Showing papers in "Journal of Literary Studies in 1991"
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors discuss the problem of heterogeneity in theories of postcolonialism and poststructuralist theories on which they are based, and argue that the heterogeneity in these theories threatens to undermine the political dimension of these theories.
Abstract: Summary This article is an attempt to broach the issue of heterogeneity, recasting it as a problem for theories of postcolonialism, and for the poststructuralist theories on which they are based. Heterogeneity results in a dilemma for the theorising of reconstitutive political action: If the colonised person is seen as radically heterogeneous, s/he is inevitably either passive and incapable of acting for liberation, or the discourses which allow for resistance or emancipatory action are subject to the same critique as the discourses of imperialist domination. Where heterogeneity is conceived as a problem, but theoretically retained and affirmed, the theory becomes incoherent. This is a result of the terms in which heterogeneity has been cast in these theories. Ultimately the problem of heterogeneity as it emerges in theories of postcolonialism threatens to undermine the political dimension of these theories, and of poststructuralism.
12 citations
TL;DR: The Cinema of Apartheid: Race and Class in South-African Film, K.T. Tomaselli 1989 London: Routledge as discussed by the authors,..., and.. ).
Abstract: The Cinema of Apartheid: Race and Class in South‐African Film, K.T. Tomaselli 1989 London: Routledge
7 citations
TL;DR: The authors argued that Bakhtin's thinking about language and culture is essentially binary and argued that dialogism is at one and the same time an oppositional discursive activity which subverts the objectifying tendencies of ruling discourse and a theoretical description of all language.
Abstract: Summary After sketching in outline Bakhtin's theory of language as well as the main features of Rabelaisian carnival and its associated “grotesque” body‐image, the article argues that Bakhtin's thinking about language and culture is essentially binary. The paper suggests that Stallybrass and White's transposition of the Bakhtinian notion of carnival into a broader cultural process of high/low binarism should be extended to include the theorist's critique of language. Drawing on Stallybrass and White, the article concludes that Bakhtin's thinking on language, like his conception of carnival, is constitutive of Western subjectivity. This displacement is helpful in illuminating the widely discussed aporia at the heart of Bakhtin's theory of language: the fact that dialogism is at one and the same time an oppositional discursive activity which subverts the objectifying tendencies of ruling discourse (monologism) and a theoretical description of all language.
5 citations
TL;DR: The authors examines the current debates on South African literature, isolating four symptoms which seem to indicate national self-assertion via the high road of literature: the pride taken in locally produced artefacts; an increasing cross-over and mingling of different languages which make any quests for purity of language a risky business, challenging control over dominant discursive formations; the attempt to find an authentic South African voice in literature; and, finally, a questioning of hitherto accepted critical traditions and boundaries.
Abstract: Summary Based upon brief comparisons with other literatures, the article examines the current debates on South African literature, isolating four symptoms which seem to indicate national self‐assertion via the high road of literature These are the pride taken in locally produced artefacts; an increasing “cross‐over” and mingling of different languages which make any quests for purity of language a risky business, challenging control over dominant discursive formations; the attempt to find an “authentic” South African voice in literature, and, finally, a questioning of hitherto accepted critical traditions and boundaries But although the intense focus upon the local seems both necessary and fruitful at this particular juncture in South African political history, the birthpangs of an emerging literature ought not to blind its practitioners into becoming parochial by cutting themselves off from the international debate
5 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, an attempt is made to illustrate the creative possibilities of basic narratological concepts and a reading of a short story is done to illustrate and test the theoretical argumentation.
Abstract: Summary In this article an attempt is made to illustrate the creative possibilities of basic narratological concepts. Narratology is generally regarded as a rather rigid approach to narrative texts because of the structuralist base of the discipline. On account of the fact that narratology does describe the most important narrative categories adequately, the point is made that the discipline is very useful in teaching a reading strategy for narrative texts to inexperienced students. The results of the narratological analysis of a text can, however, be interpreted in a number of ways, and this is where creativity in reading and interpretation can be very prominent. In conclusion a reading of a short story is done to illustrate and test the theoretical argumentation.
4 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the interdependence of the intratextual components of narrative texts is not taken into account in the translation of metaphorical expressions, the target text characters can become deviant mutants of the characters in the source text.
Abstract: Summary If the interdependence of the intratextual components of narrative texts is not taken into account in the translation of metaphorical expressions, the target text characters can become deviant mutants of the characters in the source text. This has important implications for the translated text as such and for the evaluation of the translated novel as a literary work of art.
4 citations
TL;DR: Zamora as mentioned in this paper presents the Apocalypse: Historical Vision in Contemporary U.S. and Latin American Fiction, Lois Parkinson Zamora 1989, Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.
Abstract: Writing the Apocalypse: Historical Vision in Contemporary U.S. and Latin American Fiction, Lois Parkinson Zamora 1989, Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press
3 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors show how literary theory has been entangled in the process of canon formation, with particular reference to the Expressionism or Realism Debate in Germany in the 1930's.
Abstract: Summary This article shows how literary theory has been entangled in the process of canon formation, with particular reference to the Expressionism or Realism Debate in Germany in the 1930's. Certain positions expounded in this debate have found their way into the manifestoes of cultural activisms in South Africa in the 1980's. They rely on populist tactics which are seen to be necessitated by both anti‐fascist and anti‐imperialist struggles. This article problematises the equation of apartheid and fascism, and the assumption of a form of resistance common to both.
2 citations
TL;DR: In this article, it is argued that topology results from a rejection of legitimation by a Zero-2 logic, which is seen to underlie postmodernism, and that the basic principles of traditional fiction, such as the notions of mimesis and the possibility of self-sufficient assessment of meaning, are rejected.
Abstract: Summary In this article it is proposed that a dominant mode of postmodernism be typified as topological. It is argued that topology results from a rejection of legitimation by a Zero‐2 logic, which is seen to underlie postmodernism. In the case of fiction such a rejection implies that the basic principles of traditional fiction, that is, the notions of “mimesis” and the possibility of “self‐sufficient assessment of meaning” are rejected. As a result of such a rejection of “fixed points”, a relativistic shift occurs in modernism whereby the text becomes “floating”. This, in turn, leads to its topological transformation in postmodernism. It is a topology which is generated by the bioptemic system which is inherent to the process of the text. Topology can be explained with reference to the “Klein” form, since this model clearly shows how the topological nature of fiction should be sought in the transgression of borders. Deconstruction of the borders between fiction and reality results in the formation of the...
2 citations
TL;DR: In this article, a socio-historical and contextual approach is proposed for the study of South African women's poetry. But the model is not suitable for the analysis of poetry written by women in this country.
Abstract: Summary In this article I will attempt to provide a theoretical model for the feminist study of South African women's poetry. I argue for the use of a socio‐historical and contextual approach, one that accepts the “presence” of women as poets and acknowledges their voices and their attempts to define themselves as women and as writers. Using the preliminary work of Anglo‐American theorists as a point of reference, I attempt to justify the validity of my model of reading as a means of analysing the poetry written by women in this country.
2 citations
TL;DR: The authors argue that literature, like linguistics, shares no organically necessary property with the environment that creates and consumes it, and that literature can legitimately be called the paradigm of semiology.
Abstract: Summary Post‐structuralist thought queries the gesture by which linguistics‐based semiology equates elements of language with linguisticity itself. Instead of conceiving literature as a mere linguistic transformation whose lack of “worldly” contents marks it off as a “special” use of language, Paul de Man and Jacques Derrida employ this particular characteristic to assess the “truths” of language. Incontestable as it is that no other discourse form is as “baseless” and incapable of directing material life as literature, that very factor ties its destiny to language and vice‐versa. Literature, like linguistics, shares no organically necessary property with the environment that creates and consumes it. For unabashedly announcing the formality of all signs, literature can legitimately aspire to being called the paradigm of semiology.
TL;DR: The authors argue that the realism that Tallis offers as an adjunct to his reading of Saussure is seriously flawed and propose a Wittgensteinan view of the relationship between language and the world which, instead of setting out from the assumption that there is a gap between word and world which needs to be bridged, sees the objects of language as samples, or aspects of the world that are appropriated in historically and culturally variable ways as rules for the use of words.
Abstract: Summary This article is a critical review of the major argument in favour of realism and the concomitant critique of poststructuralism in Raymond Tallis's recent book, Not Saussure: A Critique of Post‐Saussurean Literary Theory. While it is generally sympathetic to Tallis's aim to “refute once and for all the belief that there are logico‐linguistic grounds for denying the possibility of a valid realistic fiction”, it argues both that Tallis overlooks the central weakness of Saussurean theory and that the realism that he offers as an adjunct to his reading of Saussure is seriously flawed. It offers instead a Wittgensteinean view of the relationship between language and the world which, instead of setting out from the assumption that there is a gap between word and world which needs to be bridged, sees the “objects” of language as samples, or aspects of the world that are appropriated in historically and culturally variable ways as rules for the use of words. For Wittgenstein there is no gap between word an...
TL;DR: In this article, the deconstructive negotiation of a text is used and disburdened in the following exploration of Ndebele's "The Prophetess" from his short story cycle Fools.
Abstract: Summary The deconstructive negotiation of a text is, by turns, utilised and disburdened in the following exploration of Ndebele's “The Prophetess” from his short story cycle Fools. In the course of this dissemination an attempt is made to illustrate how texts may be enriched by directing enquiry and critique at end‐points rather than to end‐points.
TL;DR: In this article, the authors argue that the blank is most informative when it de-automatizes the information communicated within the stanzas, in other words, when inter-stanzaic space implies the presence of narrative and/or dramatic manifestations for the enhancement of poetic principle.
Abstract: Summary In an effort to explain the function and meaning of stanzaic segmentation in poetry, the following hypothesis is argued on the basis of semiotic structuralism and empirically supported by way of references to Old Testament literature, German Expressionist poetry, Baudelaire, Wordsworth, Keats, Sotho praise‐poems and Medieval debate poetry: If inter‐stanzaic space functions as blank, then the blank is most informative when it de‐automatizes the information communicated within the stanzas, in other words, when inter‐stanzaic space implies the presence of narrative and/or dramatic manifestations for the enhancement of the poetic principle. Methodological directives for a standardized analysis of the function and meaning of stanzaic segmentation are logically inferred from the hypothesis and conclude the research report.
TL;DR: In this article, explicit and implicit intertexts (by means of the title and markers in the poem) are investigated in the article, in that way commenting on his contemporary historical literature.
Abstract: Summary Eugene Marais proposes in his “Voorwoord” to A.G. Visser's Gedigte (1925) that the ultimate norm for evaluating literature is whether the reader is compelled to return to the text as result of the pleasure he derives from it. After fluctuating criticism, Visser is credited in the late seventies for his humoristic poetry and his intricate intellectual play of reference and transposition. The poem “Lotos‐land” is an example of this early intertextual dexterity to which contemporary literary theory can functionally be applied. Explicit and implicit intertexts (by means of the title and markers in the poem) are investigated in the article. Visser intentionally presents his poem as “unhistorical”, in that way commenting on his contemporary historical literature. Two Dutch idioms and a painting of Bruegel also contribute to the complex setting Visser creates by a permutation of texts. The poem is moreover a “parent” text to later poems in which other authors are brought to mind explicitly or by implication.
TL;DR: In this article, the authors argue for an extension of Mouton's findings on the semiotics of the entire theatre experience (as opposed to what happens on the stage or between the on-stage creation and the spectator) to the relation of theatre to the life of which it is an imitation.
Abstract: Summary Marisa Mouton's book on a semiotic approach to the theory of drama and theatre, Dramateorie vandag (Dramatic Theory Today, 1989), is a welcome addition to this field in Afrikaans. It meets the first requirement Carlson (1990: xii) sets for future investigations of the semiotics of theatre and drama, i.e. an investigation of the contribution of the audience, and hence the influence of the performance, on dramatic and theatrical communication. Following Carlson (1990: xiii) this article argues for an extension of Mouton's findings on “the semiotics of the entire theatre experience (as opposed to what happens on the stage or between the on‐stage creation and the spectator)”. The third argument is in favour of a contribution to the semiotics of “the relation of theatre to the life of which it is an imitation” (Carlson 1990: xiv). This article consequently argues for the contribution of a theory of possible worlds to the semiotics of theatre and drama. Dramateorie vandag: die bydrae van die drama‐ en t...
TL;DR: The authors explored the methodological possibilities implied by Shusterman's analysis of the logical status of value judgments by an examination of the evaluative strategies employed by Watson and Oliphant in their respective reviews of SA in Poetry/SA in Poesie.
Abstract: Summary The recent polemic sparked off by the debate between Stephen Watson and Andries Oliphant in The Weekly Mail (April‐May 1989) underscores the fact that the contingency of value judgments coupled with the complexities of a diverse number of critical theories make it imperative to develop a methodology which will prevent a breakdown in critical discourse and enable the literary historian to identify, classify and evaluate the subjective value judgments at a particular point in time from a sound philosophical basis. This paper explores the methodological possibilities implied by Shusterman's analysis of the logical status of value judgments by an examination of the evaluative strategies employed by Watson and Oliphant in their respective reviews of SA in Poetry/SA in Poesie.
TL;DR: In this article, C. Barnard's short story "Vrydag" is analyzed to illustrate how narratology may be of use in the teaching situation to identify and describe the required reading strategy for the stream-of-consciousness story.
Abstract: Summary C. Barnard's short story “Vrydag” is analysed in this article to illustrate how narratology may be of use in the teaching situation to identify and describe the required reading strategy for the stream‐of‐consciousness story.
TL;DR: In this article, an allegorical reading of Antjie Krog's Lady Anne is attempted, and the allegorical point-for-point similarities between the characters include thematic (feminism and revolution), structural (both characters have concluding poems) and narratological (a story of concern about injustice supplanted by despair about art's function).
Abstract: Summary In this article an “allegorical” reading of Antjie Krog's Lady Anne is attempted. The allegorical point‐for‐point similarities between Antjie and Anne include thematic (feminism and revolution), structural (both characters have concluding poems) and narratological (a “story” of concern about injustice supplanted by despair about art's function) resemblances. This allegorical process could be explained as the succession of abstract ideas; the portrayal of these ideas in a text; the retrieval of these ideas by the reader and then the potential application of these ideas in the life of the reader. This model of interpretation as allegorical provides an inadequate explanation of especially the metafictional elements of Lady Anne and therefore postmodernist critics such as De Man (allegory as the incomprehensible nature of the text); Jameson (the inevitable use of known explanatory models in the interpretation of texts) and Derrida (the term “differance” enables a synthesis of the viewpoints of De Man ...