ETD Collection

Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://wiredspace.wits.ac.za/handle/10539/104


Please note: Digitised content is made available at the best possible quality range, taking into consideration file size and the condition of the original item. These restrictions may sometimes affect the quality of the final published item. For queries regarding content of ETD collection please contact IR specialists by email : IR specialists or Tel : 011 717 4652 / 1954

Follow the link below for important information about Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETD)

Library Guide about ETD

Browse

Filters

20062

Settings

Has files: YesSubject: search.filters.subject.kenya

Search Results

Now showing 1 - 2 of 2
  • No Thumbnail Available
    Item
    Stirring whispers: fictionalising the 'popular' in the Kenyan Newspaper
    (2006-03-22) Ogola, George Otieno
    Popular fiction columns have been among the most resilient and versatile of the newspaper sub-genres in Kenya. Since the 1970s, these columns have remained a permanent feature in the Kenyan newspapers. Among the most popular of these columns is Whispers, a satirical column written by one of Kenya’s most talented writers of the 1980s—90s decades, Wahome Mutahi. At a time when the state had all but monopolised public sites of expression in the country, Whispers kept the Kenyan popular media porous, opening up spaces for the discussion of social and political issues that could only be ‘whispered’. This study gives a detailed discussion of this column against the historical dynamics of post-independence Kenya. I examine how Whispers became a public space where Kenya’s postcolonial existence, in its many contradictory faces was constantly interrogated. I argue that this column provided its readers certain ‘moments of freedom’; it was a site where the limits of social and political taboos were boldly tested. In Whispers, people could heartily laugh at authority, and at themselves, but ultimately reflect on the reasons for their laughter. By providing such a space for self-reflection and for the critique of society, I argue that the Kenyan newspaper became an important site of cultural production especially in the 1980s through the 1990s. The introductory parts of this thesis attempt a theorisation of the ‘popular’ and later trace the emergence of popular fiction as a category of critical literary exegesis in Kenya. I examine the beginnings and growth of popular fiction, focusing mainly on the role of the popular press. The median chapters examine how the Kenyan newspaper provides the space within which popular fiction interfaces with journalism to constitute ‘publics’, by drawing on popular cultural resources to mediate contemporary and topical issues. The thesis gives a detailed reading of the cultural forms that offer subject populations interpretive frameworks within which to make sense of their world. The last part of the thesis continues this discussion with an analysis of how the ‘popular’ mediates questions of power in postcolonial Kenya.
  • No Thumbnail Available
    Item
    Romance, love and gender in times of crisis: HIV/AIDS in Kenyan popular fiction
    (2006-03-20) Muriungi, Agnes
    The emergence of HIV/AIDS has changed how society perceives and deals with issues of sex, sexuality, and gender. The writers studied in this thesis raise important questions pertaining to HIV/AIDS and gender, love, romance, sex and sexuality in present day Kenya. Their writing demonstrates that HIV/AIDS has changed the ways in which people understand these issues. This thesis sought to explore, through an analysis of fiction, how human social behaviour has been affected by a pandemic disease. The changes in sexual and gender relationships that are reflected in this literature points at “emergent cultures of sexuality”. For instance, the literature clearly shows that both men and women in contemporary Kenya are confronted by an urgent need to change their sexual behaviour whether in monogamous or polygamous relationships, hence a change in the power matrix between men and women. Practices to do with pleasure seeking and the satisfaction of desire, male domination of gender relationships, notions of masculinity among other social and cultural practices and beliefs are affected in extreme ways. In some cases, these practices and beliefs are undermined and subverted whilst in other cases they are reinforced. What these social and sexual dynamics suggest is that human society is being revolutionized by the HIV/AIDS phenomenon. Therefore, this study looks at how popular discourses about sexuality, romance and gender have been (re)appropriated and (re)articulated by popular literature in Kenya within the context of HIV/AIDS. The thesis examines how discourses on romance are employed to re-imagine social and sexual behaviour as a means to control and contain the spread of HIV/AIDS. My analysis demonstrates that popular fiction is capable of representing the hidden realities of sex, sexuality, romance and gender that individuals face daily in a way that other forms of expression and media cannot. The examples of HIV/AIDS fiction examined here give readers a better understanding of the effects of the disease on society through the various stories that different characters in the novels tell. These stories also play an important role in the creation of urgently needed and socially relevant meaning with regard to HIV/AIDS. The popular text, in the context of HIV/AIDS, makes an important contribution to cultural production because it comments on and more importantly, offers possibilities of re-imagining and re-creating new forms and practices of social and sexual behaviour in present-day Kenyan society.