What difference does it make who is speaking?
Date
2016
Authors
Khoza, Mbali
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Abstract
This thesis examines the concept of authorship in literary and artistic practice by
travelling the concept of authorship from literature to artistic practice. To achieve
this the thesis will be guided by the questions, ʻwhat is an author?ʼ, ʻwhen is
authorship?ʼ and more importantly the title question, what difference does it make
who is speaking? To unpack these questions and those that will follow, my
research will begin by thinking through the idea of authorship and authorial voice
in literature and to identify the ways in which this is performed in artistic practice.
Additionally the thesis will explore the authorship and authority, particularly how
the author uses the power of language to impose authority over the reader and
the West language still holds power the postcolonial subject or authors. In
retaliation of this authority, the thesis also looks at how postcolonial writers/artists
have developed a language of power.
This analysis will be directed by a selection of theorists, writers and artists.
Theorists such as Roland Barthes and Michel Foucault whose questions on
authorship are the bases of my research and Miek Bal Traveling Concepts in the
Humanities, Jacques Derrida Of Grammatology, Ngugi Wa Thiongo Writers in
Politics, Walter Benjamin The Task of the Translator and Jean Fisherʼs
Embodied Subversion as well as other supporting reading.
In addition to that, investigating methods of writing in Dambudzo Marecheraʼs
novella House of Hunger and Willimam S. Burroughs The Naked Lunch and how
these ideas are reflected by artistic practice .To help envisage the idea of the
ʻartist as authorʼ I look very closely at specific works of three postcolonial artist
and their relationship with language. I have selected works by artists Kemang Wa
Lehulereʼs Some Deleted Scenes Too, Tracey Roseʼs Span I, and Danh Voʼs
Last letter of Saint Théophane Vénard to his father before he was decapitated
copied by Phung Vo as well as drawing from my own practice.
Description
Thesis (M.A. (Fine Art))--University of the Witwatersrand, Faculty of Humanities, School of Art, 2016
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Citation
Khoza, Mbali (2016) What difference does it make who is speaking?, University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, < http://wiredspace.wits.ac.za/handle/10539/21888>