The nucleation of white Zimbabwean writing

Abstract: Considering literature as a system in dialogue with non-literary systems, this article discusses the ways in which white writing in Zimbabwe finds itself marginalised from mainstream Zimbabwean literature owing to monological approaches which see the literary system as uniform, static and closed. Feeding from, and into, political, media and literary discourses on belonging, these approaches accomplish the nucleation of the system by imposing various forms of nuclei in the form of Rhodesian/colonial sensibilities and allegiances which white writing supposedly has. While it is true that some white narratives exhibit strong affinities towards the colonial past, it should also be noted that such narratives are only part of the system and resultantly the system should not in any way be reducible to this or any other segment. Enucleation is proffered as an alternative conceptualisation of the literary and cultural system in that it redeems systems from the demands of sameness and stasis. The place white writing occupies in Zimbabwe’s post-2000 cultural landscape, for instance, serves to illustrate how questions of memory and heritage always involve the intertwining of several cultural forces

Dealing with a troubled Rhodesian past : narrative detachment and intimacy in Peter Godwin’s Mukiwa : A White Boy in Africa (1996)

Abstract: This article argues that one of the challenges white Zimbabwean writers have to deal with in their narratives is a troubled colonial past. In Peter Godwin’s Mukiwa, A White Boy in Africa, there is a plain acknowledgement that Rhodesia had problems of legitimacy, which made the treatment of blacks before and during the war unjustified. Godwin’s rendition of the past is therefore informed by this recognition, compelling the author to employ narrative strategies which make it possible for him to embrace certain aspects of the past while simultaneously distancing himself from others. This analysis of Godwin’s Mukiwa shows how a re-imagined childhood consciousness enables an understanding of the Rhodesian past. Through this narrative strategy, Godwin is supposedly faithful in rendering the past, including its imperfections. Furthermore, the Rhodesian past is depicted as a baneful entity that estranges whites from the Zimbabwean present

Whitelier than white? : inversions of the racial gaze in white Zimbabwean writing

Abstract: This article looks at inscriptions of whiteness in selected white Zimbabwean narratives. Through a reading of Andrea Eames’ The Cry of the Go-Away Bird (2011), Alexander Fuller’s Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight (2003) and John Eppel’s Absent: the English Teacher (2009), the argument proposes that white Zimbabwean narratives situate whiteness within the context of change and marginality in Zimbabwe. The narratives deal with experiences of change and apprehensions of lived reality marked by the transfer of power from white minority to black majority rule. Our reading of The Cry of the Go-Away Bird examines how whiteness in the postcolonial Zimbabwean state is perceived through an outsider’s gaze, resulting in a kind of double consciousness within the (racialized, white) subject of the gaze. It is argued that the text depicts whites as torn between two unreconciled streams of possibility, reinforcing their sense of alienation. Fuller’s Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight represents whiteness as a thoroughly ephemeral experience. The meaning of whiteness is mediated through perpetual physical movement as whites travel from one point to another. Eppel’s Absent: the English Teacher affords a rethinking of whiteness as an unstable form of identity contingent on historical and political factors

Fictions, nation-building and ideologies of belonging in children's literature: an analysis of Tunzi the Faithful Shadow

This article demonstrates, through Michael Gascoigne’s Tunzi the Faithful Shadow (1988), that literature for children is sometimes employed by the government into the service of propagating dominant state ideologies in Zimbabwean schools. Such texts disseminate issues of inclusion and exclusion that characterise all nation building projects. I argue, through a reading of Tunzi the Faithful Shadow, that texts for children studied in Zimbabwean schools have been shaped by a distinctly Zimbabwean socio-historical context which includes, but is not limited to, the formation of a new national sensibility after the liberation war and the political unrest in the emerging nation

“Significant silences†and the politics of National Reconciliation in Chater’s Crossing the Boundary Fence

The article explores Patricia Chater’s Crossing the Boundary Fence (1988) within the framework of Macherey’s (1978) concept of “significant silencesâ€. I argue that in her representation of the decolonisation of Zimbabwe, the writer circumvents pertinent areas that are central to any discussion of the colonial history of Zimbabwe and the liberation war against colonialism. Among the areas the text is silent on is the role of white people in institutionalising racism in the colony and the contributions of ZAPU and the Ndebele during the war of liberation. These silences are informed by a reconciliation agenda which makes silence integral to its realisation

From “bush” to “farm”: Emplacement and displacement in contemporary white Zimbabwean narratives

In this article we discuss how places of belonging are imagined in relatively recent white Zimbabwean narratives dealing with issues of land, landscape, and belonging. Two white Zimbabwean narratives, Peter Rimmer’s Cry of the Fish Eagle (1993) and Douglas Rogers’ The Last Resort (2009), are read for the ways in which the paradoxically imagined spaces of the “bush” and the “farm” can be seen to enable, in alternate forms, exigent accommodations with place under different historical and political circumstances. In Cry of the Fish Eagle, which preceded Zimbabwe’s land reform process of the 2000s, “bush” is a privileged category by virtue of its supra-national allowance of a claim to white belonging in “Africa” at large. In The Last Resort, on the other hand, the “bush” is a derelict wilderness rescued by the ingenuity of white subjects, who create “farms” of splendid regenerative capacity in an effort to purchase belonging in the Zimbabwean nation-state

Memory, forgetfulness and the preservation of ‘third world’ communities in Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude and Armah’s Two Thousand Seasons

Both Gabriel Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude and Ayi Kwei Armah’s Two Thousand Seasons focus on ‘third world’ transitory communities struggling to survive amidst internal and external forces which threaten to erase them from existence. The two communities are conceived, by the writers and some critics, as metaphors of Africa and Latin America’s respective pursuits of nationhood in the face of challenges ranging from internal conflicts to Western imperialism. While the results of the struggles by these communities may differ in the end, it is the researcher’s observation that memory and/or forgetfulness are made central to both cases as the ultimate keys to self-preservation or characteristic obliteration. Through a metaphoric reading of the ‘insomnia plague’ incident in One Hundred Years of Solitude, the researcher looks at the various ways in which threats emerge and how, subsequently, memory and forgetfulness are configured and ritualised by communities and their representative individuals in both texts when faced with these threats. By focusing on the two fictional communities, the researcher will also tries to establish the significance of memory and forgetfulness in the ultimate survival or demise of all communities, especially in the ‘third world

‘Lame ducks’ in the time of HIV/AIDS? exploring female victimhood in selected HIV/AIDS narratives by Zimbabwean female writers

This article argues that HIV/AIDS narratives written by Zimbabwean women represent a partial view which positions women at the receiving end of the HIV/AIDS pandemic. Women are portrayed as ‘innocent’ and naïve recipients of a disease which finds its sustenance in the way Zimbabwean institutions such as culture, family and the law condone male sexual victimisation of women. Such a view echoes Maureen Kambarami’s (2006) ‘women-as-lameducks’ thesis. By focusing on two narratives, Tendai Westerhorf’s Unlucky in love (2005) and Nancy Mahachi-Harper’s Echoes in the shadows (2004), the researcher explores the ways in which female victimhood is entrenched in Zimbabwean women’s writings about HIV/AIDS. These narratives limit the sexual options available to women in and out of marriage, and stereotype men as callous agents of the disease. By failing to recognise that both men and women can be the victims as well as the perpetrators of abuse, these narratives perpetuate misconceptions about male and female sexuality on the one hand, and HIV/AIDS on the other. Furthermore, portraying female characters as perpetual victims robs women of individual and group agency. Such representations render identities permanent and project the role of women as destined for immanence

Memory, forgetfulness and the preservation of ‘third world’ communities in Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude and Armah’s Two Thousand Seasons

Both Gabriel Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude and Ayi Kwei Armah’s Two Thousand Seasons focus on ‘third world’ transitory communities struggling to survive amidst internal and external forces which threaten to erase them from existence. The two communities are conceived, by the writers and some critics, as metaphors of Africa and Latin America’s respective pursuits of nationhood in the face of challenges ranging from internal conflicts to Western imperialism. While the results of the struggles by these communities may differ in the end, it is the researcher’s observation that memory and/or forgetfulness are made central to both cases as the ultimate keys to self-preservation or characteristic obliteration. Through a metaphoric reading of the ‘insomnia plague’ incident in One Hundred Years of Solitude, the researcher looks at the various ways in which threats emerge and how, subsequently, memory and forgetfulness are configured and ritualised by communities and their representative individuals in both texts when faced with these threats. By focusing on the two fictional communities, the researcher will also tries to establish the significance of memory and forgetfulness in the ultimate survival or demise of all communities, especially in the ‘third world

Should I stay or should I go : Zimbabwes white writing, 1980 to 2011

Thesis (PhD)--Stellenbosch University, 2014.ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This thesis finds its epistemological basis in two related motives: the re-conceptualisation of white writing in Zimbabwe as a sub-category of Zimbabwean literature, and the recognition of white narratives as necessarily dialogic. The first motive follows the realization that writing by Zimbabwean whites is systematically marginalized from “mainstream” Zimbabwean literature owing to its perceived irrelevance to the postcolonial Zimbabwean nation. Through an application of Even-Zohar’s polysystem theory, this thesis argues for a recognition of white writing as a literary sub-system existing in relation to other literary and non-literary systems in Zimbabwe’s polysystem of culture. As its second motive, the thesis also calls for a critical approach to white Zimbabwean narratives built on the understanding that the study of literature can no longer be left to monologic approaches alone. Rather, white narratives should be considered as multiple and hence amenable to a multiplicity of approaches that recognize dialogue as an essential aspect of all narratives. The thesis attempts, by closely reading nine white-authored narratives in Zimbabwe, to demonstrate that white Zimbabwean literature is characterized by multiplicity, simultaneity and instability; these are tropes developed from Bakhtin’s understanding of utterances as characterized by a minimum of two voices. To consider white writing in Zimbabwe as a multiplicity is to call forth its numerous dimensions and breadth of perceptions. Simultaneity posits the need to understand opposites/conflicts as capable of existing side by side without necessarily dissolving into unity. Instability captures the several movements and destabilizations that affect writers, characters and the literary system. These three tropes enable a re-reading of white Zimbabwean narratives as complex and multi-nuanced. Such characteristics of the literary system are seen to reflect on the experiences of “whiteness” in postcolonial Zimbabwe. The white narratives selected for examination in this thesis therefore exhibit crises of belonging that reflect the dialogic nature of existence. In sum, this thesis is meant as a dialogue, culminating in the proposition that calls for a decentred and redemptive literary experience.AFRIKKANSE OPSOMMING: Hierdie tesis vestig sy epistemologiese basis in twee verwante motiewe: die herkonseptualisering van skryfwerk deur wit skrywers in Zimbabwe as ’n sub-kategorie van Zimbabwiese letterkunde, en die erkenning van wit narratiewe as onontkombaar dialogies in aard en wese. Die eerste motief volg die argument dat die skryfwerke van wit Zimbabwieërs stelselmatig gemarginaliseer is uit “hoofstroom” Zimbabwiese literatuur, as gevolg van dié skryfwerke se beweerde irrelevansie tot die koloniale Zimbabwiese nasie-staat. Deur Even-Zohar se polisisteem teorie toe te pas, pleit hierdie tesis vir die erkenning van letterkunde deur wit skrywers as ’n literêre sub-stelsel wat bestaan in verhouding tot ander literêre en nie-literêre sisteme in Zimbabwe se polisisteem van kultuur. As sy tweede motief, vra die tesis ook vir ’n kritiese benadering tot wit Zimbabwiese narratiewe, gebou op die verstandhouding dat die studie van letterkunde nie meer suiwer aan monologies benaderings oorgelewer behoort te word nie. Inteendeel, wit narratiewe moet as veelsydig beskou word, en dus vatbaar vir ’n verskeidenheid benaderings wat dialoog as ’n noodsaaklike aspek van alle verhale erken en verken. Deur nege wit outeurs se verhale in Zimbabwe noukeurig te lees, dui hierdie tesis aan dat wit Zimbabwiese literatuur gekenmerk word deur veelvuldigheid, gelyktydigheid en onstabiliteit; hieride is teoretiese konsepte wat ontleen is aan Bakhtin se begrip van uitsprake (“utterances”) as bestaande uit ’n minimum van twee stemme. Om wit lettere in Zimbabwe as veelvuldig te verklaar is om die talle dimensies en breedtes van persepsie in letterkundige korpus te erken. Gelyktydig postuleer die tesis die moontlikheid dat teenoorgesteldes/konflikte langs mekaar kan en móét bestaan, sonder om noodwendig in ’n eenheid te ontaard. Onstabiliteit, soos dit hier verstaan word, omvat die verskillende bewegings en ontstuimige roeringe wat skrywers, karakters en die literêre sisteem beïnvloed. Hierdie drie konsepte laat ’n herlees van wit Zimbabwiese verhale toe wat as kompleks en multi-genuanseerd bestempel kan word. Sulke kenmerke van die literêre sisteem moet in ag geneem word om die ervaring van “witheid” in post-koloniale Zimbabwe effektief uit te beeld. Die wit verhale wat gekies is vir herlees in hierdie tesis beeld dus krisisse van bestaan uit wat die dialogiese aard van die menslike bestaan omvat. Ter afsluiting is hierdie tesis bedoel as ’n dialoog wat kulmineer in ’n oproep vir gedensentraliseerde en verlossende ervarings van die letterkunde in sy geheel