Browsing by Author "Ouma, Christopher"
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- ItemOpen AccessAt home in Fanon: Queer romance and mixed solidarities in contemporary African fiction(2016) Smit, Sarah Johanna; Ouma, ChristopherThroughout the recent iterations of student activism that have gripped South African universities, Frantz Fanon has been continuously disinterred. But the figure of Fanon often remains both abstract and plural within its articulations - interpretations of his body of work performing sometimes only partial allegiances to the whole. This means that centralising a Fanon within political discourse stands to reproduce the losses implicated in his mythification, rather than to recover new critical imports in his work. In other words, the simplification of Fanonist rhetoric fails to deal with the "un-political" dimensions of Fanon. As such the more troubling of Fanon's work, namely Black Skin, White Masks (1952), is often left un-interrogated, while The Wretched of the Earth (1961) is read like a manifesto for purposive change. Black Skin, White Masks it seems is deemed "not radical enough" because of what appears to be a problematic preoccupation with 'love and understanding.' In the following intervention, I argue that what makes this centrality of 'love and understanding' so unpalatable to radical activists is a misappropriation of Fanon's formulation of desire. This is in part, I believe, one of the flaws of Fanon setting up the dynamic of racialised desire within cisgender, heteronormative models for potential interracial relationships - "The Woman of Colour and the White Man" and "The Man of Colour and the White Woman." Hence, I consider what queering these relationships does to the way in which we read the political dimensions of Black Skin, White Masks, and whether or not this allays the allegory of revolutionary solidarity of the generic teleology of the heteronormative romance. The object of this thesis is to elucidate what possibilities for political solidarity are generated through the queered dynamic of interracial love, explored in the literature of the contemporary African diaspora. New African writers take seriously what Fanon recognised as "The Pitfalls of National Consciousness," by emptying out the category of the nation and engaging with the intersections of a trans-national, trans-gender and trans-racial politics. To demonstrate the ways in which a queer analysis of interracial romance might reimagine a raced identity politics, I analyse novels produced by members of the contemporary African diaspora, whose works deal with mixed race identity. Through my reading of Helen Oyeyemi's The Icarus Girl (2005) and Boy, Snow, Bird (2014), Yewande Omotoso's Bom Boy (2011), and Chris Abani's The Secret History of Las Vegas (2014), I hope to demonstrate that contemporary African literature is concerned with the formation of an identity that estranges the category of blackness from itself through its entanglement with a queer identity politics.
- ItemOpen AccessBildung beyond the borders: racial ambiguity and subjectivity in three post-apartheid bildungsromane(2019) Gamedze, Londiwe Hannah; Ouma, Christopher; Mkhize, KhweziThis dissertation examines the subject formation of racially ambiguous protagonists in K Sello Duiker’s Thirteen Cents, (2001), Yewande Omotoso’s Bom Boy (2011) and Zoe Wicomb’s Playing in the Light (2006), three Bildungsromane set in post-apartheid Cape Town—the mother city—whose violent, racist histories of colonial encounters, slavery and apartheid have led to a strong social sense of racial group belonging and racial exclusion. It is between and among these strictly policed racial groups that these novels’ protagonists seek belonging and a place in society from which to act and speak. Although different aspects of racial ambiguity are foregrounded in these novels—namely phenotypical, cultural and political—these protagonists are all socially marginalised and they must form their identities and subjectivities at the intersections of social trauma and personal trauma brought about and catalyzed by the racist history and current socio-cultural formations in South Africa. Across the two socioscapes of society and family, this trauma is manifest as a gap in language—there is no affirming or cogent racial subject position for these figures from which to speak—and at the level of the body, where circulations of feeling produce the racially ambiguous body as abject or non-existent. As a sub-genre, the post-colonial Bildungsroman has been widely appraised as reconfiguring the thematic, structural and narrative traditions of its classical European counterpart, and my dissertation argues that these novels support this understanding. I also claim that they trace their racially ambiguous protagonists’ subject formation not from an initial subject position of self-centered, willful childhood innocence and ignorance but from a state of non-subjectivity into existence itself—proposing that the trajectories of the novels trace an ontological rather than ideological shift.
- ItemOpen AccessFilm adaptation of the post-apartheid South African novel: re-examining the aesthetics of creation of disgrace(2022) Sawadogo, Denis; Moji, Polo; Ouma, ChristopherWhile many scholarships of the film adaptation of Disgrace have championed the fidelity rhetoric of the film with respect to J.M. Coetzee's novel, and in so doing, have advocated the axiomatic hierarchy of literature over cinema, this dissertation challenges the fidelity discourse about the film and proposes new tropes for adaptation criticism beyond the classical paradigm. Central to the thesis is the argument that a re-examination of Steve Jacobs's feature film Disgrace unveils the inconsistency and inadequacy of the fidelity rhetoric as a language for adaptation criticism, positions the film as an independent genre with its specificity and poeticity, and allows for an intertextual dialogue with other post-apartheid South African and postcolonial African cinematic productions as a means of promoting adaptation criticism beyond the fidelity model. While cementing the film's independent status vis-à-vis the novel, the intertextual critique also allows for a rewriting of Jacobs's Disgrace that addresses its shortcomings and controversies. Hence, drawing upon structural narratologists such as Gerard Genette, postcolonial scholars such as Gayatri Spivak and Frantz Fanon, and adaptation critics including Linda Hutcheon, Robert Stam, Alexie Tcheuyap, and Lindiwe Dovey, the dissertation explores at a time formal and thematic aesthetics of the film adaptation to diversify its critical avenues not only but also to bridge epistemological gaps left by previous studies which are limited to thematic hermeneutics.
- ItemOpen AccessGothic urbanism in contemporary African fiction(2016) Hugo, Esthie; Samuelson, Meg; Ouma, ChristopherThis project surveys representations of the African city in contemporary Nigerian and South African narratives by focusing on how they employ Gothic techniques as a means of drawing the African urban landscape into being. The texts that comprise my objects of study are South African author Henrietta Rose-Innes's Nineveh (2011), which takes as its setting contemporary Cape Town; Lagoon (2014) by American-Nigerian author Nnedi Okorafor, who sets her tale in present-day Lagos; and Zoo City (2010) by Lauren Beukes, another South African author who locates her narrative in a near-future version of Johannesburg. I find that these fictions are bound by a shared investment in mobilising the apparatus of the Gothic genre to provide readers with a unique imagining of contemporary African urbanity. I argue that the Gothic urbanism which these texts unfold enables the ascendance of generative, anti-dualist modes of reading the contemporary African city that are simultaneously real and imagined, old and new, global and local, dark and light - modes that perform as much a discourse of the past as a dialogue on the future. The study concludes by making some reflections on the future-visions that these Gothic urban-texts elicit, imaginings that I argue engender useful reflection on the relationship between culture and environment, and thus prompt the contemporary reader to consider the global future - and, as such, situate Africa at the forefront of planetary discourse. I suggest that Nineveh, Lagoon and Zoo City produce not simply a Gothic envisioning of Africa's metropolitan centres, but also a budding Gothic aesthetic of the African Anthropocene. In contrast to the 1980's tradition of Gothic writing in Africa, these novels are opening up into the twenty-first century to reflect on the future of the African city - but also on the futures that lie beyond the urban, beyond culture, beyond the human.
- ItemOpen AccessNational consciousness in Postcolonial Nigerian children's literature(2016) Smart, Kirsten; Ouma, ChristopherThis project highlights the role of locally produced children's written literature for ages six to fourteen in postcolonial Nigeria as a catalyst for national transformation in the wake of colonial rule. My objective is to reveal the perceived possibilities and pitfalls contained in Nigerian children's literature (specifically books published between 1960 and 1990), for the promotion of a new national consciousness through the reintegration of traditional values into a contemporary context. To do this, I draw together children's literature written by Chinua Achebe, Cyprian Ekwensi and Mabel Segun in order to illustrate the emphasis Nigerian children's book authors writing within the postcolonial moment placed on the concepts of nation and national identity in the aim to 'refashion' the nation. Following from this, I examine the role of the child reader in relation to the adult authors' intentions and pose the question of what the role of the female is in the authors' imagining of a 'new nation'. The study concludes by reflecting on the persistent under-scrutiny of children's literature in Africa by academics and critics, a preconception that still exists today. I move to suggest further research on the genre not only to stimulate an increased production of children's literature more conscious in content and aware of the needs of its young, (male and female) African readership, but also to incite a change in attitude toward the genre as one that is as deserving of interest as its adult counterpart.
- ItemOpen AccessPost-apartheid Speculative Fiction and the South African City(2020) Roux, Rowan; Ouma, Christopher; Garuba, HarryThis 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.
- ItemOpen AccessThe postcolonial playground: colonial narratives in contemporary tourism(2016) Smith, Sean P; Ouma, ChristopherThis survey of twentieth and twenty-first century novels, guidebooks, magazines, and the social media platform Instagram illustrates the discursive paradigm by which Western backpacking tourists encounter the formerly colonized world. The "postcolonial playground" avails the non-Western world as a theatre for recreation and meaning-making, an engagement which renders locals as accessories to an experience, perpetuating colonial-era power dialectics that continue to privilege the Western subject over the individuals in whose homes they travel. Ideologically and in praxis, the postcolonial playground has become the naturalized disposition of Western tourists seeking their next holiday. In so many words, the formerly colonized world has been recolonized by tourists, who are oblivious to the regime of privilege that extorts locals in popular tourist destinations.
- ItemOpen AccessThe Nigerian novel and the postcolonial city(2021) Mamudu, Clement Oshogwe; Garuba, Harry; Ouma, ChristopherThis thesis is a critical inquiry into the nature of the postcolonial African city as represented in fiction. It examines how the Nigerian novel represents the postcolonial African city and the extent to which it confirms or contests the dominant paradigms of scholarship in urban studies. In it, perspectives from urban studies are brought into conversation with literary representations of the postcolonial African city in contemporary Nigerian fiction thereby creating a nuanced synthesis of postcolonial literary studies and urban scholarship. Its provocative argument is that the postcolonial African city is both functional and legible despite its arguably squalid state and the undesirable living conditions of its subjects. Approaches that denigrate so-called Third World cities as particularly dystopic and illegible do not present the whole picture and are therefore one-sided and misleading. The Nigerian novel, it argues, reflects the need for rethinking of the dominant templates of urban studies to take into consideration the particularities and complexities of postcolonial cities. The thesis examines representations of the postcolonial city in four recent Nigerian novels: Ben Okri's The Famished Road (1991), Okey Ndibe's Arrows of Rain (2000), Chris Abani's GraceLand (2004), and Sefi Ata's Everything Good Will Come (2006). The selected novels' analyses foreground the argument that there is no universal template for theorizing the city; hence, there is a legitimate basis for talking about the postcolonial city both in conception and fictional representation. The thesis begins with an introduction which encompasses the aim, focal question, rationale, design/structure and the definition of key terms. This is followed by Chapter One which gives an insight into the state of the research field. The chapter reviews relevant scholarship with a view to situating modernity and the postcolonial city in Africa. In Chapters Two, Three, Four and Five, the primary texts, under various subtitles, are analyzed. The novels' representation(s) of the postcolonial (African) city, from different perspectives – like the problematic of legibility and spatial morphology, infrastructure, agency, urban governmentality, etc. – are critically examined. Chapter Six examines the place of bars and gender in determining the metro poetics of the postcolonial African city and how they are depicted in the selected novels. This is followed by the Conclusion, which summarizes the thesis by restating and highlighting its major argument and the ways in which it is elaborated upon in the fictional texts analyzed in the various chapters.
- ItemOpen AccessWhiteness as currency: colorism in contemporary fiction of the Anglophone Caribbean and the Cape(2019) Smit, Brittani Reniece; Mkhize, Khwezi; Ouma, ChristopherPeople of colour are often expected to meet externally determined standards of whiteness in exchange for privileges and benefits. The specific details regarding how those standards are determined vary based on context and depend on a variety of socio-historical factors. Regardless of the context, meeting these standards typically requires rejection of indigenous ways of being in favour of foreign ideals. Colorism, which is discrimination based on skin tone, plays a significant role in determining the success of attempts at assimilation because of the long history of preferential treatment associated with light skin throughout slavery and colonialism which persists today. This dissertation is an investigation of the complex interplay between race, colour, class and gender in contexts characterised by colorist hierarchies in the shadow of the British Empire. It focuses primarily on texts written by and about women and foregrounds gendered experiences of race in the Cape region of South Africa and Anglophone Caribbean, highlighting the unique experiences of women of colour in relation to colorism and intersectional class-based discrimination in post-colonial/apartheid spaces. I examine the cultural, social and psychological impact of the classist and colorist ideologies born out of the similar histories of colonialism, slavery and indentured servitude in the Anglophone Caribbean and South Africa, specifically through the lens of contemporary literature written by authors whose work displays a particular sensitivity to these intersections. I am especially interested in the paradoxical relationship between derision and desire that accompanies aspirations towards whiteness and appropriations of European and particularly British cultural norms for people of colour in these contexts. The persistence of this tension as a trope in post-colonial/apartheid spaces resists the narrative of progression suggested by the political rhetoric of multicultural unity espoused by the governments of South Africa and the Caribbean and the retrospective writing analysed in this project functions as a palimpsest belying the optimism of current times.
- ItemOpen AccessWoman as enemy of the nation-state: citizenship, transgression and legacy in Maps and Half of a Yellow Sun(2017) Koeries, Noélle; Ouma, ChristopherThis thesis brings to the fore two non-focalising characters, Misra of Maps by Nuruddin Farah and Kainene of Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. These transgressive characters are placed at the centre of their respective narratives. The aim is to demonstrate the way they transgress conventional political, social, national and gendered boundaries. This transgression creates the space for an alternative citizenship to emerge. The type of citizenship that is multi-faceted and embraces the complexity and nuances of contested borders. These transgressions are read as legacy especially because neither Misra nor Kainene bring to fruition the potentialities and possibilities of their subversive natures. However, both novels present alternatives that reach beyond the closing of the narratives. Ultimately, this thesis questions the purpose of writing transgressive woman characters out of the official narrative.