The Uncanny and Pathological Circumstances of Apartheid’s Incarceration in Bessie Head’s When Rain Clouds Gather (original) (raw)
Related papers
Bessie Head: Exiled and longing for equality, happiness and freedom in South Africa
2008
The aim of this essay is to present an analysis of the elements concerning some of Bessie Head’s literary works. Because of their valuable and complex background, Head’s novels are linked with her own life and her desire for equality, happiness and freedom in South Africa. RAMOS, Rodrigo Viriato — Bessie Head: Exiled and longing for equality, happiness and freedom in South Africa. University of Aveiro, 2008.
A Romance That Failed: Bessie Head and Black Nationalism in 1960s South Africa
Research in African Literatures, 2011
Bessie Head's decision to leave South Africa for Botswana in 1964 at age twenty-six has been read as the consequence of apartheid's oppressive racial politics that saw her racial ambiguity as particularly threatening. However, as her early South African work would suggest, Head, who would become Botswana's best-known writer, was ostracized as much by burgeoning black nationalist discourses as by apartheid's racism. This article argues that the existing anti-apartheid discourse in post-Sharpeville South Africa was inadequate in comprehending Head's identity as mixed-raced and as a woman, as evident in her juvenilia. In this early work, Head undertook the double task of dismantling not only the racist discourse of apartheid but also the racist/masculinist elements of the available anti-apartheid discourse of her time, in an attempt to accommodate her dissident identity as an anti-apartheid writer and activist—but not male; and not black and not white. Gender, alongside her race, is seen to play a crucial role in Head's inability to construct an anti-apartheid identity in an atmosphere of a sharpening racial dialectic.
Representations of slave subjectivity in post-apartheid fiction : the 'Sideways Glance
2013
Over the past three decades in South Africa, the documentation of slave history at the Cape Colony by historians has burgeoned. Congruently, interest in the history of slavery has increased in South African letters and culture. Here, literature is often employed in order to imaginatively represent the subjective view-point and experiences of slaves, as official records contained in historiography and the archive often exclude such interiority. This thesis is a study of the representations of slave subjectivity in two novels: Rayda Jacobs's The Slave Book (1998) and Unconfessed (2007) by Yvette Christiansë. Its task is to investigate and traverse the multitude of readings made possible in these literary representations, and then to challenge such readings by juxtaposing the representational strategies of the two novels.
“‘Friend of the Family’: Maids, Madams, and Domestic Cartographies of Power in South African Art.” M. Neelika Jayawardane Chapter 9 in Ties That Bind: Race and Politics of Friendship in South Africa. Shannon Walsh, Jon Soske, Eds. In South Africa, it is not uncommon to hear families say that their domestic worker is a ‘friend of the family’ or even ‘like family’. While some employers strive to pay their ‘domestics’ a fairer wage, involve themselves in financing their labourers’ healthcare costs and funding children’s educations, most domestics are paid the minimal accepted daily rate of R100. The obvious socio-economic power imbalances between the ‘madams’ and ‘maids’ of South Africa limit claims purporting to incorporate labourers into family structures. Yet, despite this, the language used to describe voluntary social contracts that determine the bonds of friendship, and the less voluntary – but obligatory – social contracts between family members is invoked in order to frame this unequal relationship. Jayawardane’s chapter in Ties That Bind: Race and Politics of Friendship in South Africa analyses how artists and photographers in contemporary South Africa attempt to question glib attempts at eliding such power imbalances and fears of the other in domestic landscapes. Specifically, Jayawardane focuses on examples of relationships between ‘madams’ and ‘maids’ in photography by Ernest Cole, Omar Badsha, Gisèle Wulfsohn, and George Hallett, and in Zanele Muholi’s recent work that draws attention to possible interracial, ‘queer’ desire between domestic workers and the madams for whom they work. The value of this approach – using photography as an entry point for analysing the South African institution of domestic labour – is significant, precisely because the dynamics of these relationships remain largely out of view and relatively unexamined in scholarly research. Each artist’s work works as an intervention into that silence. Through their photographic projects, the photographers – and we, the audience – become critical witnesses to the oppressive nature of how the apartheid system continues to function. The chapter takes into consideration the extent to which domestic workers signify in the South African landscape; it considers the intimacy of the relationship between domestic workers, domestic employers and their respective families, and how this type of labour, and the labourers who carry it out are – historically, and in the present – deeply inscribed with social meanings. The encounter between madams and maids – created, supported, and maintained by colonial and apartheid structures – provides rich material for analysing how unbearable social relations are made normative and acceptable.
Decolonizing female consciousness in Bessie Head'sA Question of Power
Journal of the African Literature Association, 2017
In A Question of Power, Bessie Head explores how South Africa's apartheid history has been transcribed upon female bodies. Head interrogates female madness as a vehicle to transverse and recollect the historical memories and personal stories of apartheid South Africa. In this essay, I explore the socio-cultural, racialized and gendered political stories that shape female identity during times of political transition. In so doing, I examine the dialectical interplay between good and evil within the borderlands of a world divided by race and gender. I proffer that Head's "soul evolution," as she refers to it, is intrinsically connected to the sexual dynamics of masculine power and the struggle for self-autonomy.
Decolonizing female consciousness in Bessie Head'sA Question of Power
Journal of the African Literature Association, 2017
In A Question of Power, Bessie Head explores how South Africa's apartheid history has been transcribed upon female bodies. Head interrogates female madness as a vehicle to transverse and recollect the historical memories and personal stories of apartheid South Africa. In this essay, I explore the socio-cultural, racialized and gendered political stories that shape female identity during times of political transition. In so doing, I examine the dialectical interplay between good and evil within the borderlands of a world divided by race and gender. I proffer that Head's "soul evolution," as she refers to it, is intrinsically connected to the sexual dynamics of masculine power and the struggle for self-autonomy.
Instances of Bessie Head's Distinctive Feminism, Womanism and Africanness in her Novels
Instances of Bessie Head's distinctive feminism, womanism and Africanness in her novels Bessie Head was one of the Drum writers of the 1950s. As critics such as Huma Ibrahim have indicated it was only after her death in 1986 that she was included in discussions on the Drum generation. The result of her prior exclusion has been the double marginalization of Head's literary contribution, as one of the overlooked black South African writers of the 1950s and the lack of critical acclaim of her as an individual author. For this reason, she is one of the black South African writers who should consciously be given prominence today. This article utilizes an analysis of Head's novels not attempted so far. It is difficult to interrogate Head's work fruitfully, unless questions are addressed to whether she approaches her imaginative writing as an Africanist, a feminist or just as a woman. It will be argued that her fiction highlights the plight of the socially marginalized in eccentric and seminal ways and that it bears the potential to enrich debates on Africanism, feminism and womanism. Conclusions on how the complexities of Head's psyche can be beneficially used to enrich a more judicious reading will be drawn from evidence gathered from her novels.
Liberated Woman in Bessie Head's When Rain Clouds Gather: A Critical Study
International Journal of Arts and Humanities, 2020
This paper attempts to explore women in the novel When Rain Clouds Gather by Bessie Head. When Rain Clouds Gather is about the liberation of women from the bondage of traditional society. The main liberator is Makhaya Maseko, who migrated from South Africa. Makhaya was also against the apartheid regime and he decided to start a new life in Botswana. Apart from Makhaya there was Mma-millipede who was also a migrant, Paul Sebina from the surrounding village, and Gilbert who was an immigrant from England.