Telling otherwise : rewriting history, gender, and genre in Africa and the African diaspora

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dc.contributor.advisorWettlaufer, Alexandraen
dc.contributor.committeeMemberArroyo-Martinez, Jossiannaen
dc.contributor.committeeMemberHoad, Nevilleen
dc.contributor.committeeMemberLindfors, Bernthen
dc.contributor.committeeMemberWilks, Jenniferen
dc.creatorHilkovitz, Andrea Katherineen
dc.date.accessioned2011-10-14T17:06:40Zen
dc.date.accessioned2017-05-11T22:23:33Z
dc.date.available2011-10-14T17:06:40Zen
dc.date.available2017-05-11T22:23:33Z
dc.date.issued2011-08en
dc.date.submittedAugust 2011en
dc.date.updated2011-10-14T17:06:51Zen
dc.descriptiontexten
dc.description.abstract“Telling Otherwise: Rewriting History, Gender, and Genre in Africa and the African Diaspora” examines counter-discursive postcolonial rewritings. In my first chapter, “Re-Writing the Canon,” I examine two works that rewrite canonical texts from the European tradition, Jean Rhys’s retelling of the life of Jane Eyre’s Bertha in Wide Sargasso Sea and Maryse Condé’s relocation of Wuthering Heights to the Caribbean in La migration des coeurs. In this chapter, I contend that re-writing functions not only as a response, as a “writing back” to the canon, but as a creative appropriation of and critical engagement with the canonical text and its worldview. My second chapter, “Re-Storying the Past,” examines fictional works that rewrite events from the historical past. The works that I study in this chapter are Assia Djebar’s recuperation of Algerian women’s resistance to French colonization in L’amour, la fantasia and Edwidge Danticat’s efforts to reconstruct the 1937 massacre of Haitians under Trujillo in The Farming of Bones. In my third chapter, “Re-Voicing Slavery,” I take for my subject neo-slave narratives that build on and revise the slave narrative genre of the late eighteenth- through early twentieth- centuries. The two works that I examine in this chapter are Sherley Anne Williams’s Dessa Rose and the poem sequence Zong! by M. NourbeSe Philip, based on the 1781 murder of Africans aboard the slave ship Zong. My fourth chapter, “Re-Membering Gender,” examines texts that foreground the processes of re-writing and re-telling, both thematically and structurally, so as to draw attention to the ways in which discourses and identities are constructed. In their attempts to counter masculinist discourses, these works seek to re-inscribe gender into these discourses, a process of re-membering that engenders a radical deconstruction of fixed notions of identity. The works that I read in this chapter include Daniel Maximin’s L’Isolé soleil, which privileges the feminine and the multiple in opposition to patriarchal notions of single origins and authoritative narrative voices and Maryse Condé’s Traversée de la Mangrove, which rewrites Patrick Chamoiseau’s novel Solibo Magnifique so as to critique the exclusive nature of Caribbean identity in his notion of créolité.en
dc.description.departmentComparative Literatureen
dc.format.mimetypeapplication/pdfen
dc.identifier.slug2152/ETD-UT-2011-08-3995en
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/2152/ETD-UT-2011-08-3995en
dc.language.isoengen
dc.subjectRewritingen
dc.subjectTelling otherwiseen
dc.subjectCounter-discourseen
dc.subjectPostcolonial intertextualityen
dc.subjectJean Rhysen
dc.subjectWide Sargasso Seaen
dc.subjectMaryse Condéen
dc.subjectLa migration des coeursen
dc.subjectAssia Djebaren
dc.subjectL’amour, la fantasiaen
dc.subjectEdwidge Danticaten
dc.subjectThe Farming of Bonesen
dc.subjectSherley Anne Williamsen
dc.subjectDessa Roseen
dc.subjectM. NourbeSe Philipen
dc.subjectZong!en
dc.subjectDaniel Maximinen
dc.subjectL’Isolé soleilen
dc.subjectPatrick Chamoiseauen
dc.subjectSolibo Magnifiqueen
dc.subjectTraversée de la Mangroveen
dc.titleTelling otherwise : rewriting history, gender, and genre in Africa and the African diasporaen
dc.type.genrethesisen

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