(Dis)Remembering the slave mother: shame, trauma, and identity in the novels of Michelle Cliff and Zoë Wicomb

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dc.contributor.advisorMkhize, Khwezien_ZA
dc.contributor.authorDressler, Mercedes Angelinaen_ZA
dc.date.accessioned2017-01-27T14:19:47Z
dc.date.available2017-01-27T14:19:47Z
dc.date.issued2016en_ZA
dc.description.abstractThe 'new' nationalisms that have developed in postcolonial Jamaica and South Africa invite the reclamation of the slave mother, while simultaneously 'cleansing' her body of slavery's atrocities for the purpose of national healing. Michelle Cliff's Abeng and No Telephone to Heaven, and Zoë Wicomb's David's Story and Playing in the Light, reveal this national practice of elision, and especially how the disremembering of slavery factors into personal identity formation. A deeper glance into this process exposes the lingering white supremacist, patriarchal symbolic at the centre of these nations, which maintains its centrality through the erasure of the slave mother and the disavowal of rape - two things which inevitably obscure the intersection of race and sex. The colonial residue of shame and trauma, left uninterrogated in the national script, imprints itself on women of colour and affects our legibility in society today. This dissertation evaluates the exclusion of slavery and the slave mother from the national script, and highlights this exclusion in postcolonial literature to reveal its impact on an intimate level. In my analysis, I interrogate the Lacanian symbolic to showcase the white male universality it employs, which alongside the intersecting discourses of race and sex, render women of colour illegible. Furthermore, in burying the slave past, the traumatic histories of rape are buried with it. Without a platform to excavate this trauma in the national space, there is a resulting disidentification with the nation among the women of colour it fails to represent. Additionally, I suggest that the Post-Traumatic Stress Disorders that undeniably ensued postslavery, including Rape Trauma Syndrome (RTS) and what Joy DeGruy calls Post-Traumatic Slave Syndrome (PTSS), are ultimately undealt with and therefore have potentially intergenerational, melancholic ramifications. In narrating the lives of mixed-race characters, both Cliff and Wicomb reveal shame's transgenerational chokehold, resulting from neglected legacies of trauma. For the protagonists' ancestors, shame results in the denial of blackness, which manifests as a lost ideal among their descendants. As the search for identity collapses with ethnognesis and the reclamation of the black mother, Clare Savage's, Marion Campbell's, and David Dirkse's trauma remains unresolved, leading to a state of melancholia and unbelonging. Because the national scripts in Jamaica and South Africa are so exclusive, it becomes necessary to invent alternative modes of belonging. The projects of rememory and memory justice have the power to engender this sense of belonging, and therefore also create a platform for past trauma to be reconciled. In conclusion, I posit that the mining of folklore is crucial in the search for slave memory and collective healing, but also, when the erasure of slave memory has rendered these stories hidden, it is important to generate our own stories, memories, and truths.en_ZA
dc.identifier.apacitationDressler, M. A. (2016). <i>(Dis)Remembering the slave mother: shame, trauma, and identity in the novels of Michelle Cliff and Zoë Wicomb</i>. (Thesis). University of Cape Town ,Faculty of Humanities ,Department of English Language and Literature. Retrieved from http://hdl.handle.net/11427/23654en_ZA
dc.identifier.chicagocitationDressler, Mercedes Angelina. <i>"(Dis)Remembering the slave mother: shame, trauma, and identity in the novels of Michelle Cliff and Zoë Wicomb."</i> Thesis., University of Cape Town ,Faculty of Humanities ,Department of English Language and Literature, 2016. http://hdl.handle.net/11427/23654en_ZA
dc.identifier.citationDressler, M. 2016. (Dis)Remembering the slave mother: shame, trauma, and identity in the novels of Michelle Cliff and Zoë Wicomb. University of Cape Town.en_ZA
dc.identifier.ris TY - Thesis / Dissertation AU - Dressler, Mercedes Angelina AB - The 'new' nationalisms that have developed in postcolonial Jamaica and South Africa invite the reclamation of the slave mother, while simultaneously 'cleansing' her body of slavery's atrocities for the purpose of national healing. Michelle Cliff's Abeng and No Telephone to Heaven, and Zoë Wicomb's David's Story and Playing in the Light, reveal this national practice of elision, and especially how the disremembering of slavery factors into personal identity formation. A deeper glance into this process exposes the lingering white supremacist, patriarchal symbolic at the centre of these nations, which maintains its centrality through the erasure of the slave mother and the disavowal of rape - two things which inevitably obscure the intersection of race and sex. The colonial residue of shame and trauma, left uninterrogated in the national script, imprints itself on women of colour and affects our legibility in society today. This dissertation evaluates the exclusion of slavery and the slave mother from the national script, and highlights this exclusion in postcolonial literature to reveal its impact on an intimate level. In my analysis, I interrogate the Lacanian symbolic to showcase the white male universality it employs, which alongside the intersecting discourses of race and sex, render women of colour illegible. Furthermore, in burying the slave past, the traumatic histories of rape are buried with it. Without a platform to excavate this trauma in the national space, there is a resulting disidentification with the nation among the women of colour it fails to represent. Additionally, I suggest that the Post-Traumatic Stress Disorders that undeniably ensued postslavery, including Rape Trauma Syndrome (RTS) and what Joy DeGruy calls Post-Traumatic Slave Syndrome (PTSS), are ultimately undealt with and therefore have potentially intergenerational, melancholic ramifications. In narrating the lives of mixed-race characters, both Cliff and Wicomb reveal shame's transgenerational chokehold, resulting from neglected legacies of trauma. For the protagonists' ancestors, shame results in the denial of blackness, which manifests as a lost ideal among their descendants. As the search for identity collapses with ethnognesis and the reclamation of the black mother, Clare Savage's, Marion Campbell's, and David Dirkse's trauma remains unresolved, leading to a state of melancholia and unbelonging. Because the national scripts in Jamaica and South Africa are so exclusive, it becomes necessary to invent alternative modes of belonging. The projects of rememory and memory justice have the power to engender this sense of belonging, and therefore also create a platform for past trauma to be reconciled. In conclusion, I posit that the mining of folklore is crucial in the search for slave memory and collective healing, but also, when the erasure of slave memory has rendered these stories hidden, it is important to generate our own stories, memories, and truths. DA - 2016 DB - OpenUCT DP - University of Cape Town LK - https://open.uct.ac.za PB - University of Cape Town PY - 2016 T1 - (Dis)Remembering the slave mother: shame, trauma, and identity in the novels of Michelle Cliff and Zoë Wicomb TI - (Dis)Remembering the slave mother: shame, trauma, and identity in the novels of Michelle Cliff and Zoë Wicomb UR - http://hdl.handle.net/11427/23654 ER - en_ZA
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/11427/23654
dc.identifier.vancouvercitationDressler MA. (Dis)Remembering the slave mother: shame, trauma, and identity in the novels of Michelle Cliff and Zoë Wicomb. [Thesis]. University of Cape Town ,Faculty of Humanities ,Department of English Language and Literature, 2016 [cited yyyy month dd]. Available from: http://hdl.handle.net/11427/23654en_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.otherLiterature and Modernityen_ZA
dc.title(Dis)Remembering the slave mother: shame, trauma, and identity in the novels of Michelle Cliff and Zoë Wicomben_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
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