Anias Mutekwa

Bio: Anias Mutekwa is an academic researcher from Midlands State University. The author has contributed to research in topics: Sociology & Ideology. The author has an hindex of 5, co-authored 10 publications receiving 62 citations. Previous affiliations of Anias Mutekwa include University of Oxford.

The Avenging Spirit: Mapping an Ambivalent Spirituality in Zimbabwean Literature in English

Abstract: Spirit possession is a central trope in Zimbabwean literature, not only in English, but also in indigenous languages. This article looks at the avenging spirit as it is manifested in Zimbabwean literature in English from the colonial days to the present, and uses postcolonial theory and Lewis's social deprivation theory in the exploration. It shows how this trope, under colonialism, is used to represent contesting power discourses that seek a stranglehold on the people. It goes on to show how the same trope is used to recover suppressed discourses, voices and narratives, and also becomes a metaphor for fissures in Zimbabwean society in the aftermath of the war of liberation and the unfulfilled promises of the same. Finally, it explores the avenging spirit as a traditional belief system that is central in the psyche of many of the Zimbabwean people and which society has to contend with in the contemporary set up. The article goes on to argue however, that belief in the ngozi represents traditional knowledg...

Gendered beings, gendered discourses: the gendering of race, colonialism and anti-colonial nationalism in three Zimbabwean novels

Abstract: This article aims to explore the gendering of race, colonialism and anti colonial nationalism in selected novels from the Zimbabwean literary canon with the view of showing how this gendering affected different facets of colonial life and, by implication, post independence life. It relies on the Gramscian concept of hegemony in terms of how it refers to gender, particularly masculinities. The selected texts, A Son of the Soil by Wilson Katiyo, The Grass is Singing by Doris Lessing and Bones by Chenjerai Hove, cover the colonial period from the moment of contact to the early post independence period. The article links the gendered nature of colonialism to the gendered aspects of anti colonial nationalism and shows how the two existed in an oppositional yet ambivalent relationship. This is also manifest in the schizophrenia of the post independence state in modeling itself after its predecessor, its anti colonial rhetoric notwithstanding.

From “boys” to “men”? African and black masculinities, triangular desire, race, and subalternity in Charles Mungoshi’s short stories

Abstract: This article looks at African and black men and masculinities, triangulated desire, race, and subalternity in Charles Mungoshi’s short story collections. It examines the negotiation of desire, and its interface and interplay with power relations and their negotiation in the colonial and postcolonial economies of domination and gender as depicted in the short stories. It uses the Gramscian concept of hegemony, Girard’s mimetic theory of triangular desire, and Sedgwick’s theory of gendered triangular desire, to examine these dynamics. It argues that colonial and postcolonial power and gender relations are negotiated through a complex interplay of desire that cannot all be accounted for by both Girard and Sedgwick’s models, necessitating their modification to deal with the complexity of desire in a colonial and postcolonial context. The short story collections examined span the colonial and postcolonial eras and these are Coming of the Dry Season (1981), Some Kinds of Wounds (1980), and Walking Still (1997).

Destabilizing and Subverting Patriarchal and Eurocentric Notions of Time An Analysis of Chenjerai Hove’s Bones and Ancestors

Abstract: This article explores the notion of time as conceptualized and articulated in Chenjerai Hove’s Bones and Ancestors. These texts, as this article sets out to demonstrate, are characterized by a deliberate attempt to subvert and transcend the Eurocentric and patriarchal notions of time as premised and predicated on linearity and progression. The authors argue, as is reflected in the texts, that these notions of time are a simplistic model and do not reflect the diversity that characterize and constitute human experience. These notions of time are premised on linearity and progression, and so they repress and stifle the existence of other and alternative narratives of history, time, and experience as demonstrated in the texts.

Subalternizing and Reclaiming Ecocentric Environmental Discourses in Zimbabwean Literature: (Re)reading Doris Lessing's The Grass is Singing and Chenjerai Hove's Ancestors

Abstract: Much of the criticism of Zimbabwean literature has skirted the ecological question. Critical exegeses of the literature have focused on such aspects as gender, colonialism, and post-coloniality.

The Invention of Africa: Gnosis, Philosophy and the Order of Knowledge

Abstract: What is the meaning of Africa and of being African? What is and what is not African philosophy? Is philosophy part of Africanism ? These are the kind of fundamental questions which this book addresses. North America: Indiana U Press