Off-campus UMass Amherst users: To download dissertations, please use the following link to log into our proxy server with your UMass Amherst user name and password.
Non-UMass Amherst users, please click the view more button below to purchase a copy of this dissertation from Proquest.
(Some titles may also be available free of charge in our Open Access Dissertation Collection, so please check there first.)
Connecting the spheres: The home front and the public domain in Bessie Head's fiction
Abstract
This dissertation positions South African "colored" author Bessie Head as a political novelist. The dissertation also explores the nature of Head's art-form and content situating her achievements in the context of African traditions. The dissertation further highlights elements which distinguish Head as a political writer who both participates in and resists male-defined political discourse. Head's work appears to be an exploration of the possibility of defining "a new code of honour which all nations can abide by." This venture, which she seems to approach from an original angle in every text, leads her to embrace a redemptive kind of politics which is not readily recognizable as "political" writing because of its reliance on African spirituality. A Question of Power in particular, as this dissertation proposes, reveals what I have named the concept of consciousness-invasion, a notion which seems to be informed by African spirituality. Additionally, the thesis analyzes the critical reception accorded Head in the last two decades. It explains two discoveries: that, in general the attempts of Headian scholars to articulate the author's novelistic vision has yielded limited results because they have not seen her work as primarily political; that the view of Head's texts as political exposes the complexity of her canon as represented by her ability to simultaneously depict, with a fine balance, colonialism, racism, sexism, tribalism, and the self-interest which lies in every character who champions these oppression devices. In its redefinition of "political" writing the dissertation further argues that Head's novels exhibit the power dynamics of "macropolitics" in relation to those apparent in "micropolitics" and in "metapolitics". ("Macropolitics" and "micropolitics" are terms adopted from the work of linguist Robin Tolmach Lakoff while "metapolitics" is my own coinage.)
Subject Area
African literature|Comparative literature|Womens studies|South African Studies
Recommended Citation
Matsikidze, Isabella Pupurai, "Connecting the spheres: The home front and the public domain in Bessie Head's fiction" (1991). Doctoral Dissertations Available from Proquest. AAI9207434.
https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations/AAI9207434