Browsing by Author "Narismulu, Gayatri Priyadarshini."

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Challenging patriarchal normativity: Southern African women writers’ constructions of women’s concerns, needs, changing identities, agency and solidarity.
(2021) Rubaya, Clemence.; Narismulu, Gayatri Priyadarshini.
This thesis explores literary representations of African women challenging the oppressiveness of patriarchal normativity that has and continues to undermine and destroy the quality of women’s lives the world over, by persistently oppressing them and denying them equal rights, freedoms and opportunities. Contesting patriarchal normativity is critical to addressing the discrimination and oppression experienced by women, and understanding how they seek to emancipate themselves, to enjoy their rights to respect, dignity and fulfilling lives, as full members of the society to which they belong. African women have played important roles in surviving and challenging a range of interlocking patriarchal systems. They have tackled the imperatives of transforming the oppressive structures that hinder peace and development in many societies. To address his topic, the researcher adopted an interpretive content analysis of feminist literature from Southern Africa, and reviewed a range of secondary literature to support the study. Lauretta Ngcobo’s And They Didn’t Die and Tsitsi Dangarembga’s Nervous Conditions are the primary texts selected for study. The research indicates the power and resilience of a range of women in struggles against colonial/apartheid/capitalist patriarchy that have intersected to compound the abuse and tyranny experienced by African women. Dangarembga and Ngcobo’s powerful representations of African women in their novels afford deep insights into the critical roles of African women in ensuring family and community survival, and challenging the assumptions embedded in patriarchal thinking. Drawing on the inspiring leadership of the authors, the study challenges more men to get involved in the feminist struggle against patriarchal normativity and oppressive systems, because all women, children, men, families, communities, societies, our continent, and the world benefit from gender empowerment and justice, and the full integration of women. The thesis also addresses the value and strength of women’s (and men’s) solidarity in challenging these oppressive systems.
A critique of the representation of women and land in postcolonial Zimbabwe fictional literature.
Hungwe, Elda.; Narismulu, Gayatri Priyadarshini.
This research explores the representation of women and land in postcolonial Zimbabwean fictional literature, through examining the extent to which Zimbabwean literary writers deal with the challenges of women’s access to owning and controlling land. Most Zimbabwean women have many generations of agricultural knowledge, skills and labour, as women have long been the primary agriculturalists who grew crops and raised animals. The research indicates that the colonial invasion, seizure and dispossession of land and oppression of African people prompted women and men to fight for liberation. However, even after independence, Zimbabwean women have continued to struggle to gain access to owning and controlling land. These struggles are well represented in creative works, such as Irene Mahamba’s Woman in Struggle, Freedom Nyamubaya’s On The Road Again, Yvonne Vera’s Without A Name and Nehanda, Chenjerai Hove’s Bones, Valerie Tagwira’s The Uncertainty of Hope, Lawrence Hoba’s ‘The Trek And other Stories’, Julius Chingono’s ‘Minister Without Portfolio’, Lawrence Hoba’s ‘Specialisation’, Daniel Mandishona’s ‘A Dirty Game’ and NoViolet Bulawayo’s We Need New Names. The research, including the analysis of the primary literary texts, shows that patriarchal social customs, as well as the functions and operations of the state and the police continue to limit and deny women opportunities to access, own and control land. The literary texts also show women using strategies and tactics to challenge the gendered limitations to their access to land. African Feminist theory and approaches are used to analyse women’s challenges and responses including the literary representations of land access and to address these in empowered ways.
Enabling student teachers of literature to become agents of change.
(2013) Pillay, Ansurie.; Narismulu, Gayatri Priyadarshini.
This thesis reports on a study involving student teachers of literature in a teacher education programme who used literary texts as catalysts for implementing change. The researcher asserted that if student teachers are empowered with sound disciplinary knowledge, effective pedagogical tools and an understanding of how to bring about academic and social change, they can make a difference to the lives of their learners, irrespective of context or resources. Critical pedagogy served as the theoretical framework for the study which was characterised by a system of interventions within six participatory action research cycles. The researcher found that participants responded positively to co-operative, experiential learning strategies in lecture-rooms that were perceived to be safe. When participants recognised that their views were respected, their interactions with others were characterised by respect as well. They realised that having agency and voice did not mean denying others the same. They felt empowered to make decisions and access resources, and they embraced challenges perceived to be valuable. By the end of the study, participants recognised that teachers can serve as primary resources in schools if they empowered themselves with deep content knowledge, pedagogical skills and a transformative agenda, and if they actively engage learners, scaffold learning, build on prior knowledge and skills, affirm histories, and enable a classroom where learners’ contributions are valued. Participants established that to serve as agents of change in the classroom, teachers need to critically reflect on their practices and confront their prejudices. In addition, they need to ascertain the underpinning philosophy of their practices. Only then can they determine the roles and functions that comprise their identities as teachers. Ultimately, the researcher draws on the knowledge from participatory action research, critical pedagogy and literary texts to enable change agency in a lecture-room at a School of Education. The thesis adds to the discourses on teacher education, participatory action research, critical pedagogy and change agency and contributes to knowledge by showing that using participatory action research and critical pedagogy in a lecture-room is feasible and useful in enabling the transformation and empowerment of students.
‘For my Torturer’: an African woman’s transformative art of truth, justice and peace-making during colonialism.
(Bridgewater State College., 2012) Narismulu, Gayatri Priyadarshini.
Against a range of injustices African women have made powerful challenges to structural, gender and repressive violence through their interventions in questions of justice, dialogue, creativity and transformation. This article addresses an activist's interventions against colonial oppression by examining gender as the central variable in the relationship between justice and activism in African women's creative literature. The poem 'For my Torturer, Lieutenant D… ' was written in prison by the Algerian activist Leila Djabal who navigated the silences and challenges of gender, age and national identity (post colonial). It challenges the violence of colonial and patriarchal silencing to expose torture and rape by a prison official." Emerging from an abject position in a colonial jail the poet drew on the representational and allusive properties of poetry to heal and transform the role of victim so as to expose gross human rights abuses and hold colonial officials, the colonial state, and French culture to account. Predicated upon the recognition of very diverse audiences, the visionary poem invokes and explores emerging transitional justice and peace-making processes, decades before their formal appearance. It also demonstrates the value of creative communication strategies under conditions of extreme oppression and division. Using a Critical Theory lens with intersectional analysis, Djabali's text may be read as innovatively connecting individual testimony to the nascent national processes of transitional justice and peace-making. The work of Audre Lorde is used to interpret this bold and resourceful experiment in the generation of justice and transformation through literary art.
Locating the popular-democratic in South African resistance literature in English, 1970-1990.
(1998) Narismulu, Gayatri Priyadarshini.; Van Wyk, A. J.
As a conjunctural construct located between politics, society and art, the popular-democratic construes the resistance literature of the 1970s and 1980s as being expressive of an entire social movement to end oppression and transform society. Through the construct of the popular-democratic voices that have been marginalised, fragmented, dislocated, excluded or otherwise silenced can be seen in relation to each other and to the sources of oppression. The introductory chapter addresses the characteristics of the popular-democratic, and the caveats and challenges that attend it. The remaining nine chapters are divided into three sections of three chapters each. The first section examines repression of different types: structural repression, coercive repression/state violence and cultural repression. An important index of the structural oppression of apartheid is the home, which a range of resistance writers addressed in depth when they dealt with city life and the townships, forced removals, homeless people, rural struggles, migrants and hostels, commuting, the "homelands" and exile. The coercive apparatus of the state, the security forces, were used against dissidents in the neighbouring states and within the country. The literature addresses the effects of the cross border raids, assassinations, abductions and bombings. The literature that deals with internal repression examines the effects of the mass detentions, restrictions, listings and bannings as well as the impact of the states of emergency, P.W. Botha's "total strategy", and the actions of the death squads. An examination of the conservative liberal constructions of resistance literature helps to clarify why resistance literature remains inadequately conceptualised ("Soweto poets", "protest literature") although there has been a vibrant and challenging corpus. The way in which the audience of resistance literature is constructed is identified as a key problem. The responses of various resistance writers, in poems, interviews, letters and articles, to conservative liberal prescriptions are contextualised. The middle section of the argument focuses on the organisations that developed to challenge oppression. Through an examination of the literature that was influenced by the activism and the cultural and philosophical production of Black Consciousness, it is apparent that the movement was continuous with the rest of the struggle for liberation. The satirical poems that challenged both the state and the conservative liberals offer powerful displays of verbal wit. The struggles of workers are addressed through texts that deal with their plight and call for worker organisations. The trade union COSA TV paid close attention to the development of worker culture, which proved to be critical when the state cracked down on the resistance organisations. The production values and effects of very different plays about strikes, The Long March and Township Fever receive particular attention. The rise of the United Democratic Front (UDF) is anticipated in literature that celebrates the potential of ordinary South Africans to achieve political significance through unity. Constructed out of substantial ideological pluralism, the UDF arose as an act of political imagination and organisational strategy. The ideological convergence between the UDF and COSATU on the question of bidding for state power constituted a turning-point in a nation built on the intolerance of difference. The last section focuses more closely on the productive responses of the culture of resistance to specific aspects of repression, such as the censorship of the media and the arts, the killings of activists, the struggles around education and the keeping of historical records (which enable an interrogation and reconstruction of discursive and interpretive authority).