Precarious spaces: intersections of gendered identity and violence in Zimbabwean literature

dc.contributor.authorChando, Aaron
dc.contributor.co-supervisorNyanda, Josiah
dc.contributor.supervisorMuponde, Robert
dc.date.accessioned2024-08-21T18:37:37Z
dc.date.available2024-08-21T18:37:37Z
dc.date.issued2022-12
dc.departmentDepartment of English Studies
dc.descriptionA thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English Studies, to the Faculty of Humanities, School of Literature, Language and Media, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2022.
dc.description.abstractThis thesis examines ways in which selected Zimbabwean literary works expand understandings of the cultural production and deconstruction of precarity. It seeks to advance the claim that a cross-section of Zimbabwean writers espouses a ‘precarious aesthetic’ to reimagine the nation by deconstructing cultural practices that produce and sustain precarity. I postulate that precarity is ideologically produced at the intersections of gendered identities and institutionalised forms of violence, such as ethnonationalism, heteropatriarchal policing, ableism, homophobia, and misogyny, where notional understandings of masculinity and femininity become central to the politics of (un)belonging. I draw on premises from precarity, gendered identities, and intersectionality studies to make a case for a space-bound understanding of precarity that recognises Zimbabwean textual nuances and environmental specificities. By deploying Western-based theorisations of precarity to address dynamics of disempowerment in a Zimbabwean context, I seek to demonstrate that precarity discourses are in a constant process of becoming and to expand discursive space on a subject that has been predominantly approached through tropes of drought and hunger. A cross-cutting premise in precarity studies is that the experience of marginalisation promotes radical thinking, which enables victims to weaponise their condition. This underwrites my assumption that all marginalising impulses leave spaces for pushback, strategic surrender, and self-affirmation. Therefore, throughout the five core chapters of the thesis, I adopt a close reading strategy to offer context-specific evaluations of refusal politics undertaken by precarious subjects in different sites of displacement. I propose that exploring overlaps among marginalising ideologies and pushback mechanisms can unravel new insights about the political function of vulnerability and bring forth a new grammar with which to talk about precarity. Overall, I argue that the literary front constitutes a site of reinvention where precarious subjects are radically written into existence and where diversity and difference are recast as indices of social hygiene.
dc.description.sponsorshipPostgraduate Merit Award (Wits University).
dc.description.submitterMM2024
dc.facultyFaculty of Humanities
dc.facultyFaculty of Humanities
dc.identifierhttps://orcid.org/0000-0002-1784-6382
dc.identifier.citationChando, Aaron. (2022). Precarious spaces: intersections of gendered identity and violence in Zimbabwean literature. [PhD thesis, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg]. WIReDSpace. https://hdl.handle.net/10539/40252
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/10539/40252
dc.language.isoen
dc.publisherUniversity of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg
dc.rights©2022 University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. All rights reserved. The copyright in this work vests in the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg.
dc.rights.holderUniversity of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg
dc.schoolSchool of Literature, Language and Media
dc.subjectPrecarity
dc.subjectGendered identity
dc.subjectDifference
dc.subjectCultural disablement
dc.subjectViolence
dc.subjectRadical vulnerability
dc.subjectMinoritization
dc.subjectIntersections
dc.subjectUCTD
dc.subject.otherSDG-4: Quality education
dc.titlePrecarious spaces: intersections of gendered identity and violence in Zimbabwean literature
dc.typeThesis
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