Nadine Gordimer after apartheid : a reading strategy for the 1990s.

Thesis (Ph.D.)-University of Natal, Durban, 1997.The aim of this study is to suggest, by selective example, a method of interpreting Gordimer's fiction from a 'post-Apartheid' perspective. My hypothesis is that Gordimer's own comments in her key lecture of 1982, "Living in the Interregnum", reflect not only her practice in the years of struggle politics, but suggest a yearning for a time beyond struggle, when the civil imaginary might again become a major subject. She claims that she has continually felt a tension in her practice as writer between her responsibility to 'national' testimony, her "necessary gesture" to the history of which she was indelibly a part, and her responsibility to the integrity of the individual experience, her "essential gesture" to novelistic truth. In arguing for a modification of what has almost become the standard political evaluation of Gordimer, my study returns the emphasis to a revindicated humanism, a critical approach that, by implication, questions the continuing appropriateness of anti-humanist ideology critique at a time in South Africa that requires reconstitutions of people's lives. The shift in reading for which I argue, in consequence, validates the 'individual' above the 'typical', the 'meditative' above the ideologically-detennined 'statement', 'showing' above 'telling'. I do not wish to deny the value of a previous decade's readings of the novels as conditioned by their specific historical context. The philosophical concept of social psychology and the stylistic accent on neo-thematism employed in this thesis are not meant to separate the personal conviction from the public demand. Rather, I intend to return attention to a contemplative field of human process and choice that, I shall suggest, has remained a constant feature of Gordimer's achievement. My return to the text does not attempt to establish textual autonomy; the act of interpretation acknowledges that meaning changes in different conditions of critical reception. My study is not a comprehensive survey of Gordimer' s oeuvre. It focuses on certain works as illustrative of the overall argument. After an Introduction of general principles, Chapter One focuses on two novels from politically ' overdetermined' times to show that even in the 'years of emergency', Gordimer's commitment to personal lives and destinies had significantly informed her national narratives. Chapter Two turns to two novels from less 'determined' times as further evidence of Gordimer' s abiding interest in the inner landscapes behind social terrains. Having proposed a critical return to the 'ordinary' concerns of the 'civil imaginary', the study concludes by suggesting that the times in the 1990s are ready for a new look at the most intensely lyrical aspects of Gordimer' s art: her short stories. The specific examples culminate, at the end of each chapter, in brief observations as to how the reading strategy might apply to other works in Gordimer's achievement, as well as to an 'interior' as opposed to an 'exterior' accent in South African fiction as a whole

Father, Daughter and ‘Estranged Belonging’: Anne Landsman’s The Rowing Lesson

In this article, I analyse aspects of a father/daughter story that is emblematic of dislocation and a yearning to belong. It is a story of a deep-seated, recurrent condition of ‘estranged belonging’. Most critical responses to Anne Landsman’s prize-winning novel have focused on the narrator’s (the daughter’s) memory and nostalgia within the trope of an ‘elegy for a dying parent’. I embed such a trope, however, in the quite insistent – but hitherto largely ignored – societal dimension of the story. Accordingly, the expatriate daughter reconnects with her dying father not only by recollecting her affective memories of him and the ‘lessons’ learned. She also reconnects by entering imaginatively into the life of her father as the son of a poor, immigrant Lithuanian family. The reader enters, intimately, into the ‘estranged belonging’ of a country doctor, in the class marginalisation, hardship, fracture and resilience of small-town South Africa. Key words: Anne Landsman, The Rowing Lesson, double dislocation, estranged belonging, father-daughte

Expression of β-Defensin-1 and 2 in HPV-Induced Epithelial Lesions

α, β, θ defensins represent a family of small antimicrobial peptides expressed predominantly by a series of cells, including neutrophils, monocytes-macrophages and epithelial cells that are involved in defense mechanisms against viral infections. β-defensins are the most widespread in this family being encountered in oral, digestive, urogenital mucosa and cutaneous lesions. β-defensins directly inactivate certain viruses, including the human papillomavirus(HPV) suppressing viral replication by altering target cells. Considering these aspects, we investigated the immunohistochemical expression of β-defensin-1 and 2 in HPV-induced epithelial lesions. For this study, tumoral and normal mucosal tissue fragments were collected from 10 patients aged between 31-60years, with previously confirmed HPV infection, diagnosed clinically and histopathologically with cervical carcinoma. Patients did not receive any chemotherapy or radiotherapy before the biopsy procedure. The tissue fragments were processed by the standard immunohistochemistry technique using anti-β-defensin-1 and 2 antibodies(Bioss Antibodies). The samples examination revealed weak positive(+) membrane, cytoplasmic and nuclear IR for hβD-1 in basal layer of normal cervical mucosa and moderate positive(++) membrane and cytoplasmic IR in squamous epithelium. For dysplastic HPV-associated tissues we highlighted a nuclear moderate positive(++) IR.For hβD-2, IR in basal layer of the normal mucosa was lower(+) compared with dysplastic cells IR and showed a strong expression(+++) at membrane, cytoplasmic and nuclear level in koilocytes of patients with HPV-associated dysplasia. It was also observed a moderate positive (++) IR in basal layer of dysplastic cells of patients without HPV. The obtained results are in agreement with some literature data, which highlighted the fact that hβD-1 and hβD-2 are very important components of the molecular pattern in HPV-induced lesions

Corelattions Between CD31, CD68, MMP-2 and MMP-9 Expression in Allograft Cardiac Rejection – Immunohistochemical Study

Introduction. The cardiac allograft rejections from the post-transplant period are attributable to the acute cellular rejection monitored by multiple endomyocardial biopsies. Compared to this, humoral rejection remains a matter of debate, with multiple therapeutic strategies, poor prognosis, and persisting uncertainty about diagnostic criteria. Acute allograft rejection is associated with significant modifications of the extracellular matrix compartment mainly regulated by matrix metalloproteinases (MMPs). In this context, the aim of this study was to evaluate the expression of MMP-2 and -9 and CD31, CD68 (endothelial and histiocytic markers) and the correlations between them using immunohistochemistry, in patients with cardiac allografts