Faculty of Humanities (ETDs)

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    Representations of masculinity in African women’s literature and their implications for English FET education: A feminist study of Ama Ata Aidoo’s Changes: A love story, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Purple Hibiscus and Sindiwe Magona’s Mother to Mother
    (University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2024) Mohlala, Morufane Relebogile; Nkealah, Naomi
    Masculinity is a socially constructed concept that prescribes certain behaviours and attitudes which are deemed acceptable for ‘real’ men. How an individual embodies or performs his masculinity is usually in relation to those around him and how they embody their own masculinities or femininities as well. This dissertation seeks to re-interrogate the representations of masculinity in Ama Ata Aidoo’s Changes: A Love Story, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Purple Hibiscus and Sindiwe Magona’s Mother to Mother. It seeks to analyse the various forms of masculinity emerging from these three novels which have been prescribed novels in schools in South Africa, and to discuss the implications of these representations on English FET education. Using an African feminist analysis of the novel and an application of the African feminist conceptualisation of masculinities, the analysis of the three novels reveals three factors. In Ama Ata Aidoo’s Changes: A Love Story, the analysis reveals that Aidoo is guilty of only rewriting the conditions of her central female character Esi, while her other two female characters’ conditions remain unchanged, as a result of the problematic masculinities enacted by the men in their lives. In Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Purple Hibiscus, the analysis reveals that Adichie can be given some credit as she introduces an alternate form of masculinity that is inspiring; however, Adichie still focuses on the problematic and un-transforming masculinity of her central male character and makes the transforming masculinity a secondary character. In Sindiwe Magona’s Mother to Mother, the analysis reveals that Magona makes a significant attempt at theorising the violent and violating masculinities that are found in South Africa. From the analyses of the three novels, this study identifies a gap that presents itself between the intended purpose of literature and the rudimentary way in which it is actually approached in South African English classrooms. To try and bridge this gap, I recommend the use of an African critical masculinity pedagogy to help teach these novels in critical ways that will move learners understand the nuanced meanings of masculinity.
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    Constructing the Afrocyborg in VR 360 Cinema: A Critical Investigation into how Two African Women Filmmakers Collaborate to Construct Prosocial African Science Fiction in Virtual Reality Filmmaking
    (University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2023-10) Passchier, Shmerah; Koba, Yolo; Sakota, Tanja
    The Afrocyborg semiotic construct is a neologism inspired by cyborg scholarship, beginning with Donna Haraway’s 1985, A Cyborg Manifesto, which materialised at the zenith of the Third Industrial Revolution (3IR), and the appearance of the domestic personal computer (PC) in the late twentieth century. This contribution to cyborg discourse re-focuses the Western science/fiction gaze of “cyborgology” by foregrounding African cyborg realities at the centre of the new zeitgeist of 4IR-driven XR technologies, specifically the VR HMD as an immersive computing device, which is a cyborg prosthetic extension of human ocular abilities (Gray 1995: 1). Moratiwa Molema and I formed the Afrocyborg VR Collective as an Afro-technofeminist coalition, and solidarity support group for collective womanist filmmaking. This methodology foregrounds the technological empowerment of women in relation to VR as a medium while focusing on prosocial subject matter in the domains of eco-justice and racial-gender-justice (Ogunyemi 2006: 21). For this reason, the Afrocyborg VR Collective make Prosocial VR films in the genre of African Science Fiction, which is a counter-hegemonic narrative lens through which to generate “cyborg consciousness” about “oppositional consciousness” (Sandoval 2020: 408; hooks 1992: 264). Cyborg oppositional consciousness is expressed as “Fourth VR” (Wallis & Ross 2020: 1). An Afro-technofeminist, technopolitical framework advances filmmaking discourse and praxis by autodidactic online learning of how to operate VR equipment, thereby overcoming our tech-inferiority complex with a thought experiment we call the “Dora Milaje mind trick” (Coogler 2018). As we learn, we also teach VR skills to our students and communities of youth to share knowledge of 4IR tools, specifically with women, to empower them with 4IR STEAM skills as a technopolitical, educational and future-proofing empowerment strategy. The Afrocyborg Collective has made two VR films in the genre of Prosocial VR as part of the creative praxis of Quantum Botho/Ubuntu in the making of The Cosmic Egg, which is a call to elevated environmental consciousness, and The Eye of Rre Mutwa, which confronts “white fragility” about the technological developments of the 4IR (DiAngelo 2018). By experimenting with new gaze regimes offered by the exponential medium of VR, with its multiple lenses that create 360-degree spherical story worlds, we demonstrate how the “medium is the muthi” when used in the mode of Prosocial VR. Therefore, the construction of an expanded prosocial gaze in VR, in the genre of African futurism, contributes to the decolonial undoing of oppressive power structures by generating representations of Africa that seek to apprehend the stereotypes of Hegelian racial prejudice and “poverty porn” that persist in global media representations (Kahiu 2017).