Browsing by Author "Sandwith, Corinne."

Now showing 1 - 5 of 5

Bodylands : inscriptions of the body and embodiment in the novels of Lauren Beukes. Key terms : South African literature, inscriptions of the body and space, gender, abjection, the disciplined body, the grotesque and classical body.
(2015) King, Natasha.; Dimitriu, Ileana.; Sandwith, Corinne.
This dissertation takes up the question of the body and embodiment(s) in contemporary South African fiction, paying particular attention to the novels of award-wining author, Lauren Beukes. In the first three fictional works published to date, namely Moxyland (2008), Zoo City (2010) and The Shining Girls (2013), the body emerges as a persistent focus of narrative interest and attention. My aim in this dissertation is to explore how these fictional bodies are imagined and constructed; to ask what kinds of bodies predominate in Beukes’s texts and to consider their thematic, narrative, aesthetic and political significance. Taking my cue from contemporary cultural theory (the work of Foucault, Bakhtin and Scarry), and various studies in feminist theory (such as Gatens, Grosz and Butler), I hope to bring renewed attention to the body and its inscriptions within discourse by offering a reading of the body in Beukes’s first three fictional works: Moxyland (2008), Zoo City (2010) and The Shining Girls (2013). By extending the existing critical literature on the body, as well as these novels, I aim to provide a reading of the body in these texts in terms of the following themes: the disciplined body, the body in pain, the gendered body, the body in relation to power and the vulnerable body.
Culture in the public sphere : recovering a tradition of radical cultural-political debate in South Africa, 1938-1960.
(2005) Sandwith, Corinne.; Daymond, Margaret Joan.
This thesis is concerned with the negotiation of cultural and literary matters in South African public life during the period 1938 to 1960. While I begin with an exploration of the more 'orthodox' or 'academic' traditions of literary-cultural discussion in South Africa, the far more urgent preoccupation has been to explore a hitherto undocumented tradition of cultural-political debate in the South African public sphere, one which arose in the ' counter-public' circles of oppositional South African political groups. What has emerged is a rich and heterogeneous public debate about literature and culture in South Africa which has so far gone unrecorded and unrecognised. What sets this 'minority' discussion apart from more mainstream cultural discourses, I argue, is its overt engagement with contemporary socio-political issues. Articulated mainly by 'subaltern' writer-intellectuals - who occupied a precarious position in the social order either by virtue of their racial classification, class position or political affiliation - this is a cultural debate which offers a forthright critique of existing race and class norms. In these traditions, literary-cultural discussion becomes a vehicle for the articulation of radical political views and a means whereby marginalised individuals and groups can engage in oppositional public debate. In this regard, I argue, literary-cultural debate becomes a means of engaging in the kind of public political participation which is not available in the ' legitimate' public sphere. Focusing in the first instance on literary criticism 'proper', this thesis considers the distinctive reading strategies, hermeneutic practices, and evaluative frameworks which mark these alternative South African discursive traditions . Here I argue that the political, content-oriented, historical and ideological emphases of an alternative South African tradition are in marked contrast to the formalist, abstracted and moralising tendencies of more normative approaches. What the thesis points to is not only the existence of a substantial body of anti-colonial criticism and response in South Africa from the mid-1930s onwards, but also to a vigorous tradition of Marxist literary criticism in South Africa, one which predates the arrival of Marxist approaches in South African universities by some thirty years. Aside from the more traditional critical arena of literary consumption and evaluation, the thesis also considers a more general public discussion, one in which questions such as the place of politics in art, the social function of literature/culture, and the complex 'postcolonial' questions of cultural allegiance, identity and exclusion are debated at length. In this regard, culture becomes one of the primary sites of a much broader contestation of ruling class power. Regarded by many in these traditions as intrinsic to the operations of class and colonial oppression, culture also figures as one ofthe primary nodes of resistance. In seeking out these marginal South African 'subaltern counterpublics', the project has sought to retrieve a history of radical cultural-political debate in South Africa which is not available as part of the existing literary-cultural archive. In this regard, I hope not only to keep these ideas ' afloat' as a way of complicating and interrogating the present, but also seek to provide a more accurate and inclusive sense of the South African public sphere during the period under review. In particular, I offer a sense of the many competing intellectual discourses which formed the broader intellectual context out of which the dominant English Studies model was eventually constellated. I also give attention to the complex social processes by means of which certain intellectual discourses are granted legitimacy and permanence while others are discarded: what emerges in this regard, as I suggest, is gradual 'outlawing' of politics from South African cultural debates which coincides with the rise of the apartheid state.
The difference debate : the politics of feminist literary criticism in South Africa.
(2013) Sephuma, Nandipha.; Sandwith, Corinne.
This dissertation traces the development of the ‘difference debate’ during the 1990s. Using the ground-breaking Natal conference on ‘Women and Gender in Southern Africa’ as the central point of reference, the study aims to investigate the impact and legacy of the ‘difference debate’ in feminist criticism in the 1990s, and ultimately, the ways in which feminist scholars responded to the challenges posed by the ‘problem of difference’. The dissertation outlines the heated debates and intense disagreements that occurred during the decade that exposed previously nascent fissures in a purportedly unified feminist ‘sisterhood’. In this way, this brief intellectual history traces the trajectory of feminist debates over difference, race and gender, and the politics of representation, as articulated at the Natal conference on Women and Gender and in subsequent feminist scholarship. What emerges from these discussions are new strategies in which feminists embrace coalition politics as a way to move beyond the divisions that the concept of difference exposed. These feminist formations are orientated towards recognising and dealing with the differences between and among women, in order to account for gender as a fragmented and unstable concept. This dissertation therefore illuminates the ways in which the difference debate has had an indelible impact on contemporary feminist thought and in turn, has influenced the principles and methodologies of feminist literary criticism.
Gendered geographies and the politics of place : a comparative reading of the novels of Mariama Bâ and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.
(2014) McGuigan, Fiona.; Sandwith, Corinne.
This thesis is concerned with inscriptions of gender and space in the novels of two African women writers, Mariama Bâ and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, particularly Bâ’s So Long a Letter (1981) and Scarlet Song (1986) and Adichie’s Purple Hibiscus (2004) and Half of a Yellow Sun (2006). The exploration of representations of gendered identity is thus integrated with an awareness of space/place. By exploring the demarcation and enunciation of space within my chosen texts, I hope to provide new perspectives on the question of gendered identities and relations. The theorizing of gender identities and relations thus gains a new orientation from its application in relation to the theorizing of space and spatiality. As many theorists have argued, space is an important aspect to consider because it is not a neutral site: it becomes invested with meanings and encodes particular values and relations of power which can be contested and negotiated. This is particularly evident when looking at questions of gender identity, roles and relations. ‘Geographies of gender’ are established not only in the coding of spaces as ‘masculine’ and feminine’ but also in the kinds of sociality which they encourage and the power-relations they encode. If space is central to masculinist power, it is also important in the development of feminine resistance. Drawing on a range of theorists, I endeavour to pursue a gendered analysis of space/place through a reading of particular locations (the home, the street, the village) as expressive of power relations, gender identities and roles. I also consider how space/place is differently experienced and inhabited by men and women as well as how dominant constructions of space/place, which are also invested with meaning and power relations, come to be negotiated or contested. In all four novels explored in this thesis, the home is revealed as a dominant site of inscription, a space which tends to reflect and reinforce dominant social identities and roles. In this sense, the home is often figured as a site of patriarchal and gendered oppression, a central domain in which normative definitions of gender are established and reinforced. What is also clear, however, is that way in which the home also becomes a site for the contestation and renegotiation of gender identities and roles, a place where conventional identities can be challenged and new identities explored. In this sense, the home is revealed as a major site of contestation in which the tensions between different experiences and interpretations of space based on contrasting cultural definitions of power relations, gender identities and roles are played out. If the ordering of space is an important means of securing dominant gender relations, it also provides the means for negotiation and resistance. This is reflected not only the alternative ii examples of home explored in these novels but also in liberating spaces such as the school, the beach and the university. In the destabilisation and destruction of the home, the links between self and place becomes apparent as new identities are formed and conventional roles are redefined.
Writing autism inside-out autism and representation : a novel and critical essay.
(2014) Miller, Kirsten.; Sandwith, Corinne.; Moolman, Jacobus Philippus.
The dissertation adopts both a creative and critical approach to exploring the representation of autism in literature. Much of the autism literature produced so far has arisen in first-world, developed contexts, characterised by a high degree of support and an extensive knowledge base. In this original novel, The Hum of the Sun, autism is presented in a contemporary South African context. Against a background of the rather narrow or limited representations of autism found in Western medical and popular literature, the novel intends to extend the range and focus of existing literary representation by exploring a condition of severely impaired communication in a developing world. The creation of Zuko, a character with autism, explores the extreme scenario of the classic form of the condition, where language is limited or non-existent. A third person narrative describes the experience of Zuko’s character through a visceral, sensory language that focuses on quality and immediate experience rather than cognitive processes. The theoretical component of this study discusses autism through a historical narrative from its emergence as a diagnosis, and the condition’s diversity but tendency to characterise as lack against a norm. The rise in popular representations of autism emerge from constructions in popular media, as well as the public’s fascination with and anxiety about the condition. Autism’s representation spans a variety of genres. Compared and contrasted here are the genres of psycho-medical, fiction and autobiography or life-writing. Such popular representations potentially both create awareness and simultaneously produce stereotypes about the condition. Here the question of the relationship between the different discourses examines the vexed notion of ‘truth’ in the epistemological value of literature. The value of literature as a source of knowledge, and a source of knowledge about autism, is discussed, which illuminates various ethical and aesthetic questions in writing. Representation might be viewed as construction, not reflection, and the role of discourse also determines how autism as a knowledge-object is constructed and shaped by a particular genre and its conventions. Literature is a construct and truth is complex, but literary texts can facilitate understanding and offer a form of truth and illumination about the condition. Within all three genres, attention is given to the use of language, the narrative arc and structure, common stereotypes, plot devices, the resolution and grounding assumptions in relation to the way autism is represented. Finally, the implications of this research for the writing of an autism narrative in the form of the novel, The Hum of the Sun, are examined, with reflection on the ways it is possible to extend the terms of the debate and avoid some of the pitfalls found in the examination of other texts.