from cultural censorship in Zimbabwe.African Languages
D. Phil. (African Languages)
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Hurst, Christopher. "Albert Sumbo-Ncube : AmaNdebele oral historical narrative and the creation of a popular hero." Thesis, 2000. http://hdl.handle.net/10413/5321.
Full textAbstract:
In 1998 I conducted a series of interviews with Zimbabweans who recounted, often using English, their memories of Albert Sumbo-Ncube. From these I have selected and transcribed five interviews with ZIPRA ex-combatants in which they tell the story, as they remember and elaborate on their memories, of Sumbo's escape from Rhodesian police custody at the Victoria Falls in 1977 during the Zimbabwean liberation struggle. The interviews represent Sumbo as a hero and reveal the folk hero creation process at work. This hero figure was created by people who needed an effective figure of oppositional propaganda and who did not
have access to the technology and resources of the Rhodesian government. Their narratives were communicated orally and they fused material found in the Rhodesian government-controlled newspapers with an amaNdebele oral tradition. I shall draw on Hobsbawm's (1972) notions of the social bandit and Robens's (1989) study of the folk hero creation amongst post-slavery African-Americans in order to understand the ZIPRA guerrillas' hero creation. The Sumbo folk hero creation served to promote an ideal self for the Zimbabwean guerrillas and their recruits. Sumbo's daring and his ability successfully to defy authority evoked admiration amongst the guerrillas in the 1970s, and in 1998 revives for them the
idealism of the struggle. In Zimbabwe the 'hero' has become a contested category, because of the government's will to control the historical representation of the liberation struggle by promoting an official history with official categories of heroes. Working with Barber's notion of popular African arts (1987 and 1997), I argue that a folk hero can be redefined as a 'popular hero' when created by a proletariat and expressed by means of a popular art form. The interviewees use a specific form, the oral historical narrative, to preserve and transmit the Sumbo hero figure. I argue that though this oral historical narrative is less fixed in form and occasion than praise poetry, songs and genealogies, it nevertheless possesses identifiable and recurrent characteristics and I have established a number of criteria for identifying oral historical narrative as a genre. In order to avoid taking a generalised and essentialising approach to the notion of
'African culture', I have drawn on theory that is as specific as possible to the
understanding of oral historical narratives within the context of siNdebele speakers in Zimbabwe. I have drawn on research published by Hofmeyr (1993) and Scheub (1975) because they focused on Nguni-speaking societies. Their research is further supported by my own research conducted in the rural area of Tsholotsho in Zimbabwe. The analysis of the oral historical narrative genre used by the interviewees demonstrates that significant formal and performance skills occur in this type of narrative which takes place within apparently informal conversations.Thesis (M.A.)-University of Natal, Durban, 2000.
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Viriri, Eunitah. "The promotion of unhu in Zimbabwean secondary schools through the teaching of Shona literature : Masvingo urban district, a case study." Thesis, 2017. http://hdl.handle.net/10500/23737.
Full textAbstract:
This study examines the extent to which the teaching of Shona novels can be used to
promote unhu (humanness) in Zimbabwean secondary schools where there has been a
call for the teaching of cultural values. The school syllabi for Shona make this position
abundantly clear. For that reason, anchoring the discussion on the role of literature in
Africa as expounded by African scholars such as Ngugi wa Thiong’o (1981), p’Bitek
(1986) and Achebe (1989) among others, the study observes that literature plays an
important role in moulding character through advancing unhu. For instance, as Achebe
(1989) argues that the novelist is a teacher, the study therefore locates literature as a
life-affirming and life-extending affair. The discussion of the role of literature as a
potential conduit for expressing unhu takes place within the theoretical confines of
Afrocentricity, an African-centred theory that places the interests of Africa at the centre
of any analysis involving African people. The selected novels namely Pfumo Reropa
(1961), Kunyarara Hakusi Kutaura? (1983) and Ndafa Here? (2007) are therefore
interrogated from an Afrocentric point of view. The three novels are representative of
different historical epochs in Zimbabwe’s cultural trajectory. In addition, they have
featured quite prominently on the school syllabi for Shona. Through a combination of
interviews and critical analysis of the novels, the study crucially observes that the proper
teaching of literature can effectively transform the thinking of learners thereby locating
them in their own cultural platforms. However, for this to happen, teachers must be
properly trained in order that they develop an appreciation of the value of literature in
imparting unhu among learners. As a result, the study thus proposes sufficient
conscientisation of teachers and learners on the concept and practice of unhu be
systematically carried out. At the same, there is need for greater planning in
constructing a more informing syllabus, as well as the deliberate inclusion of texts that
canonise unhu.African Languages
D. Litt. et Phil. (African Languages)
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Quansah, Ekua A. "Women of African ancestry's contribution to scholarship: Voices through fiction (Edwidge Danticat, Haiti, Tsitsi Dangarembga, Zimbabwe, Dionne Brand)." 2005. http://link.library.utoronto.ca/eir/EIRdetail.cfm?Resources__ID=370494&T=F.
Full text
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Panashe, Gloria Chigumadzi. "Of nation, narration and Nehanda: accounts by Samupindi and Vera." Thesis, 2017. https://hdl.handle.net/10539/25909.
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A research report submitted in fulfillment of requirements for the degree of Masters in African Literature of Faculty of Humanities, University of the Witwatersrand, April 2017This research report uses the “Frozen Image” - a widely circulated photograph taken by the British South Africa Company of Mbuya Nehanda and Sekuru Kaguvi, the female and male Shona Mhondoros who led Zimbabwe’s first anti-colonial uprising against the settlers, as its point of departure to explore the relationship between settler-colonial, nationalist, patriarchal and feminist versions of Mbuya Nehanda’s role and agency in the First Chimurenga. This paper begins by demonstrating that it is necessary for nationalist discourses to seek to “lock in” the histories embodied in visual moments such as the widely and historically circulated “Frozen Image”, arguing that they are reliant on the “fixedness” of gendered national temporalities. I argue that Charles Samupindi’s Death Throes: The Trial Against Mbuya Nehanda demonstrates that when the challenge to settler-colonial projections of an African past go unaccompanied by an interrogation of historical gender relations and a broader challenge to Western modernities, it is necessary to remain faithful to, and narrate the Frozen Image, in a self-conscious, realist, imaginatively constrained narrative project. This is whereas Yvonne Vera’s, Nehanda demonstrates that it is possible to “move beyond the image” to create a liberatory, poetic and imaginative narrative project.
XL2018
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"Female self, body and food strategies of resistance in Doris Lessing, Margaret Atwood, Zhang Jie and Xi Xi (China, Zimbabwe)." 2002. http://library.cuhk.edu.hk/record=b6073481.
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"2002."Thesis (Ph.D.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2002.
Includes bibliographical references (p. 207-239).
Electronic reproduction. Hong Kong : Chinese University of Hong Kong, [2012] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web.
Electronic reproduction. Ann Arbor, MI : ProQuest Information and Learning Company, [200-] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web.
Mode of access: World Wide Web.
Abstracts in English and Chinese.
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Mazuruse, Mickson. "The theme of protest in the post-independence Shona novel." Diss., 2010. http://hdl.handle.net/10500/3949.
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The study discusses selected Shona novels‟ depiction of the theme of protest in the post-independence era in Zimbabwe. The ideas that these novels generate on protest are examined in the context of socio-political and socio-cultural issues in post-independent Zimbabwe. The study is an investigation of the extent to which protest literature is indispensable in the struggle of African people to liberate themselves from imperialist servitude. Novels on socio-political protest show how the government has failed to deliver on most of its promises because of neocolonialism and corruption. Novels on socio-cultural protest show how cultural innovations in post-independence Zimbabwe brought problems .The study comes to the conclusion that for literature to be reliable and useful to society it is not enough to highlight weaknesses in criticizing, but it should go beyond that and offer constructive and corrective criticism. This shows that protest literature is a vital tool for social transformation in Zimbabwe.African languages
M.A. (African languages)
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Gudhlanga, Enna Sukutai. "Gender and land ownership in Zimbabwean literature : a critical appraisal in selected Shona fiction." Thesis, 2016. http://hdl.handle.net/10500/24806.
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The study has been prompted by the gap that exists regarding gender and land in Zimbabwean fiction. The study therefore seeks to interrogate the gender and land ownership discourse in Shona fiction in relation to the current conflict of access to land by race, class and gender. The study therefore examines the following fictional works; Feso (1956), Dzasukwa-Mwana-Asina-Hembe (1967), Pafunge (1972), Kuridza Ngoma Nedemo (1985), Vavariro (1990) and Sekai Minda Tave Nayo (2005). Of significance is the fact that the selected fictional works traverse the different historical periods that Zimbabwe as a nation has evolved through. Apart from analysing the selected fictional works, the study also collected data through open-ended interviews and questionnaires to triangulate findings from the fictional works. The selected fictional writers present the different experiences of black Zimbabweans through land loss and the strategies taken by the indigenous people in trying to regain their lost heritage, the land. The exegesis of the selected fictional works is guided by Afro-centred perspectives of Africana Womanism and Afrocentricity. Findings from most of the selected fictional works reveals the selective exclusion of blacks, both male and female, from accessing land and other vital resources from the colonial right up to post-independence periods in Zimbabwe. The study observes that Shona traditional culture accorded both genders the requisite space in terms of land ownership in the pre-colonial period. The study also establishes that colonialism through its numerous legislations stripped black men and women of the fertile land which they formerly collectively owned. The study also establishes that disillusioned black men and women worked extremely hard to regain their lost land as reflected in the unsanctioned land grabs as well as the government sanctioned Fast Track Land Reform Programme. Recommendations for future research include the expansion of such research to include works of fiction in other languages as well as different genres. Future land policies stand to benefit from the inclusion of women in decision making since women the world over have been confirmed as workers of the land. This is likely to deal with the gender divide regarding land ownership patterns both within and outside Zimbabwe.African Languages
D. Litt. et Phil. (African Languages)
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Rugwiji, Temba. "Reading the exodus tradition from a Zimbabwean perspective." Diss., 2008. http://hdl.handle.net/10500/3325.
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The exodus tradition was passed on for posterity among the Jewish descendants about God who
delivered their ancestors from bondage in Egypt, who divided the Red Sea waters and provided
them with manna in the desert. The exodus tradition motivated them in many problematic
situations about "God of their fathers" who delivered them. The modern post-biblical world has
drawn some motivation from the exodus liberation motif, namely: Latin America, USA, South
Africa, Rhodesia and Zimbabwe, amongst others.
The topic: Reading the Exodus Tradition from a Zimbabwean Perspective is necessitated by the
Zimbabwean experience of oppression. The function of the exodus tradition during colonialism
in Rhodesia is discussed because it forms the nucleus from which Zimbabwe was born. Recently,
the Zimbabwean people have been subjected to unjust treatments by the Zimbabwean regime.
The function of the exodus tradition in the Zimbabwean situation is explored in chapters five and
six, respectively.Biblical and Ancient studies
M.A. (Biblical Studies)
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Moyo, Thamsanqa. "The unsettling of colonialist and nationalist spaces : John Eppel's writings on Zimbabwe." Thesis, 2018. http://hdl.handle.net/10500/25320.
Full textAbstract:
The Rhodesian and Zimbabwean space-time involved the creation and adoption of hegemonic discourses that influenced ways of behavior, thinking, perceiving reality and particular ways of identity construction based on mystifying nationalisms. In raced and politically charged spaces, such grand narratives depended, for their currency, on stereotypes, essentialisms, domination and dichotomization of ‘nation as narration’. The metanarratives of the two spaces functioned as discursive tools for the legitimation of particular forms of exclusions, elisions and distortions. As discursive and polemical literary tools, these discourses always found sustenance and perpetuation in the existence of a different other. In other words, these constructed narratives sought to use difference as a basis for scapegoating and naturalizing racial, economic, political and resource asymmetries in the Rhodesian and Zimbabwean spaces. Power was wielded not in the service of, but against, the majority who are marginalized. This study explores John Eppel’s writings on the constructions of both Rhodesia and Zimbabwe as ideological spaces for the legitimation of power based on class, race and politics. I argue that Eppel’s selected writings are a literary intervention that proffers a satirically dissident critique of the foundational myths, symbols and narratives of Rhodesian and Zimbabwean space-time. The study argues that Eppel offers literary resistance to unproblematized identity compositions predicated on socially constructed but skewed categories that limit the contours of belonging and citizenship. The Rhodesian space is viewed as a palimpsest upon which is overwritten the Zimbabwean patriotic discourse that also authorize racism, marginalization, power abuse and other forms of exclusion. In examining Eppel’s satiric disruption of both spaces, I use certain strands of the Postcolonial Theory that problematize issues of nation, identity, race, tribe and power. Its usefulness lies in its rejection of fixities, of absolutes and in its general counter-hegemonic thrust. I therefore invoke the theorizations of Frantz Fanon, Homi Bhabha, Maria
Lara, Paul Gilroy, Mikhail Bakhtin and Benita Parry. These form the theoretical base with which the study confronts Eppel’s writings on Rhodesia and Zimbabwe. The focal texts used are: Absent: The English Teacher (2009), selected short stories in White Man Crawling (2007) and The Caruso of Colleen Bawn (2004), The Holy Innocents (2002), Hatchings (2006), selected poems from Spoils of War (1989), Songs my Country Taught me: Selected Poems 1965-2005(2005) and D.G.G.Berry’s The Great North Road (1992). I conclude by arguing that Eppel creates a fictional life-world where race, origin, politics, class and culture are figured as polarizing identity markers that should be re-negotiated and even transcended in order to materialize a more inclusive multicultural society. To the extent that both the colonial and post-independence eras cross-fertilize each other in terms of occlusions, creating hegemonic narratives, resort to race, violence, silencing and erasure of certain subjectivities, Eppel advocates the ‘hatching’ of a new national, moral and inclusive ethos that supersedes the claustrophobia of both spaces.English Studies
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Wasosa, Wellington. "Deviance and moralisiation as portrayed in selected post-independence Shona novels and short stories." Thesis, 2014. http://hdl.handle.net/10500/19842.
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This thesis is an exegesis of the portrayal of deviance in selected post-independence Shona fictional works. The analysis is done within the context of moralisation in Shona literature. The forms of deviant behaviour discussed include prostitution, homosexuality, crime and violence and negligence of duty within families. The fictional works are Mapenzi (1999), Totanga Patsva (2003), Ndozviudza Aniko? (2006), Ndafa Here? (2008), and Makaitei? (2008). All the fictional works are set during the period of the Zimbabwe Crisis and this becomes the context of the criticism of the manner in which deviance is handled by the writers. Particular attention is paid on the causes and solutions to deviance, images of deviants and the implications of such images in attempting to understand the realities of deviant behaviour. The research adopts an eclectic approach through a combination of literary and sociological theories to unpack issues concerning the litigious subject of deviance. The research fully acknowledges that deviance is a fluid and controversial concept as it varies with cultural frameworks and historical periods of certain societies. Thus the research has endeavoured to locate deviance with the ambit of Shona existential philosophy and the period of the Zimbabwe crisis. The research advances the argument that no human being is inherently deviant but there are certain circumstances and eventualities that are responsible for the development of such a personality. Therefore deviance herein is viewed as a response to the situation and in the case of this research it is the crisis which then is responsible for nurturing the people into deviance. In most of the situations, deviance is shown to be essentially a survival strategy by those who engage in it. Prostitution, homosexuality and crime have been shown to be largely economic necessities as the collapsing economy during the period of the crisis came with amorphous challenges and people resorted to anti-social behaviour in an attempt to live contenting lives. With regards to prostitution, homosexuality and crime, the writers have to a larger extent been able to contextualise deviance in terms of the crisis although Mabasa has been shown to display some ambivalence in his treatment of prostitutes in Mapenzi and Ndafa Here? There are instances he castigates prostitutes as social renegades which somehow weakens his vision. Apart from this, it has also been argued that deviant behaviour can be a result of the frustrations people face as they battle the vagaries of life. Violence and negligence of duty within families is argued to be a consequence of the frustrations from the poverty brought by the crisis and the movement into the diaspora as this has its own challenges that disempower people to carry out their duties as sanctioned by culture. Also, the research advances the argument that oral literature continues to impact on written literature and one such area is that of moralisation which continues to be a major priority of the writers. Except for the authors of the short stories in Totanga Patsva, moralisation on issues to do with deviance has been done in an enlightening way as the writers unearth the underlying causes of deviant behaviour and these are found in society and not individuals. The writers of the short stories have shown to be largely influenced by feminism and erroneously blame male deviants for the problems faced by women instead of explaining men`s behaviour in the context colonialism and neo-colonialism which brought various challenges related to gender relations in Africa not experienced hitherto. The direction in terms of qualitative development which Shona literature is taking in post-independence era is positive as the writers are shown to be tackling sensitive political, social and economic issues and their impact on the human condition.African Languages
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Naidoo, Salachi. "Gender violence and resistance : representation of women's agency in selected literary works by Zimbabwean female writers." Thesis, 2016. http://hdl.handle.net/10500/22609.
Full textAbstract:
The aim of this study is to offer a critical analysis of representations of gender violence and resistance to such violence in selected novels by Zimbabwean women writers. A great deal of scholarship on Zimbabwean women writers focuses on well-known authors such as Yvonne Vera and Tsitsi Dangarembga. Even here, the critical emphasis tends to be on the representation of women’s suffering under patriarchy and their status as victims. Although the exposure of gendered suffering is important, these studies often fail to take into consideration the female characters’ agency and survival strategies, including how they go about rebuilding lives and identities in the aftermath of violence. This thesis argues that the fictional texts of other, lesser known Zimbabwean authors are similarly worthy of critical scrutiny, yielding as they can important insights into female characters’ resistance to gender violence. The current study analyses Zimbabwean women writers’ literary contributions to discourses on gender-based violence and explores how female characters have embraced the concept of agency to recreate their identities and to introduce a new gender ethos into the contexts of lives that are often shaped by severe restrictions and oppression. Violence is a phenomenon that is always shaped by specific cultural, ideological and socio-economic forces. As the study shows, characters’ identities are constituted by the complex intersections of a number of markers of difference, including their gender, race and class. This study thus regards identity as intersectional and takes all these factors into consideration in its analysis of the representations of violence and resistance in the selected texts. The study also aims to determine whether these literary representations offer any solutions to the difficulties of characters affected by or living with violence. The works critiqued are Lillian Masitera’s The Trail (2000), Valerie Tagwira’s The Uncertainty of Hope (2006), Virginia Phiri’s Highway Queen (2010) and Violet Masilo’s The African Tea Cosy (2010).English Studies
D. Litt. et Phil. (English)