Unisa Press Journals (University of South Africa)
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The Moral Law of Ngozi Crime in Two Zimbabwean Novels: The Case of Emmanuel Ribeiro’s Muchadura (1967) and Solomon Mwapangidza’s Rebel Soldier (2013)
No full textThe modern Western-inspired Literature and Law movement has inspired African works of art in which the creative imagination perceives itself as a form of moral law. In Africa, a literature and law movement has given rise to dynamic discourses of human rights. Human rights scholars have then tended to read imaginative works with a legal handbook on the side to try to verify the veracity of legal acts in works of art. In these legal-literary perspectives, the question regarding the extent to which the literary imagination imagines itself as a source of indigenous law is undervalued. This current desktop study examines what can be gained by prefacing African and indigenous literature as the point of departure when debating the elements of a contemporary literature and law movement in Africa. My unit of analysis consists of two novels, Muchadura (You shall confess) by Emmanuel Ribeiro, and Rebel Soldier (2013) by Solomon Mwapangidza. My argument is that in the two novels the narrativisation of the ngozi crime challenges current understandings of transitional justices such as retributive, compensatory, restorative, distributive, and emancipatory justices and denies the stability ascribed to them in African legal scholarship
Exploring Muti Murder and the Supernatural in Lauren Beukes’s Zoo City: The Case for (Magical) Realism
No full textThis study evaluated the extent to which representations of muti magic and other supernatural elements in Lauren Beukes’s Zoo City (2010) adhere to conventions of realism or magical realism. It questioned the appropriateness of Western genre categories and cosmologies to understanding muti murder and supernatural elements in African fiction. While asserting that Zoo City is a magical realist text, the study juxtaposed Western-led realism with what could be Bantu realism, where myth concepts such as shavi spirits and muti murder are considered to have real-life supernatural effects. Muti murders are criminal actions under southern African states’ laws, committed because of a cultural belief that they have believable supernatural effects—the novel interrogates this belief. This study was text-based and explorative; qualitative and hermeneutic methods were applied. Postcolonial theory served as a theoretical framework to understanding the diverse beliefs such as the conflict between Western scientific thought and African supernatural cosmologies. Often Western-led scientific thought believes that the human body has no connection with the supernatural, which is contrary to African supernatural cosmologies that hold that the supernatural and the natural exist interdependently; thus representations of muti murder in the text have a potential to be read as realistic according to Bantu cosmology. This study suggests that because of the representations of shavi spirits and muti murder, Zoo City should be read as a faith-based magical realist text—this approach helps to achieve the text’s objectives
“Life and Times of a Black Immigrant”: Precarious Refugee-ness and Human Rights in Simão Kikamba’s Going Home (2015)
No full textMost studies on intra-Africa migration to South Africa have focused more on the figure of the migrant. The exploration of the refugee and asylum-seeking persons remains understudied. This article seeks to explore the representation of precarious refugee existentiality and human rights in South Africa. By examining the interplay between refugee-ness, personal narrative and human rights advocacy, this article underscores the significance of refugee autobiography in the cultural landscape of South Africa. The article focuses on how Simão Kikamba’s Going Home (2015) is a narrative which serves as a powerful site for expressing challenging systemic injustices and advocating for social change. The analysis reveals how Going Home contributes to a broader human rights discourse, highlighting the ongoing challenges and aspirations in the journey towards a more just and equitable South African society
Stanley Nyamfukudza’s The Non-Believer’s Journey: A Critique of Zimbabwe’s Nationalist Discourses
No full textThis article argues that The Non-Believer’s Journey (1980), a novel by Zimbabwean author Stanley Nyamfukudza, is a narrative which is sceptical of the anticolonial nationalist project, specifically the liberation struggle of the 1970s in the then colony of Rhodesia. The discussion insists that Nyamfukudza’s novel subverts histories, metanarratives, and group identities that nationalists use in their attempt to concretise the idea of a homogeneous nation. In subverting these histories and narratives, Nyamfukudza shows that although the colonised black people in Rhodesia occupy the margins of the colony, they cannot be imagined in terms of homogeneity because they have different subjectivities. The article concludes that nationalism’s quest for homogeneity ironically becomes a force that represses the very colonised people that it seeks to liberate
The Two Meanings of ’āšam in Leviticus 5
No full textThis article explores how the noun ’āšam is used in Leviticus 5 and focuses especially on the argument that the noun has two meanings. A brief look at a number of translations and the way commentators have translated the different occurrences of the noun will support this argument, but many of these commentators do not offer any explanations for why this is so. This article attempts to fill this gap. It is argued that ’āšam has two meanings, one being a general umbrella meaning and one referring to the sacrifice. From a methodological perspective, much of this article consists of a synchronic reading of Leviticus 5, with some engagement with other texts in Leviticus, especially chapter 4. The article also examines the diachronic debates around this chapter and especially around the history of the ’āšam. The author argues that the Priestly author coined an umbrella term for Leviticus 5 because of the more serious nature of the trespasses in this chapter
The Biopolitics of Disability: A Critique of the Neoliberal England of Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go
No full textThis article investigates the biopolitics of disability in the ablenationalist England of Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel Never Let Me Go and examines how a neoliberal society urges its citizens to depend on market-based private medical management to be able-bodied individuals in order to fully participate in society. It also analyses the lives of clones who reside at Hailsham, a boarding school, as well as those of the non-cloned human beings living in the community outside Hailsham to illustrate the Agambenian ideologies of zoē and bios. The less explored and less debated sections of the novel, such as the fictional state of England, the institutions that produce and raise human clones like Hailsham, and the society of non-cloned human beings who are waiting for organ transplantation, are examined to exemplify how ablenationalism and able-disabled become strategies for inclusion in a neoliberal society of Ishiguro’s fictional England, thus problematising the ableist notion of inclusion as presented in Never Let Me Go
The Marriage Debate, Mona Caird and Her Feminist Radicalism
No full textNew Woman scholarship presents Mona Caird as a radical marriage reformer and emphasises how she challenged the patriarchal structure of Victorian marriage norms. However, this paper demonstrates Caird’s radicalness was not a challenge to marriage norms, but an attack on legal, cultural, and religious restrictions on womanhood. Caird developed her radical arguments through her interaction with her mentor John Stuart Mill, the New Woman novelist Sarah Grand, and the influential Victorian anti-feminist writer Elizabeth Lynn Linton. This paper explores her relationship with these three writers regarding their thoughts on marriage, based on the study of her novels The Daughters of Danaus (1894) and The Wing of Azrael (1889), and the collection of her journalistic articles The Morality of Marriage (1897). Caird differed from these three writers by arguing for a more liberal and equal gender relationship, resisting eugenic theory, and challenging anti-feminist arguments. Caird was an undisciplined New Woman writer not only in the sense of her feminist stance but also her critical engagement with the patriarchal discourses of gender and class relationship
On the Way to Language: Reading Celan Philologically
No full textThresholds, Encounters: Paul Celan and the Claim of Philology, edited by Kristina Mendicino and Dominik ZechnerState University of New York Press. 2023. Literature … in Theory. ix + pp. 314. LCCN 2022053651, ISBN 9781438494418 (hardcover: alk. paper), ISBN 9781438494395 (ebook
Researching Violence, Researching Ourselves: Unsettling Knowledge Production on Gendered and Sexual Violence
No full textThe colonial nature in which academia has taken shape has meant that its practices of acquiring and producing knowledge are often violent towards those affected by sexual and gender-based violence. Shifting the praxis of how knowledge is understood and engaged in, means critiquing these traditionally colonial methods, as well as identifying new ways of engaging with academia and the framework of conducting research. Contributors of the Unsettling Knowledge Production on Gendered and Sexual Violence Project have undertaken this idea in their individual and collaborative work as a way to challenge, disrupt and change the sometimes violent nature of research on sexual and gender-based violence. These contributors believe that there is a responsibility for producing knowledge that is respectful and which contributes towards the goals of care, ethical engagement and social justice, from the inception of the research work through to its dissemination. In this article, we look at their reflections on what unsettling knowledge means for them as they simultaneously navigate and resist colonial structures within which their work still takes place. They describe their journeys within this unsettling and decolonial framing and how they try to enact it in their work on sexual and gender-based violence.