1,720,963 research outputs found
Speaking positions: Zimbabwean women's writing in English and the disease, pain and trauma paradigm
No full textThis article critiques the disease, pain and trauma paradigm in Zimbabwean women’s writing in English. In discussing Virginia Phiri’s Desparate, Lutanga Shaba’s Secrets of a woman’s soul, and Valerie Tagwira’s The uncertainty of hope, the article becomes a project of analysing the traumatic legacies of the female experience in Zimbabwe. By locating the analysis of the sample female-authored texts in the context of significant political, social and economic experiences in the postcolony, the article reflects on the ramifications of experiencing pain and trauma in a culture where no one is supposed to remember what they saw or experienced. The authors posit in this article that by creating narratives of disease, pain and trauma, Zimbabwean women have crafted a cultural speaking position from which to testify about cultural and social unspeakable. The argument in this article is that in placing the woman at the centre of the drama of pain and trauma, Zimbabwean women writers have feminised pain and trauma representation will increasingly become poetic, as Zimbabwean women’s writing in English is developing into testimonial practices, giving birth to a cultural language of trauma
The female body and voice in audiovisual political propaganda jingles: the Mbare Chimurenga Choir women in Zimbabwe's contested political terrain
No full textZimbabwe’s post-2000 political terrain has been highly polarised and contested; a minefield requiring political resourcefulness to negotiate. Political actors in this terrain have employed an array of political and cultural tools, ranging from discourses of black empowerment and democratisation, to written texts and performances of political propaganda to garner support from the electorate and gain political mileage. This article explores the literal and symbolic implications of the entry of the female body into public and political spaces through performance in propaganda jingles in the electronic media, represented here by the Mbare Chimurenga Choir’s album ‘Nyatsoteerera’ [Listen carefully]. Using the Bakhtinian carnivalesque theoretical framework, the article analyses the audiovisual and thematic aspects of the Mbare women’s performance, exploring how the female body is cast in the visuals as both object and metaphor in the articulation of a largely masculinist nationalist project. The authors of this article suggest that the choreography exalts the female body as a metaphor for the authoritarian creed, and the gyrating bodies make tangible the objectification and metaphorisation of women in political discourses, while thematically, the lyrics suggest that
the Zimbabwean nation cannot be construed outside ZANU-PF’s terms, thereby foreclosing
any alternative discourse on Zimbabwe
Recovering the tongue: memorializing grieved women through spirit possession and ritual in Zimbabwean literature
No full textIn memorializing the past, Zimbabwe’s national and cultural discourses have more often than not drawn their legitimacy from selective versions of past experiences. These discourses are therefore exclusionary or inclusive depending on the cultural and political exigencies of the time. In both national historiography and cultural discourses, the total female experience has not been accounted for. The accounts of the past are
fairly homogenized. This article seeks to unravel, in two Zimbabwean fictional narratives, a matrix of authorial endeavours to recover and empower female subjectivity; endeavours that are guided by the tropes of spirit possession, ancestral power and rituals. The article posits that, through spirit possession and the resultant
coming to voice of wronged females as well as the authorial elevation of dead women to ancestral status, families and communities engage in integrative processes that facilitate healing and introspection. The focus of the article is on violated womanhood in both the pre-colonial and colonial contexts and in the latter case, with special regard to liberation war experiences in Zimbabwe. The article’s argument is presented within
the context of Shona cosmology and the place of spirit possession and ancestral memory therein
Portrait of a political liberation theologian: liberation theology and the making of Abel Muzorewa’s autobiographical subjectivity in Rise up and walk
No full textAutobiographical subjects are products of their experiential histories, memories, agency and the discourses of their time lived and time of textual production. This article explores the religious and political discursive economy in which Abel Muzorewa (former Prime Minister of Zimbabwe-Rhodesia) narrates the story of his life and how this discursive context constructs his autobiographical subjectivity. The article examines how Muzorewa’s religious beliefs – com-bined with his experiential history of being a colonial subject – are deployed as a strategy of constructing his subjectivity. I argue that the discursive contexts of mass nationalism and his Christian religious beliefs grounded in Latin American liberation theology construct both Mu-zorewa as the subject of Rise up and walk and the narrative discourse. The article posits that the narrative tropes derived from Christian texts that Muzorewa deploys mediate his identity, and that his selfhood emerges with the unfolding of the narrative. What he claims to be politi-cal pragmatism on his part is also inspired by the practical theology which he subscribes to. I argue that his subjectivity is complexly realised through the contradictory relationship between missionary theology and liberation theology
Mapping the Contours of an Imperial and Domestic Settler Subjectivity: Hylda Richards and the Heteroglossia of her Epoch
No full textBakhtinian dialogism places great emphasis on situating texts within the dialogues of their historical contexts. this article deploys Bakhtin's concept of heteroglossia to identify ideological and discursive currents/voices running through Hylda Richards' Next Year Will be Better, an autobiographical account. The context in which these currents are discussed is the construction of autobiographical subjectivity. This article argues that Richards' subjectivity is constituted against the background of a historical epoch populated with the heteroglossia of imperial and colonial societies. The subjectivities that emerge in this context are those of pioneer and domestic settler subjects. In addition, the article maps the relationship between Richards' narrative to the languages of her epoch and how she articulates these. The discussion establishes that her utterances in the narrative are polemical and largely inspired by pre-existing scripts about the condition of Africa and the moral superiority of white people, especially the English race. The article foregrounds Bakhtin's insistence on the impossibility of forming self-identities outside dialogue, whether subjects are conscious of the dialogising words or not
Erasure of girlhoods, inscriptions of womanhood: a study of erased girlhoods in selected Zimbabwean fiction
No full textThis paper takes feminist literary criticism of Zimbabwean literature as its point of departure. Feminist studies in Zimbabwean literature have more often than not, critiqued womanhood as broad category and in the process, girlhood has been subsumed under the ambits of the general and aggregated experiences
of womanhood. Girlhood has been relatively invisible as a category in feminist literary criticism of Zimbabwean literature and yet feminist literary theory could benefit from a comprehensive analysis of girlhood as a lens through which to perceive and understand the overall condition of womanhood and the implications of the depiction of girlhood in Zimbabwean fiction. This paper aims to construct an analysis of girlhood as a disaggregated category and how the very notion of girlhood is under erasure at both textual and discoursal levels. The paper uses a cross-section of Zimbabwean fictional narratives to engage with girl hoods through the prisms of legacies of patriarchal power, the wake of HIV and AIDS, economic insecurity and lack of access to education, basic health and information services. I argue, using Laclau's discourse theory and Derridian exploration of the implications of Heidegger's concept of erasure, that increased responsibilities, the patriarchy and economic insecurity coalesce to erase the childhood of adolescent girls in
the process shattering the perceived stability of the categories child/girl and adult/ parent. The paper concludes that the concept of girlhood in the selected texts is paradoxical and undermining as the boundary between girlhood and womanhood is rendered undecidable
When the masculine migrate from importance to impotence: the politics and erotics of political power in Liosa's the feast of the goat and Sembene's Xala
No full textMichel Foucault’s identification of the body as the principal target of power and feminist concerns with the political implications of sexual pleasure and eroticism have helped illuminate the Complex relationship between political power and sexuality. Following Achille Mbembe’s submission that power can be eroticised, this article explores what I term Trujillo's eroticisation of tyrannical power over Dominicans in Llosa's The Feast of the Goat. Trujillo deploys his sexuality to emasculate subordinates and occupy a privileged subject
position. The article delineates how the sexualised political control over women's bodies inspires the construction of Trujillo’s subjectivity and how in the- final moments of his reign his dysfunctional;phallus destabilises that subjectivity. The discussion also unravels how both the planned tyranycide by disenchanted Trujilliscas and Uranita’s remembering of Trujillo's totalitarian regime are to some extent inspired by sexualised concerns. The paper critiques the implications of Trujillo's eroticised rule for nationalism and gender. Drawing on parallels from Sembene's Xa/o, the article argues that the sexual dysfunctions suffered by Trujillo and El Hadji are a direct outcome of their excesses. I conclude that hr from confirming the
political power derived from sexual domination, Trujillo's and El Hadji’s embarrassing sexual experiences complicate and subvert that power
When the written and visual texts collide: photographic images and acts of memory in Zimbabwean autobiography
No full textStudies focusing on the inclusion of visual/photographic images in autobiographical narratives have recently gained currency. This article is based on the notion that photography is a mode of representation and a technology of memory; and it will critique the strategic deployment of photographic images in autobiographies of Zimbabwean politicians. The article explores the dynamics of how photographic images render remembering and self-construction possible in Joshua Nkomo’s The story of my life, Fay Chung’s Re-living memories of the second chimurenga and Edgar Tekere’s A lifetime of struggle. When visual and written texts collide, it becomes an act of memory and this visual-print-text paradigm in autobiographies is a site where official national memory and private memory can be interrogated. Images serve to negotiate the conflict between the autobiographical subject, national memory and the ideology of representation. This article posits that, when photographic images are included in autobiographies, they become implicated in
the politics of remembering, and in how the self and national memories are perceived
Mediating HIV/AIDS strategies in children’s literature in Zimbabwe
No full textThe Ministry of Education and Culture in Zimbabwe has introduced an intervention into the school curricula to complement the already existing mechanisms in the fight against HIV/AIDS. The literature in this programme is said to be designed to develop children’s knowledge of HIV/AIDS and to maximise both individual and community commitment to the safest protective behaviour possible. This paper argues that despite the Ministry’s efforts there is a dearth of such literature which would depict human relations and experiences in the context of HIV/AIDS in the corpus of Zimbabwean children’s literature in schools. It proposes that more fiction about HIV/AIDS could effectively complement the current non-fictional texts used in most Zimbabwean schools. This paper seeks therefore, to clarify the need for fictional narratives in which the disease plays a part since they will provide the main context in which young children learn to cope with the realities associated with HIV/AIDS through education. It posits that Zimbabwean children’s literature should also depict the conceptual framework within which health, human interaction and sexuality are understood in relation to the epidemic
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