Doubling the Point: Essays and Interviews

TL;DR: Beckett's point of view in "The Comedy of Point of View in Beckett's Murphy" (1970) and "The Temptations of Style" (1973).

Abstract: * Author's Note * Editor's Introduction Beckett * Interview * The Comedy of Point of View in Beckett's Murphy (1970) * The Manuscript Revisions of Beckett's Watt (1972) * Samuel Beckett and the Temptations of Style (1973) * Remembering Texas (1984) The Poetics of Reciprocity * Interview

TL;DR: For instance, this paper argued that the essential gesture of the white South African writer can be fulfilled only in the integrity Chekhov demanded: 'to describe a situation so truthfully [...] that the reader can no longer evade it' (248-50).

Abstract: It seems logical to assume that substantive changes in history should lead to shifts in emphasis in the preoccupations of politically engaged literature. After all, such literature usually erects history as an a priori structure. For this reason forms of social realism have usually been favored by politically engaged fiction writers in the South African context. During the apartheid period, Nadine Gordimer treated with suspicion the \"disestablishment from the temporal\" that results from the modernist attempt to \"transform the world by style\"; she concluded that the \"essential gesture\" of the white South African writer \"can be fulfilled only in the integrity Chekhov demanded: 'to describe a situation so truthfully [. . .] that the reader can no longer evade it'\" (248–50). A body of writing whose understanding of the relation between text and history is informed by a correspondence theory of truth must of necessity alter

TL;DR: In early March 1998 Nelson Mandela met with cabinet ministers and agricultural leaders to discuss the results of an investigation into a series of murders of white Afrikaans-speaking farmers.

Abstract: In early March 1998 Nelson Mandela met with cabinet ministers and agricultural leaders to discuss the results of an investigation into a series of murders of white Afrikaans-speaking farmers. Since the historic 1994 elections, more than 500 white farmers have been murdered in South Africa, 35 of them killed in the final two months of 1997 alone. Mandela had ordered the investigation in late 1997, when the frequency of the killings had led to speculations from across the political spectrum that the murders were in some way "politically motivated." Derek Hanekom, Minister of Agriculture and Land Affairs, emerged from the cabinet meeting and announced to reporters, "The overwhelming trend is pure criminality. [. . .] Of course, in certain isolated cases there are people with their own motives and own agendas" ("Crime"). Mandela made no public comment on the intelligence report, and it was not released to the public. At the height of the farm murders crisis in late 1997, Afrikaner farmers had claimed to be in a "war situation" with, as Transvaal farmers' organization leader Willie Lewies claimed, "losses of life comparable to the Vietnam and Yugoslavian conflicts" ("S. Africans to Set Up"). However overstated Lewies's analogy to genocidal military conflicts might seem, the South African Agricultural Union cited the statistic—impressive in

TL;DR: This paper argued that the deconstruction of the conventional metaphorics of speech and silence calls into view the irreducible textuality of the work of representation, which implies that questions about institutional positionality and academic authority should be kept squarely in sight when discussing the problems of representing the struggles and agency of marginalised social groups.

Abstract: Recent interest amongst critical human geographers in postcolonial theory has been framed by a concern for the relationship between ‘politics’ and ‘theory’. This paper addresses debates in the field of colonial discourse analysis in order to explore the connections between particular conceptions of language and particular models of politics to which oppositional academics consider themselves responsible. The rhetorical representation of empowerment and disempowerment through figures of ‘speech’ and ‘silence’ respectively is critically examined in order to expose the limits of this representation of power-relations. Through a reading of Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak’s account of the dilemmas of subaltern representation, contrasted with that of Benita Parry, and staged via an account of their different interpretations of the exemplary postcolonial fictions of J. M. Coetzee, it is argued that the deconstruction of the conventional metaphorics of speech and silence calls into view the irreducible textuality of the work of representation. This implies that questions about institutional positionality and academic authority be kept squarely in sight when discussing the problems of representing the struggles and agency of marginalised social groups. It is suggested that the continuing suspicion of literary and cultural theory amongst social scientists for being insufficiently ‘materialist’ and/or ‘political’ may serve to reproduce certain forms of institutionally sanctioned disciplinary authority.

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors discuss the postcolonial issues in performance and post-colonization issues in post-colonial literature, and present a glossary of critical terms for critical terms.

Abstract: Preface 1. Introduction: Situating the postcolonial 2. Postcolonial issues in performance 3. Alternative histories and writing back 4. Authorising the self: postcolonial autobiographical writing 5. Situating the self: landscape and place 6. Appropriating the word: language and voice 7. 'Narrating the nation': form and genre 8. Rewriting her story: nation and gender 9. Rewriting the nation: acknowledging economic and cultural diversity 10. Transnational and black British writing: colonising in reverse 11. Citizens of the world: reading postcolonial literature Glossary of critical terms Notes on main writers discussed Brief histories: Australia, The Caribbean, East Africa, India and Pakistan, Ireland, West Africa Bibliography.

TL;DR: In this article, the authors present a field survey on the history of ghost stories and the theatre, focusing on three main arguments about ghost stories: purpose, method, definitions, and major argument about telling ghost stories.

Abstract: ........................................................................................................................................... ii Acknowledgments ......................................................................................................................... iii Table of Contents .......................................................................................................................... iv List of Figures ................................................................................................................................. vi Preface ............................................................................................................................................ vii 1 Introduction: Speaking of Ghosts ........................................................................................... 1 1.1 Purpose, Method, Definitions ......................................................................................... 1 1.2 Talking Ghosts: On Ghost Stories and Criticism ....................................................... 26 2 How to Tell A Ghost Story .................................................................................................... 45 2.1 Field Survey: A Brief History of Ghost Stories and the Theatre ............................... 45 2.2 Major Argument: About Telling Ghost Stories .......................................................... 52 2.3 Speaking of Ghosts: Conor McPherson’s The Weir ................................................... 61 2.4 An Irish Gothic: Marina Carr’s By the Bog of Cats... ................................................. 76 2.5 Staging South African Photography and the Ghost of Sizwe Banzi ......................... 90 2.6 A Haunting Machine: Theatrical Technologies and Samuel Beckett’s Shades ..... 108 2.7 Haunting Oceans, Mourning Languages: J.M. Synge and Derek Walcott ............ 135 3 Witness to Ghosts ................................................................................................................. 155 3.1 Field Survey: Transnational Poetics and the Globalgothic ..................................... 155 3.2 Major Argument: Voice, Medium, Rhythm, and the Poetry of Dead Metaphors162 3.3 Eavan Boland and the Haunted Chorus .................................................................... 187 3.4 Breyten Breytenbach and the Afrikaans Gothic ....................................................... 209 3.5 Nohow On from Here: Samuel Beckett’s Worsening Writings .............................. 235 3.6 Scholia on a Case Study: Imagining the Zong ........................................................... 259