The silence at the interface : culture and narrative in selected twentieth-century Southern African novels in English.
Loading...
Date
1992
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Abstract
The primary intention of this study is to establish the theoretical
significance of silence within the sphere of the twentieth-century
Southern African novel in English. Clearly a feature of recent writing,
silence is less overtly thematised in earlier work. Since relatively
little critical and theoretical attention has been paid to silence as a
positive phenomenon, however, modes of reading it are sought within the
broader sphere of the social sciences, and specifically its tradition of
social constructionism. Care is taken to address the pressures of the
local context, identified in terms of the postcolonial paradigm as
relating to language and to culture. A deliberate theoretical innovation
is the renunciation of the trope of penetration in favour of the notion
of an interface between intact language-culture systems, given an
understanding of culture as existing between subjects in relations of
power. Fictional narrative which addresses cross-culturality is thus
read as a process of cultural translation, and the volitional deployment
of silence as an act of resistance to its power. The significance of
language is registered in the use of speech-act theory, in the
insistence on meaning as generated in spatially and temporally situated
conversation, and in the exploration of the influence of pronominal
relations on identity. Emerging from my investigation is a recognition
of the measure offered by silence of the autonomy of character as
subject, and a corresponding recognition of the constitutive capacity of
the reader to site the power of narration amongst the polyphonic voices
within the culture of the text. The postcolonial paradigm indicates the
need for a regional rather than a national perspective; thus the
interfaces considered in the case studies include, in Plaatje's Mhudi,
orality and literacy, tribal membership and non-sectarianism, Tswana and
English; in Paton's Too Late the Phalarope the private domain and
apartheid as public hegemonic discourse, narration as possession, and
the tragic as structuring textual relations; and in Head's Maru the
constitution of a postcolonial identity that resists and transcends the
discursive hostility of racism, and the dislocation, displacement and
alienation of exilic refuge from apartheid.
Description
Thesis (Ph.D.)-University of Natal, Durban, 1992.
Keywords
Conrad, Joseph. Heart of Darkness., Paton, Alan. Too Late The Phalarope., Head, Bessie, 1937-1986. Maru., Theses--English., South African fiction (English)--History and criticism., Silence in literature., Plaatje, Sol T., 1875-1932. Mhudi.