...Fragments of Sorrows: Mothertongue Transforming Spaces Occupied by Women in South Africa through Theatre This paper sets out to explore how processes of theatre making employed by The Mothertongue project, provide spaces for women to remap their personal narratives. Mothertongue works from the premise that the development and subsequent performance of stories in theatrical processes affords women the opportunity to re-write and remap their personal narratives and in so doing insert their voices into the landscape of South African Theatre. In an attempt to redress the gender imbalances and androcentricism prevalent in post-apartheid theatre, this paper speaks to the relationship between theatre, liminality and communitas. I am interested in unpacking how collaborative processes of theatre-making provide spaces for women to remap their personal narratives. Remapping in this instance refers to processes of transforming lived experience through story. I address how, through engaging in ritual activities that are central to the stories performed, actors, audiences and the owners of the source stories are invited to physically participate in remapping and transforming lived experience. Linked to this is the choice of form(s) and how this affects or impacts on the performed stories as well as on the construction of performed rituals and ultimately on the processes of remapping personal narratives. I focus specifically on Mothertongue’s 2004 production, Uhambo: pieces of a dream...
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...“Pro- slavery writers recognized that The Interesting Narrative was ‘calculated to increase the odium against the West-India planters’ at the time when Parliament was actively considering bills to abolish the slave trade,” states Carretta. This alone is a reason to discount the argument. If the argument is raised by a desperate and partial source, it cannot be regarded as legitimate. The pro-slavery writers were clearly fearful of the Parliament’s coming decision to abolish the slave trade. Consequently, they franticly flailed for a counter argument and settled on this heart wrenching and popular story to soften their cruelty in the eyes of the...
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...CHAPTER ONE METHODOLOGY, THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK AND LITERATURE REVIEW This chapter sets out to examine the methods used in this study, the importance of methodology in research and it also, examines the types of theories necessary for the study. METHODOLOGY This refers to the theoretical approach(es) employed in the work. It is the systematic study method that are, can be, or have been applied within a discipline. Methodology here refers to both methods of data collection and method of data analyses. Field work is the very first step to come up with this work. The method use in collecting data in this study are based on interviews and personal participation in the performance which serves as primary sources.in order to collect data, the researcher acted as part of the audience meanwhile, the performance was recorded without the performers knowledge because it would have been difficult for materials to be collected through other methods such as dialogue, for example. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK Theoretical framework refers to the concept that are related to the research topic to determine the statistical relationship the paper will measure. The approach that will suit this topic is the sociological approach. In the sociology of literature, Diana Laurenson and Swing Wood argue that: Essentially the scientific objective study of man, society, the study of social processes, seek to answer the question of how society is possible, how it works, why it persists. Through a rigorous...
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...caused uproar back in 1789. The British readers were captivated by his personal experience of being enslaved at age 11, kidnapped from Nigeria, and brought into slavery of a New World in a terror-filled ship. Equiano's tale is viewed as an authoritative description of the villainous Middle Passage, one of the very first narratives from a slave, a story that gave the hatchling abolitionist movement a buzzing moral influence; except it may not be exact. Therein lays the mystery: Because if the gentleman who penned "The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavas Vassa, the African" was not born in Africa, but rather born into slavery in South Carolina -- as Vincent Carretta suggests -- then who was he? Where did he learn to speak fluent Igbo? And how did he obtain such agonizing details about life aboard an 18th-century slave vessel? The air soon became unfit for respiration, from a variety of loathsome smells, and brought on a sickness among the slaves, of which many died, thus falling victims to the improvident avarice, as I may call it, of their purchasers. This wretched situation was again aggravated by the galling of the chains. . . . The shrieks of the women, and the groans of the dying, rendered the whole a scene of horror almost inconceivable. (Equiano, 1789) In that lies the controversy: Carretta's findings, detailed in his biography of Equiano, have ignited a blaze in academic life, for the most part among those who have extensively considered Equiano...
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...produce their own historians, the story of the hunt will glorify only the hunter.” Chinua Achebe, Home and Exile Literature is the expression of life in words of truth and beauty.It encompasses all genres of literature-poetry,prose,fiction,drama,philosophy,history etc.Among them,fiction is any narrative,whether in prose or verse,which is invented instead of being an account of events that actually happened. The voice of Africa in the world of letters tries to emancipate Africa from its literary stereotype.Africa is no longer a gloomy phenomenon,a dark continent.Chinua Achebe, the major exponent of the modern African novel,is greatly concerned with the two realities of social man –his individual and group identity,the legacy of colonialism, and the shift in the system of values of life leading to rampant corruption- moral and monetary. He is also concerned with the use of English as the medium of expression of African experience defining the relevance of colonial and post-colonial experience to the present .Achebe’s novels are dialectic tranformation of experience, a new way of looking at tradition to create a different order of reality through universalizing imagination.Though he has followed the established tradition of novel writing in English, Achebe has put few things ‘African’ and has successfully employed certain narrative techniques of narration to give authenticity and African flavour to his novels in order to attract the native audience and overseas readers as well...
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...Olaudah Equiano was a man that went through hell and back. Throughout his life time he experienced slavery, pain, and loneliness. Equiano wrote of this amazing and detailed journey and shared the things he saw and experienced throughout his life. In this essay I will be talking about his journey in two ways. The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, he explains his detailed experience and in his biography it explains less details about Equiano but it goes into detail when it comes to location, facts, and slave work force. In my essay I will compare and contrast the differences and similarities between the interesting narrative of Olaudah Equiano and his biography. I will prove that Equiano interesting narrative is true based off the comparison of his biography....
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...through Marlow’s personal encounters upon his expeditions in Africa. Seen through the late nineteenth-century European eyes, the narrator creates images of violent imperial suppression and presents the corrupt colonial civilization that occurs in Africa; effectively creating a screen for the dehumanization and philosophical challenges of the pilgrims. Compared to Tess d’Urbervilles, Thomas Hardy wrote in third person to establish...
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...the goal of true education.” In life, not everyone is born with a silver spoon in his or her mouth. Everyone in my family has giving up on me because they said that there is nothing good that can come out of me. As I entered Montgomery College, I told myself that I will make something good out of myself. I have managed to complete ESL classes, which many people doubted. I feel that through my experience of this English course, I have gained the knowledge and confidence it takes to step out into the real world. My writing strength is the ability to use rhetorical strategies in a narrative essay to develop an academic prompt, but I still need to polish on how to demonstrate the facilities like improve my tone, how to persuade my reader, and how to organize...
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...After reading an excerpt from “The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass,” I personally learned the cruelty of enslavers, how Douglass felt about slavery, and why he wished to be an animal. Frederick Douglass was born into slavery in 1818, and he wrote a book called “The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass,” which was written about his unutterable experiences as a slave. I learned on a personal account of how he felt, and the thoughts soaring through his mind. In the excerpt, Douglass recalled reading was important to him. Douglass learned how to read from Auld’s wife (Hugh Auld was his slaveowner), but said that reading would make him unfit for slavery. According to Douglass, his documents “gave tongue to interesting thoughts of my own...
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...[Indiana University Libraries] Date: 24 February 2016, At: 16:43 Journal of Postcolonial Writing Vol. 46, No. 1, February 2010, 65–75 “He does not understand our customs”: Narrating orality and empire in Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart Jarica Linn Watts* University of Utah, Salt Lake City, USA Downloaded by [Indiana University Libraries] at 16:43 24 February 2016 jarica.watts@utah.edu Jarica 0 100000February 46 2010 &Article OriginalofFrancis 1744-9855 (print)/1744-9863 JournalandPostcolonial 10.1080/17449850903478189(online) RJPW_A_448194.sgm TaylorLinnWatts 2010 Writing Francis This article delineates different strains of Achebe’s narrative technique in Things Fall Apart, arguing that earlier critics have failed to account fully for two fundamental principles in Achebe’s narrative: the myriad phrases that are repeated throughout the first part of the work; and the formative shift, the poetic volta, that takes place between parts one and two of the novel. Drawing on Achebe’s assertion that “anyone seeking an...
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... Ryan Forde 11/0807/0858 The story being reviewed is titled “The Danger of a Single Story”; it is based on the perception that the media, journalists and story tellers only allow viewers and readers to see and read one side of the story. Chimamanda gave examples from her childhood, college life and her adult life to support her claims in the danger of telling a single or one side of a story. After viewing the video, as a journalist we learn that, what is depicted by the media and the press is what the viewers and readers will assume the individual’s life to only be and images portrayed by the media, is what people believe and conclude the situation to be. Secondly, aspiring journalist, storytellers and writers would believe that writing should be based on trend, this example was depicted in the video as Ms. Adichie explained her first set of stories were based on what she had read, therefore she believed that her writing should have taken the same pattern. These lessons can be applied to narrative journalism by creating a balance between the negative and positive side of the story but with Narrative journalism from the get-go, it requires extensive reporting so that the writer can pull from many different sources and anecdotes to develop the various layers of a story. It requires a kind of authorial confidence that comes across as an assured voice. And it requires time,...
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... * lit·er·a·ture n. 1. The body of written works of a language, period, or culture. 2. Imaginative or creative writing, especially of recognized artistic value:"Literature must be an analysis of experience and a synthesis of the findings into a unity" 3. The art or occupation of a literary writer. 4. The body of written work produced by scholars or researchers in a given field: medical literature. 5. Printed material: All the available collected literature on the subject. 6. Music: All the compositions of a certain kind or for a specific instrument or ensemble: the symphonic literature. Good literature has something important to say about life. If we take the time to read and understand the literature, it should help us to learn more about life. It may be that we do not agree with what the writer says. Nevertheless, the act of studying it will have made us think more carefully about the topic on which the writer focuses. The word genre in literature means a type or style of writing: * Fantasy * Romance * Science Fiction * Mystery * Horror * Historical Fiction...
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...AS Media Studies Assignment AS Media Studies Assignment Week 2, Task, page 15 (Genre) Description of Law and order In the criminal justice system, sexually based offenses such as rape, torture, pedophilia and child-abuse are dealt with in New York City, by a special unit of detectives of the police department known as the Special Victims Unit. These crimes are then passed on to the courtroom for prosecution. Description of Law and order In the criminal justice system, sexually based offenses such as rape, torture, pedophilia and child-abuse are dealt with in New York City, by a special unit of detectives of the police department known as the Special Victims Unit. These crimes are then passed on to the courtroom for prosecution. Law and order is a crime-based drama, with a mixture of ‘court-room’ and ‘detective’, TV series, mainly shown on channel five. By reading the description of the show, I immediately realised that this is a show that is based around the world of crime and how the crime is dealt with within the city of New York. It starts from finding who the criminal is and then we follow the story up to the prosecution in the court room. Words such as ‘courtroom, ‘rape’, ‘victim’, ‘detective’ immediately grabs the reader’s attention, giving us the impression of the type of genre this TV series is. The picture that accompanies the description also shows that the genre of this series is crime as the main detective is pulling out her police badge and is what the...
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...story “The Guilt” is written by Rayda Jacobs and it describes a confrontation between two people from different races. The story takes place in South Africa in a time which includes danger and ignorance. It is a story from the post-apartheid South Africa; the period has infected the story which was based on discrimination on the basis of race, gender, religion and color. Apartheid was also a formal system of the racial segregation which divided its people; in this instance is it the white contra the black people who make its focus. The themes in the story concern danger and guilt in a society which includes violence and crime of the inhabitants, especially the white people are in serious trouble if they are going outside or at the streets in Centrum. It is told in third-person narration which provides the greatest flexibility to the author and that is the reason why it is the most commonly used narrative mode in literature. The main character in the short story is Lillian Thurgwood who is a widow and through the hole story gives us the impression of an old and lonely woman against the world around her through different incidents of her life. The writer, Rayda Jacobs, has sketched jock (her late husband) as having a big influence on her life in a way that the strength of her courage and the way she overcomes the challenges of her life to the readers very clear. Lillian lives in security with her two dogs, Tembi, and Tor, who guard and give her the sense of being secured as if they...
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...black identity, and a strong faith and religion. Even though the words can be separated in the end they all come back together. There were many narratives written by fugitive slaves before the Civil War and by former slaves in the postbellum era. These narratives document slave life from the perspective of first-hand experience. The stories they tell are dark and ugly. The authors like Douglas and Jacobs reveal the struggles, sorrows, aspirations, and triumphs of slaves in absorbingly personal story-telling. Harriet Jacobs’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl was the first autobiography by a formerly enslaved African American woman. In it she describes her experience of the sexual exploitation that made slavery especially oppressive for black women. She also recounts her life in slavery in the context of family relationships with her escape and her struggle to free her children. Fredrick Douglas who wrote Narrative of the Life of Fredrick Douglas, an American Slave, Written by Himself depicts the grim life of slavery as well. He vividly describes the brutality that slaves endured, the meager rations they are allowed for nourishment, and even the murder of a slave. He also hits on the common practice of slave owners raping the enslaved women. Douglas also writes of his escape from slavery and fleeing north. This brutal harsh life was reality for a slave. Inequality of...
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