Negotiating Exclusion: Female Heterotopic Spaces and Survival in Valerie Tagwira’s The Uncertainty of Hope (2006)

Abstract

The analysis of literary works written by African women has largely utilised Eurocentric frameworks and traditional approaches to interpret them. For this reason, this article adopts a relatively new approach, geocriticism (the study of space—Westphal 2011), to focus on Valerie Tagwira’s novel, The Uncertainty of Hope (2006). The article challenges and reconsiders biases that may have been engendered by traditional ideological readings of African women’s texts. Thus, this study aims to offer an alternative reading of the spaces of the Zimbabwean woman. Consequently, by deploying geocriticism instead of the traditional thematic approaches to examining gender, the study of space eliminates some of the ideological predispositions concerning women. It also uncovers previously hidden dimensions in earlier scholarship. A textual analysis of the selected text is done to demonstrate how geocriticism deconstructs the physical and moral boundaries of space, reconstituting new ones. In this way, women recreate their spaces when they confront exclusion, which become safety zones of survival and agency, previously not recognised. This is consistent with Africana Womanism, a gender theory also used in this study, which underlines the flexibility and family-centeredness of women. This has a direct bearing on how they negotiate space. We selected The Uncertainty of Hope because it imaginatively captures the post-2000 hyperinflationary environment in Zimbabwe, HIV and AIDS, and the effects of Operation Murambatsvina. This period, therefore, presents a rich repertoire of spaces that women navigate and hence constitutes multiple interpretations regarding their identities. The study reveals that, contrary to mainstream debate that women are hapless victims of male oppression, they create their own heterotopic spaces for survival and agency.