OpenUCT :: Browsing by Author "Garuba, Harry"

Browsing by Author "Garuba, Harry"

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"Ah, what an age it is, when to speak of trees is almost a crime" : national landscapes and identities in the fiction of Nadine Gordimer
(2016) Middleton, Jemima; Garuba, Harry
In this study, I will explore the ways in which Nadine Gordimer engages with the natural world in three of her novels: The Conservationist (1974), July's People (1981), and No Time Like the Present (2012). I argue for the importance of the relationship in her work, between the natural landscapes of South Africa and the responsibility of the author in 'meaning-making:' this is a literary study that brings elements of postcolonial ecocriticism into play. In particular, I will explore how and why she chooses to "speak of trees" at all. Gordimer demonstrates that there is a definitive agency in the non!human world that presses against the reductive binary of 'human' versus 'natural' environments. Her fiction highlights the fact that flattening the natural world into a series of symbols is overly simplistic and does not engage sufficiently with the political: a responsibility that she takes upon herself. In this study I will be arguing that Gordimer achieves a profound political meditation by creating meaning from a variety of natural landscapes, making use of images rather than symbols. I am particularly intrigued by the ways in which Gordimer imagines the landscape as a series of sign systems, whose various shifts and changes reflect and illustrate wider systemic shifts in South Africa. In the novels that I will examine, Gordimer demonstrates, by way of physical, visceral engagement with various landscapes, that historical and contemporary systemic shifts must be taken into account in order truly to understand the complexity of national identities in her country. The image of the trees ties poetry, politics and the environment together, in particular to witness a distinctive shift in political sign systems, and the identity crises that occur as a result. In The Conservationist, Gordimer takes issue with misplaced obsessions with autochthony and heritage, whilst simultaneously investing in the lexical field of botanical names and a fine delineation of literary ecology: the novel both takes apart and preserves a sense of how the landscape can be entwined in a cultivation of identity. In my examination of July's People, I will consider the matter and poetics of the interregnum via the question of "the bush": the environment, landscape and ecosystem contained or in fact uncontained by this term are at the heart of the shift in sign systems that plays out in the novel. The bush in July's People is a heterotopia: an 'other' place that signifies many different meanings, but simultaneously signifies, in the novel, a shift in an entire system of signs. In my final chapter, on No Time Like the Present, I will be continuing to examine the 'language' of trees in Gordimer's work! particularly noting the terminology of trees and plants to signify, and add value to the study of identity and the indigenous versus the alien
Open Access
Border thinking and the modern Plaasroman: a study of three novels
(2021) Winfield, Matthew; Garuba, Harry; Chitonge, Horman
In Afrikaans literature, the farm concept has a history of entanglement with ideals that are racist and nationalist. The early plaasroman (farm novel in Afrikaans) subgenre was a product of the 1920s and the 1930s, a period when Afrikaner nationalism was incipient. Later farm novelists brought new energy to the plaasroman during the second half of the twentieth century. In the modern plaasroman subgenre, challenges to racist-nationalist ideals are exhibited, along with ideals of the early plaasroman. The following study is an attempt to gauge whether, and the extent to which, three modern plaasromans are an expression of border thinking. These novels are Etienne Leroux's Seven Days at the Silbersteins, Etienne van Heerden's Ancestral Voices and Nadine Gordimer's The Conservationist. The paradigm of border thinking is chosen due to the similarities between its objectives, on the one hand, and the critical stance of the modern plaasroman, on the other hand. Both border thinking and the modern plaasroman can be described as a response to racial injustice and inequality. For this reason, it would seem that a study of modern plaasromans is well-suited as a context for the application of border thinking. Given that previous studies addressed challenges by modern plaasromans to racist and nationalist ideals, moreover, a study that deploys border thinking (focusing on racial injustice) is considered to be a valuable critical contribution. In order to determine whether these three novels are expressions of border thinking, this study first formulates three templates of ‘literary border thinking' (border thinking that is expressed in literature). Criteria that are derived from these templates are then used to determine whether, and the extent to which, these novels represent literary border thinking.
Open Access
Frantz Fanon and the Dialetic of Decolonisation
(2010) Ndlovu, Siphiwe; Nash, Andrew; Garuba, Harry
It has been more than five decades since the wave of decolonization swept across Africa. For people on the continent, the rise to power by the former liberation movements brought hope for a better future in the post-colonial state. However later developments showed that independence would, in fact, not change the material and social conditions of the ordinary people. Although the national liberation movement took over the government of the former colony, colonial institutions and structures of power, which were founded on the economic exploitation of the colony, remained unchanged. Thus in this thesis I set out to examine Frantz Fanon’s thought in order to provide a critique of post-independence failures in Africa. I will argue that whilst Fanon shared the same ideals as the anti-colonial movements in their objective to remove colonial regimes from power, that Fanon, in fact, had a critical attitude towards the anti-colonial movement. Whereas the latter conceived of freedom as independence, Fanon conceived of freedom as disalienation, premised on the complete recovery of the black self from the negative effects of colonialism. Thus the study sets out to examine the extent to which Fanon offered an alternative idea of freedom and liberation to the one which was being advanced by the national liberation movements.
Open Access
From Development Aid to Development Partnerships – the End of Coloniality? Critical discourse analysis of DFID's development partnership with South Africa
(2018) Strand, Mia; Garuba, Harry; Chitonge, Horman
Development aid discourses have been criticised for perpetuating othering and coloniality. The discourses have been argued to produce and reproduce conceptual creations of a distinguishable 'us' and 'them' through binaries of 'developed' and 'underdeveloped', and they have been stated to uphold lingering colonial and racial hierarchies where the former colonial powers remain preeminent and subjugate the 'Global South'. This decolonial critique of development aid discourses and their perpetuation of asymmetrical relationships between donor and recipient has led to the emergence of development partnerships. This discourse emphasises the levelling of the playing field, and mutual cooperation to achieve common development goals. The development partnership discourse thus appears to challenge the othering and coloniality inherent in former development aid discourses. In 2015, the United Kingdom's Department for International Development (DFID) ended their 'traditional' bilateral aid programme to South Africa and implemented a 'development partnership' in its place. DFID's development partnership discourse has previously been criticised for denying mutuality, however, and for perpetuating racialised hierarchies. The question is therefore whether the discourse surrounding DFID's development partnership with South Africa is perpetuating othering and coloniality, or whether it is establishing a relationship built on mutual interests and cooperation. This research paper analyses two DFID policy papers setting out the planning of the partnership approach, and four transcripts of interviews with representatives involved in the implementation of the development partnership. By applying Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) the thesis analyses linguistic aspects of the discourse that serves to uphold certain power structures by defining decision-‐making. The CDA particularly focuses on the science, narrative and perceived 'truths' about development, the recontextualisation of its particular language and the interconnectedness with other discourses that continue to sustain and reproduce the discourse. The research finds a more nuanced approach to development, as conceptualised by the representatives involved in the implementation of the partnership, and that it is challenging the 'imperial gaze' inherent in development aid discourses. However, the analysis also reveals clear examples of othering and coloniality. This is evident through linguistic distancing through notions of time, relying on particular binaries, and referring to a naturalised development trajectory which denies lived experiences and subjugate South Africa as a country. The suggestion of mutuality therefore appears to be just a façade, and the development partnership discourse is rather emphasising difference and justifying colonial hierarchies.
Open Access
How new is New Frank Talk? Steve Biko's philosophy of Black Consciousness in the post-aparthed context
(2012) Van der Wolf, Marthe; Garuba, Harry
The main aim of this thesis is to examine the usage and modification of the philosophy of Black Consciousness in post-1994 South Africa. The usage and modification is examined through an intertextual analysis, which investigates what notions of Black Consciousness are used by New Frank Talk, how these notions are used and what manner they are modified in a post-1994 context. The analysis consists of an examination of seven New Frank Talk essays published since 2009.
Open Access
Individualism in the Novels of Nuruddin Farah
(2009) Moolla, Fatima Fiona; Garuba, Harry
The subject conceived as 'individual' is a sustained focus across the novels of Somali writer, Nuruddin Farah. This thesis locates a reading of individualism in Farah's novels in the context of the historical and philosophical development of modern identity in the societies of the North-Atlantic. It relies primarily on the analysis of philosopher, Charles Taylor, who proposes that individualism makes modern identity an historically unprecedented mode of conceiving the person. By individualism, Taylor refers to the inward location of moral sources in orientation around which the self is constituted. Nonindividualist conceptions of the self locate moral horizons external to the subject thereby defined. The novel appears to be the most significant cultural form which mutually constitutes modern subjectivity. This is suggested by the centrality of the Bildungsroman sub-genre which fundamentally determines the form of the novel. Farah's work spans the historical development of the novel from the proto-realism of his first publication, through modernism and postmodernism, returning to the 'neo-realism' of his most recent novel. The representation of the subject in the novel suggests transformations in identity which belie the uniformity of the disengaged, autonomous self which is articulated in the novel as a genre. Tension thus is generated between the social commitment Farah expresses as a writer and the limitations of the form which deny representation to the heteronomous subjectivities who are the objects of Farah's concern. The introduction identifies the centrality of individualism to Farah's project. Chapter 1 explores the historical development of individualism and genealogies of alternative conceptions of self. Chapter 2 addresses the articulation of individualism in the classic Bildungsroman, the sub-genre which defines the novel. Chapter 3 interrogates Farah's use of the 'dissensual' Bildungsroman to escape the contradiction of the classic Bildungsroman. Chapter 4 focuses on how modernism in the novels allows aesthetic resolution of individualist contradiction through fragmentation. Chapter 5 explores the resistance encountered when the novel attempts to represent heteronomy rather than autonomy. Chapter 6 suggests the indispensability of coherent subjectivity to Farah's socially committed stance. Within the philosophical matrix of individualism, the 'performative' or 'stylized' subject is the consequential form of identity.
Open Access
Legacy of one party dictatorship : collective memory and contestation in Malawi 1994-2004
(2014) Mweso, Clemence; Garuba, Harry
This thesis explores the significance of the use of historical memory in shaping the nature and dynamics of the democratic dispensation in Malawi, particularly in relation to the legacy of the authoritarian past. The memory of the one-party dictatorship was reactivated on numerous occasions to address contemporary political challenges. Focusing on the period during the second term of the first democratic government when there was a debate on whether or not to extend the terms of office of the president, the thesis investigates how people, individually or as groups, chose to deal with the heritage of the authoritarian past in a democratic era. The proposals to extend the presidential term limit ignited political debates in the contemporary period, that involved collective remembering of the past dictatorship, and political contestation over the shared past in order to create a vibrant democratic process. The thesis shows how the new political elites in democratic Malawi tended to utilise the collective memory of the past dictatorship to legitimise their rule, mobilize support and at times push through agendas that were detrimental to the young democracy. While civil society actors building on strong antidictatorship and anti-authoritarian sentiments, relied on the same collective memory to criticise the actions of the new elite and protest against undemocratic political moves. It is demonstrated that the memory of the atrocities and abuses of the one-party regime played a major role in influencing the masses and civil society to fight against any relapse to authoritarianism. The study ultimately demonstrates the importance of collective memory and its preservation in ensuring that lessons from the past contribute to a better present and future for the nation.
Open Access
Mbeki's Africanism : the intellectual and political thought of Thabo Mbeki
(2009) Williams, Ryan; Garuba, Harry; Bogues, Anthony
This dissertation examines and analyses the intellectual and political thought of Thabo Mbeki. The study examines Mbeki’s thought throughout his political career from his political activism during the anti-apartheid movement to his rise as major leader in the ANC and the government. The thesis argues that analysing the intellectual and political thought of a practicing politician requires moving beyond conventional ideas relating to the work of political intellectuals. The thesis establishes the importance of Mbeki's political activism and political career to the content of his political thought. The study locates Mbeki' s intellectual and political thought within the body of intellectual work that forms part of history of modern African political thought. The research also establishes that Mbeki's thought cannot be located solely in one political tradition and that the movement in his political ideas corresponds to the different phases of South African political history. The thesis argues that during the struggle against apartheid Mbeki's political thought has a distinctly revolutionary Marxist character but as result of the transition to freedom there is a movement towards issues of race and culture as well as the appropriation of certain features of Marxist-Leninism in Mbeki's idea of political leadership and political practice. The thesis concludes by arguing that Mbeki's political thought is a critical contribution to the history of modern African political thought.
Open Access
Mourning and melancholy: a comparative study on Christopher Okigbo and Dambudzo Marechera
(2020) Akcay, Ahmet Sait; Garuba, Harry
This study explores the modernist subjectivity in Africa by revisiting two major poets, Christopher Okigbo and Dambudzo Marechera. It argues that the modernist self is created in the form of melancholy and mourning. The main question is to see how the African modernist subjectivity is constructed through poetry. As subjects of colonialism, both Okigbo and Marechera sought to establish new links combining them with the mainstream Euromodernist movement along with their own spiritual roots. In the sense of the construction of a modernist self, the main predicament they have to challenge is the Western knowledge system which infiltrated into mindsets through colonial dominion. Thus, Okigbo and Marechera enact a certain type of positionality strategy to claim their own poetic utterance. By invoking natural and spiritual images the poets demonstrate their affiliation to their roots. The process of mourning, here, becomes a passage through which the poets claim their strong allegiances to their roots. The sense of absence leads the poets to mourn their remote past or culture. The poets' relation with the past determines the dynamics of subjectivity. The idea of the past is so tempting and tantalising in many ways.
Open Access
Museums and the construction of race ideologies: the case of natural history and ethnographic museums in South Africa
(University of Cape Town, 2020) Kasibe, Wandile Goozen; Mangcu,Xolela; Sitas, Ari; Garuba, Harry
This enquiry investigates the entanglement of the Natural History and Ethnographic museums in the construction of racist ideologies, the perpetuation of colonial reasoning and its continuities in South Africa today. It draws our attention to the fact that the museological institution was complicit and colluded in the perpetuation of colonial "crimes against humanity", thereby rendering its own institutionality a colonial "crime scene" that requires rigorous "de-colonial" investigation in the "post-colonial" era. In the attempt to shed more light into the miasma caused by colonial and apartheid rule, I turn to the practices of 'scientific enquiry' and public exhibitions to advance an argument that these museum exhibits were a precursor to genocide. The study further argues that, these public exhibits of Africans were instrumental in popularizing theories of racial ideology and white 'supremacy', dehumanizing Africans and thereby creating public justification for colonial dispossession of Africans. To support my argument I discuss the underpining politics that informed the making and dismantling of the South African Museum's "Bushman" diorama. Further to the discussion about dioramas, human zoos and other forms of racializing spectacles, I make reference to the haunting narratives of the African Diasporas to provide context and perspective. These African individuals are: Sarah Baartman ('The Hottentot Venus') and El Negro 'object 1004' and then Ota Benga, the "Congolese Pygmy", who was displayed with an orangutan at the Bronx Zoo in America in 1906, and labelled "the Missing Link". Part of my attempt to understand the story of Benga, I set on a journey to track him to the United States (US). To point out and expose these human wrongs I incorporate and discuss images of decapitated heads, prepared skulls and images of emaciated Africans, not to reproduce colonial traumas, but to unveil the gravity of the violence that was emitted against those who were deemed 'lesser' beings, namely the black Africans and KhoiSan in particular. The colonial museum collected these human remains for race 'science' under politically motivated circumstances to feed to the idea that black 'inferiority' and white 'superiority' as a new global socio-political order. The evidence of diverse materials (photographs, manuscript letters etc) that I have used here point to the toxic collusion between the colonial administration and the museological institution in the perpetuation of racial violence in South Africa. The contribution among many other contributions of this study is the interrogation of these colonial traces in the museological institution and the proposal of a decolonial project framed in the form of a Museum Truth, Repatriation and Restitution Commission (#MuseumTRRC). The MuseumTRRC as both a socio-political and museological tool sharply invokes the interplay between the construction of race and the establishment of the colonial museum in a way that helps us understand how the museological institution influenced laws of racial separation that South Africa's apartheid past was built on. The MuseumTRRC is presented as the sine qua non in the framing of the 'new museum' of the future. In a nutshell, the study presents to us new ways of seeing museums and their sociological impact of their collections on people's lives today. It presents what I term in this thesis as 'museumorphosis', a process of radical epistemological shift that should take place in the museum in order for the museological institution to effectively respond to the sensibilities of the 21st Century and beyond.
Open Access
My name is Afrika: Setswana genealogies, trans-atlantic interlocutions, and NOW-time in Keorapetse Kgositsile's life and work
(2016) Phalafala, Portia Mahlodi; Samuelson, Meg; Garuba, Harry; Mkhize, Khwezi
South African poet laureate Keorapetse Kgositsile lived in extraordinary times marked by extraordinary challenges and changes. Born in 1938, exactly a decade before the draconian apartheid regime came into power, his life and work emerge from the milieus of British colonial South Africa, apartheid South Africa, civil rights America, anti-apartheid movements, anti-colonial wars in Africa, anti-imperialism in Asia, cold war politics, and the eventual demise of both the Berlin wall and the apartheid regime in South Africa. His poetry responds to these times in illuminating ways. His poetic influences point to his Tswanacentred upbringing, his encounter with Afro-American oral and literary traditions, the styles and poetics of Drum writers, the outpouring of African literature he received from the Makerere conference of Uganda, and anti-colonial critical thinkers from Africa and its diaspora. At age twenty three, post-Sharpeville massacres, he was sent into exile by the leadership of the ANC, and he took with him a corpus of Tswana literature which would in/form his poetic. He readily immersed himself in the oral and written tradition of Afro-America while in exile in the United States of America. His work interweaves the oral and literary traditions of black South Africa and black America, revealing a dynamic and complex relationship between the two geographical sites. Where oral traditions have largely been left out of the broader narrative of modernity, this study demonstrates how oral traditions remain alive and are reinvigorated, providing a resource that is then carried across the Atlantic and renewed in translation, rather than left behind to ossify. Kgositsile's prominent presence in black international periodicals and his collaborations with other diasporic cultural, political and musical figures there show that the relationship between the two geographical sites is more complex than its current positioning of Afro-America as a vanguard on which Africans model themselves. Through a reading of Kgositsile's revolutionary poetry, this study also shows how the indigenous resource base enables him to resolve the agonising temporal and spatial tensions presented by modernity's colonialism. He coins concepts that re-enchant the world through a poetic that fosters a dialogue between past and future, and traditional and modern in a simultaneous present he deems the NOW-time.
Open Access
Negotiating whiteness: a discourse analysis of students' descriptions of their raced experiences at Rhodes University, Grahamstown,1 South Africa
(2020) Msomi, Zuziwe Nokwanda; Nyamnjoh, Francis; Garuba, Harry
Questions of the dominance of cultures of whiteness are pre-imminent issues in historically white South African universities. Even when historically white universities – such as Rhodes University, the site of study for this thesis – have a predominantly black student body post 1994, there are still reports of students experiencing such institutions as alienating and excluding due to the privileging of whiteness. This thesis draws on the significant role played by discourse in how the world is constructed and reconstructed, to better understand how whiteness may continue to be produced and reproduced in everyday interactions at a historically white South African university, and how some students may feel less at home than others within such institutions. The thesis seeks to answer the following research question: what discursive strategies do Rhodes University students use to describe their raced experiences, and what role do these strategies play in either reinforcing and or challenging a culture of whiteness? The thesis engages with and is informed by literature on whiteness as constitutive of both social aspects and phenotypical essence. Drawing primarily from discourse analysis tools, and from interviews with Rhodes University students completed between 2014 and 2015, the thesis argues that whiteness is far from being a zero-sum game of winners and losers. Rather, there are gradations of whiteness where speakers draw upon whatever capital (social, phenotypical or a combination of both) to attain the best possible outcome for themselves. The thesis therefore takes seriously the idea that whiteness is a social construct which can, through socialisation be acquired, lost and, in some cases, decanted partially into other vessels. Whiteness, the thesis argues, is ever incomplete and subject to change as the context changes in order to ensure that it remains associated with privilege, opportunity and power. If whiteness is not limited to white bodies only, as suggested by both the data and literature review, then it must be studied in relation to blackness as well. The interactional, inter-relational and inter-racial construction and use of whiteness both methodologically and conceptually is one of the key contributions to the field of whiteness studies made by this thesis. This open-ended, permanent work in progress approach to whiteness can be the beginning of conversations about race that are not necessarily bounded by phenotype or essence – especially in South Africa, where race and a fixation of rigid social categories continue to be a central part of how South Africans navigate and understand the world around them.
Open Access
Post-apartheid Speculative Fiction and the South African City
(2020) Roux, Rowan; Ouma, Christopher; Garuba, Harry
This thesis examines the role that speculative fiction plays in imagining the city spaces of the future. Considering the rapid pace of change that has marked post-apartheid South Africa as an impetus for emerging literary traditions within contemporary South African speculative fiction, the argument begins by sketching the connections between South Africa's transition to democracy and the emerging speculative texts which mark this period. Positioning speculative fiction as an umbrella term that incorporates a wide selection of generic traditions, the thesis engages with dystopian impulses, science fiction, magical realism and apocalyptic rhetoric. Through theoretical explication, close reading, and textual comparison, the argument initiates a dialogue between genre theory and urban theory as a means of (re)imagining and (re)mapping the city spaces of post-apartheid Cape Town and Johannesburg.
Open Access
Re-assessing the inner city of Johannesburg : an exploration into emerging African urbanism and the discovery of black agency in Phaswane Mpe's Welcome to our Hillbrow and Kgebetli Moele's Room 207
(2008) O'Shaughnessy, Emma Vivian; Garuba, Harry
At present, we are witnessing an exciting moment in African urban discourse, one that sees writers and theorists engaging with new avenues in which the African city can be configured and read. The discourse reflects and focuses on the myriad, creative ways in which African urbanites capitalise on their environments, exploring the kinds of challenges and freedoms generated by a life in the African city. Underlying this exploration is the notion that through the development of creative tactics, African urbanites can lay claim to agency amidst difficult conditions and can also shape their urban environments into flexible and enabling spaces. This approach challenges the idea that African cities are simply 'dysfunctional' or 'chaotic'. Simultaneously, this allows the stigma attached to the entire 'sign' of Africa to be challenged. The following study uses this basis of African urban discourse and applies it to a South African context. Indeed, one local urban centre that has always garnered a wealth of interest is the inner city of Johannesburg. Recent theory and research around African cities allows me to delve deeper into the intricacies of its social and geo-political landscape. The purpose of this is ultimately to shape a literary study. The discourse will aid me as I analyse two novels set in the inner city, namely Phaswane Mpe's Welcome to Our Hillbrow and Kgebteli Moele's Room 207. The theoretical framework creates a context in which I explore the impact of these two, post-apartheid novels. The texts also provide a crossover point that enables me to explore the ideas propagated by emerging African urban theory in depth. Both novels are realistic and semi- autobiographical accounts of life in the inner city. In a sense, the novels provide a semi-fictionalised 'ethnographic' frame for my research. This is not to imply that literature can challenge social theory or that the two naturally should correspond. What this approach does allow for is for me to show how valuable the writer is in this kind of environment, as well as how the city generates a particular kind of story and storytelling. Furthermore, it gives me a space in which the central tenets of African urban thought can be explored and applied in detail. For these reasons, the following research is multidisciplinary, using a range of social, urban theory to understand two creative, urban texts. The contribution it aims to make is to both to the field of literature and to the study of (South) African city spaces.
Open Access
Reporting Africa : between the Basarwa and the Botswana state
(2008) Molosiwa, Russ; Garuba, Harry
Includes abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 94-97). Also available online.
Open Access
Representing Africa differently an analysis of the proposed sale of the Africa collection at the Wereld Museum Rotterdam
(2012) Frank, Chandra Nirmala; Garuba, Harry
Includes abstract. Includes bibliographical references.
Open Access
Sending up trauma : a study of political cartooning in South Africa's post-apartheid trauma discourse
(2012) Roosblad, Serginho Calvin; Grunebaum, Heidi; Garuba, Harry
[The] idea of the collective trauma has been applied to South Africa in the period of transition from apartheid to democracy. Especially during the hearings of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), as the commission invested heavily in the practice of traumatic storytelling as part the broader globalization of psychiatric knowledge about trauma (Colvin, 2008). Political cartoons shed an interesting light on the establishment and development of trauma discourse. This study looks at the contribution of South African political cartoonists to trauma discourse at the time of the hearings of the Human Rights Violations Committee (HRVC) of the TRC.
Open Access
Subalternity and the negotiation of a theatre identity : performing the postcolony alternative Zimbabwean theatre
(2011) Ravengai, Samuel; Morris, Gay; Garuba, Harry
The present study investigates the field of theatre practice that I have chosen to call alternative Zimbabwean theatre through a detailed study of four plays and reference to several others all first performed and written between 1980 and 1996. The study interrogates the interweaving and juxtaposition of divergent performance forms and styles on stage created by the contact between western dramatic theatre, indigenous theatre and cultural performances. This contact results in the formation of a third space for theatre which is a creative area of ambivalence, sameness, difference, conflict, struggle, mocking and celebration. The study specifically scrutinises this intersecting area as it obtains in alternative theatre and examines the forces at work in producing the nature and identity of syncretic theatre. Between 1980 and 1996, the nature and identity of alternative theatre changed significantly. This thesis investigates these changes, movements, shifts, conflicts and appropriations and the context within which they took place.
Open Access
The African imagination: Postcolonial studies, canons, and stigmatization
(2003) Garuba, Harry
In the prefatory remarks to his new book, The African Imagination, Abiola Irele traces the trajectory of his professional career from his initial location in Africa to his present base in an American university. The Africa phase of his career, he emphasizes, was marked by an awareness that he was involved in the definition and mapping of a distinctive terrain of imaginative expression and a new academic field known as African literature within the context of a local community of scholars and students mutually engaged in a cultural activity that they felt was central to the needs of an evolving national community. In relocating to the center of the Western academy in the United States, he continues, he now pursues his professional career in an environment within which this literature is marginal. Indeed, the literature is not only marginal, it is more often secondary, serving only to provide validating material for other disciplines and/or evidence for consolidating the paradigms of dominant discourses or epistemologies.
Open Access
The biopolitics of violence in the drama of the Niger Delta
(2018) Ajumeze, Henry Obi; Garuba, Harry
The representation of the Niger Delta insurgency in cultural texts is often registered from the viewpoint of human history, an approach that foregrounds the politics of resistance against the multinational oil corporations in ways that ignore the contribution of the non-human elements in the historical struggles in the region. In this study, I seek to understand the ways that the Niger Delta landscapes and environment are imagined in the works that I describe as the Niger Delta drama. Drawing on a number of plays to reflect on the different historicizations of spaces in the region, I examine and analyse the ways in which these spaces exercise social and political agencies in the unfolding events in the region. I tentatively delineate the region’s history into two analytic epochs: pre-oil and oil modernity Niger Delta. Though noting the centrality of the creeks and swamps in both temporal contexts, I argue that the drama of the pre-oil modernity textualized the "ontology of water" as a site of socioeconomic and ecological relations with the people who inhabit the Delta terrain. In the event of oil modernity, these spaces and relationships are reframed in the material transformations of the region’s landscape and environment from a site of decay and degradation to that of material recalcitrance and revolt that petro-violence provokes. In that vein, I treat the spaces represented by the creeks as "spaces of exception" - a phrase coined by Giorgio Agamben to explain how political democracies exclude certain zones to legitimise state terror - in which biopolitical securitisations are programmatically unleashed on trouble-prone geographies in ways that reduce the citizens to the status of bare-life. Although Agamben has identified the concentration camps as the paradigmatic basis of the modern state of exception, I propose that the creeks of the Delta offer an exemplary case that is consistent with bare life - a space as much excluded as included in the sense of Agamben’s paradoxical formulation of homo sacer, where life is violently exposed to the state apparatus of repression. Texts situated within the frame of exclusion and violent geographies deploy a poetics of waste and decay, what I term "environmental scatology" to capture the condition of bare life in the Delta, and reflect on the state of abandonment and invisibility that underwrites the exclusion. At other times, the texts illustrate how the ontology of water and the knowledge that it enables construct the people's mode of resistance, articulating ways in which the seaweeds and crocodiles that inhabit the swamps are entangled in the violent political ecology of the region. I read these texts as inaugurating a truly environmental drama in which the human-nonhuman nature is entangled in the performance of political resistances in the violent geography of the Delta.