States of displacement: voice and narration in refugee stories

Simple item page
dc.contributor.advisorTwidle, Hedleyen_ZA
dc.contributor.authorBraam, Marilyn Elizabethen_ZA
dc.date.accessioned2015-08-10T06:32:07Z
dc.date.available2015-08-10T06:32:07Z
dc.date.issued2015en_ZA
dc.descriptionIncludes bibliography.en_ZA
dc.description.abstractThis thesis probes three texts to explore pathways between narration and refugee voices. In Dave Eggers’ text What is the What (2008), the words ‘novel’ and ‘autobiography’ on the title page set a framework for an exploration of the displacement of both genres. As Achak Deng, the Sudanese refugee-exile claims to have “gone out in search of a writer,” so this thesis has sought textual manifestations of the voices of those labeled “refugees”. In Eggers’text a temporarily-gagged narrator presents the question as to how the writer-refugee collaboration allows the voice of a refugee to be heard. In Little Liberia: an African Odyssey in New York (2011), Jonny Steinberg’s placement of himself inside the text demonstrates a different narrative approach to this question as he opts to share subject-space with refugee-exiles, Rufus Arkoi and Jacob Massaquoi. Unsettling the idea of ‘protagonist’, the text challenges borders between story and history, telling and writing. Through a narrative relationship Steinberg probes acts of recounting, listening, reviewing in the routes he takes to the text eventually written. By contrast, Luxurious Hearses, a novella by Uwem Akpan, places the extreme fate of the refugee-protagonist in the hands of a third-person narrator to wrestle with the distinctions between voice, mediation and representation. Through Jubril and his co-commuters, the text investigates forms of “rupture” (Bakhtin, 2000) that occur when identities are opportunistically exposed to social labeling. Writer, reader and displaced person emerge as subjects of an economic framework which positions them within the powerful confines of terms such as citizen, refugee, exile. Said’s affirming insight thus presents a challenge to all on this continuum to “cross borders, (to) break barriers of thought and experience” (Said, 2000:185). Reading the text then becomes associated with interpreting events through the collaborative work of relating, and through reviewing the frames of reference. This thesis examines narrative approaches to refugee voices with the question ‘How do voice and narration inflect the transitions in these texts involving refugees?" Rather than the easy transference this may seem to involve, acts of entrusting the timbre of such stories to texts require political vigilance and a sensibility cognizant that a globalized environment implicates all in the crises creating refugees.en_ZA
dc.identifier.apacitationBraam, M. E. (2015). <i>States of displacement: voice and narration in refugee stories</i>. (Thesis). University of Cape Town ,Faculty of Humanities ,Department of English Language and Literature. Retrieved from http://hdl.handle.net/11427/13664en_ZA
dc.identifier.chicagocitationBraam, Marilyn Elizabeth. <i>"States of displacement: voice and narration in refugee stories."</i> Thesis., University of Cape Town ,Faculty of Humanities ,Department of English Language and Literature, 2015. http://hdl.handle.net/11427/13664en_ZA
dc.identifier.citationBraam, M. 2015. States of displacement: voice and narration in refugee stories. University of Cape Town.en_ZA
dc.identifier.ris TY - Thesis / Dissertation AU - Braam, Marilyn Elizabeth AB - This thesis probes three texts to explore pathways between narration and refugee voices. In Dave Eggers’ text What is the What (2008), the words ‘novel’ and ‘autobiography’ on the title page set a framework for an exploration of the displacement of both genres. As Achak Deng, the Sudanese refugee-exile claims to have “gone out in search of a writer,” so this thesis has sought textual manifestations of the voices of those labeled “refugees”. In Eggers’text a temporarily-gagged narrator presents the question as to how the writer-refugee collaboration allows the voice of a refugee to be heard. In Little Liberia: an African Odyssey in New York (2011), Jonny Steinberg’s placement of himself inside the text demonstrates a different narrative approach to this question as he opts to share subject-space with refugee-exiles, Rufus Arkoi and Jacob Massaquoi. Unsettling the idea of ‘protagonist’, the text challenges borders between story and history, telling and writing. Through a narrative relationship Steinberg probes acts of recounting, listening, reviewing in the routes he takes to the text eventually written. By contrast, Luxurious Hearses, a novella by Uwem Akpan, places the extreme fate of the refugee-protagonist in the hands of a third-person narrator to wrestle with the distinctions between voice, mediation and representation. Through Jubril and his co-commuters, the text investigates forms of “rupture” (Bakhtin, 2000) that occur when identities are opportunistically exposed to social labeling. Writer, reader and displaced person emerge as subjects of an economic framework which positions them within the powerful confines of terms such as citizen, refugee, exile. Said’s affirming insight thus presents a challenge to all on this continuum to “cross borders, (to) break barriers of thought and experience” (Said, 2000:185). Reading the text then becomes associated with interpreting events through the collaborative work of relating, and through reviewing the frames of reference. This thesis examines narrative approaches to refugee voices with the question ‘How do voice and narration inflect the transitions in these texts involving refugees?" Rather than the easy transference this may seem to involve, acts of entrusting the timbre of such stories to texts require political vigilance and a sensibility cognizant that a globalized environment implicates all in the crises creating refugees. DA - 2015 DB - OpenUCT DP - University of Cape Town LK - https://open.uct.ac.za PB - University of Cape Town PY - 2015 T1 - States of displacement: voice and narration in refugee stories TI - States of displacement: voice and narration in refugee stories UR - http://hdl.handle.net/11427/13664 ER - en_ZA
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/11427/13664
dc.identifier.vancouvercitationBraam ME. States of displacement: voice and narration in refugee stories. [Thesis]. University of Cape Town ,Faculty of Humanities ,Department of English Language and Literature, 2015 [cited yyyy month dd]. Available from: http://hdl.handle.net/11427/13664en_ZA
dc.language.isoengen_ZA
dc.publisher.departmentDepartment of English Language and Literatureen_ZA
dc.publisher.facultyFaculty of Humanitiesen_ZA
dc.publisher.institutionUniversity of Cape Town
dc.subject.otherRefugee Storiesen_ZA
dc.titleStates of displacement: voice and narration in refugee storiesen_ZA
dc.typeMaster Thesis
dc.type.qualificationlevelMasters
dc.type.qualificationnameMAen_ZA
uct.type.filetypeText
uct.type.filetypeImage
uct.type.publicationResearchen_ZA
uct.type.resourceThesisen_ZA
Files
Original bundle
Now showing 1 - 1 of 1
Thumbnail Image
Name:
thesis_hum_2015_braam_me.pdf
Size:
1006.25 KB
Format:
Adobe Portable Document Format
Description:
Download
Collections
Masters