Browsing by Author "Samuelson, M A"

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    Archipelagic thinking in the Indian Ocean world : the story of 'Sindbad the Sailor' and Alan Villiers's Sons of Sindbad
    (2016) Hofmeyr, Andrew James; Samuelson, M A
    This project focuses on the travel literature produced through the Indian Ocean world of the dhow trade. It examines the medieval story of "Sindbad the Sailor and Sindbad the Porter" alongside the 20th century travel narrative Sons of Sindbad (1940) written by mariner and author Alan Villiers. Both texts engage with the ocean and the ways in which immersion in the watery world result in an uneasy sense of hybridization. In "Sindbad", the sailor's world is represented as a place of deep encounter that renders him indelibly changed and so sets up a paradox between home and away. His voyages and adventures, while often explored purely in terms of their fantastic value, depict an Indian Ocean world that is densely connected through trade and travel. Alan Villiers' narrative uses "Sindbad" as a trope and signifier for this world and through him seeks to rekindle the romance of the free sea and pure-sail that is encroached upon by maritime modernity. Villiers constructs himself as a citizen of the sea and so straddles an uneasy line between the Arab sailors and his own colonial affiliations. It is a position that means he is constantly narrating from a perspective that is simultaneously inside and out. This minor dissertation will look at the way in which travel narratives located in the Indian Ocean render the subjects foreign to themselves and how the sense of identity flux engendered through the tales shed light on and open new paths for enquiry, what I have called archipelagic thinking, focusing not on constructed borders but connectivity across time and between disparate locations.
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    Remembering the nation, disremembering women? : stories of the South African transition
    (2005) Samuelson, M A; Cooper, Brenda
    The thesis explores the making of nationhood, and its contestation, in narrative representations of women during the South African transition. This temporal span extends across the first decade of democracy and the first two terms of governance following the historic 1994 elections. The transition is a fertile temporal zone in which new myths and symbols are generated. My interest lies in the new national symbols and myths that emerge from this historical moment and the ways in which they have been figured through images and appropriations of women and their bodies. Women's bodies, I argue, are the contested sites upon which nationalism erects its ideological edifices. I engage with the mutually informing productions and performances of gender and nation, and the re-membering of a previously divided and divisive South Africa as a unified 'rainbow' nation. I proceed by tracing narrative acts of memory and repression, with a specific focus on the re-memberings and dismemberings of women's bodies as they are reconstituted as ideal vessels for a national allegory. Includes bibliographical references (pages 211-238).