3. Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETDs) - All submissions
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Browsing 3. Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETDs) - All submissions by Department "Department of African Literature"
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Item Hydro-colonialism: a hydro-critical reading of three texts on Kariba(2021) Makuyana, LuckThis research report offers a hydro-critical reading of three texts on Kariba dam. Kariba dam becomes a source of narrative temporality that reminds us that colonization was as much a struggle for water as it was for land, a realisation that helps us to reimagine Southern African colonization and decolonization discourse from almost exclusively land-based perspectives. Although the texts I have selected are largely binary and are informed by colonial schemas, my watery analysis aims to lay bare these structures and highlight the points at which these binaries become unsustainable. I argue that immersing colonialism in water underscores the paradoxes of colonization and decolonization more sharply. The theoretical framework for this research draws on Isabel Hofmeyr’s concept of hydro-colonialism (2019) and Rob Nixon’s notion of slow violence (2011), a combination of theories that offers ways to think about water and hydrological themes from an ecological and post-colonial perspective. The research report considers the use of water as a weapon of political terror, explores colonization of water, examines the colonization of the idea of water, critiques colonial constructions of water and reads water as a narrative techniqueItem Of water and water spirits in southern African literature(2022) Joseph, ConfidenceThis project contributes to the growing scholarly work that foregrounds water as a critical tool for, and object of analysis. I am interested in how creative writers and filmmakers employ water and water spirits in forms such as novels and films from Southern Africa. While I refer to the beings as water spirits in this thesis, they are also known as water gods or deities. In this project, I explore how water spirits are used as innovative literary devices in different texts as they are re-imagined in line with changing historical contexts and authorial visions. Water is both life-giving and mortally dangerous, and water spirits often manifest similar dualities. To create a conceptual framework for this thesis, I benefitted from several theories that include water mythologies, magical realism, and post-colonial ecocritism. I argue that while the histories of the nation have been intricately tied to the land, a watery turn reveals fresh insights into our understandings of pre-colonial, colonial, and post-colonial conversations. Watery spaces are complex and contested sites like land territories. The complexity of watery spaces invites my exploration of the materiality of water and the representation of water spirits in the selected texts in a decolonial frame. The way the selected texts represent the entanglements between the human and non-human, land, and water, the natural and the supernatural, speaks to the many ways of being in the world