Journal of Literary Studies

Robotic Narrative, Mindreading and Kazuo Ishiguro’s Klara and the Sun

Guanghui Shang — Tue, 13 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Bringing into dialogue the theory of mindreading reformulated within cognitive narratology, this article offers an analysis of Kazuo Ishiguro’s Klara and the Sun (2021). It argues that Ishiguro extends this theory beyond human minds to nonhuman minds and human-machine bonds to explore human minds as human essence. By examining an artificial-intelligence (AI) character-narrator’s struggle to read human minds through observation, this study draws two conclusions. Firstly, machines cannot comprehend entire human minds due to their complexity and variability. A mind encompasses not only an individual’s own intricate thoughts and emotions but also others’ diverse feelings about this individual. Secondly, both humans and machines engage in one-sided mindreading without eliciting reciprocal affective responses. This suggests that the limitations of robotic mindreading, coupled with human anthropocentrism, prevent the establishment of true human-machine intersubjectivity. By illustrating machines’ incapability to possess human minds through robotic narrative, Ishiguro offers a new perspective on the theory of mindreading, asserting the irreplaceable nature of human minds in the age of AI to prompt a reflection on the uniqueness of human minds, a realm that machines cannot replicate or transfer.

Unveiling Jane Eyre: Space Escape and the Construction of Subjectivity through a Foucauldian Lens

Zhixing Nie, Hardev Kaur, Mani Mangai — Fri, 31 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000

This paper reexamines Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre through a Foucauldian lens, focusing on how traditional societal structures and the rise of capitalism impact women in 19th-century Britain, as observed by literary critic Sandra M. Gilbert and Gayatri C. Spivak. It analyses Jane’s journey through oppressive environments such as Gateshead Hall, Lowood School, Thornfield Hall, and Marsh End, culminating in her retreat to Ferndean Manor. These settings are interpreted as sites of power that impose disciplinary measures on Jane, both physically and mentally, with windows symbolising possible escape routes. The study argues that Jane represents a female rebel challenging patriarchal constraints and seeking personal freedom and equality. Despite her attempts to transcend societal and economic confines, her ultimate settlement at Ferndean Manor highlights the persistent influence of the old societal order, illustrating the novel’s realism and the complex, inescapable nature of reality. This interpretation enriches the ongoing scholarly discussion about Jane Eyre in light of its relevance to discussions of gender, power dynamics, and societal change.

“I Felt Misunderstood by the World”: The Interplay of Fame, Adversity, and Identity in Bonnie (Mbuli) Henna’s Autobiography Eyebags & Dimples

Nonki Motahane, Oliver Nyambi — Fri, 31 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Bonnie (Mbuli) Henna’s autobiography, Eyebags & Dimples (2012), navigates the intricate and multifaceted interplay between fame, adversity, and identity in a uniquely South African post-colonial context. Through an ‘interested’ (re)memorialisation of her journey of becoming a black female celebrity, Henna unveils the complexities of becoming and being a celebrity in a transitioning society marked by pervasive historical legacies of institutionalised disadvantage, shifting notions of gender, and agency. Focusing on what is remembered and how it is remembered for specific aesthetic and perspectival effects, this article examines Henna’s identity project in Eyebags & Dimples. It explores how autobiographical memory in the text becomes, for Henna, a technology of the self she implements to grapple with profound internal struggles inhabiting her (celebrity) identity. Deploying theories of self-writing and memory, the article centres on Henna’s portrayal of adversity – its past location in the colonial home and township and its persistence in family relations – to understand the nature of memory-assisted self-(re)identification processes. The article argues that adversity emerges in Eyebags & Dimples as a transformative force that allows Henna to inscribe history, race, mental health, and family onto her consciousness of being famous. Within this context, Henna’s celebrity identity is completed as re-formed through the narrative stabilisation of the tension between her public fame and personal struggles.

Problems in Philosophy of Literature

Paolo Pitari — Fri, 31 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000

This article discusses methodological inconsistencies affecting philosophy of literature today, especially in its analytical and perspectivist instantiations. In doing so, it raises questions on method that apply to the humanities in general. As a result of the inquiry, an invitation to return to ontology-metaphysics is formulated: too often, isolating specificities from their contexts can lead to arbitrary definitions and incomplete analyses. It might be necessary to adopt a wider outlook—one which seeks the foundations of knowledge and to explain a specific object in relation to its widest possible context—to explain many of the literary objects we want to understand.

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: Maternal Ambivalence in Avni Doshi’s Burnt Sugar

Haritha Vijayakumaran, Marx T — Tue, 25 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Scholars and philosophers of motherhood studies have continuously highlighted the contradictions in the dominant cultural ideologies of motherhood and the lived experiences of mothers. While the ideologies define the mother as selfless, unconditional, and unequivocal in her love for her children, the actual experience, psychological and sociocultural studies reveal, is often permeated with negative, violent, and conflicting emotions towards children, known as maternal ambivalence. In India, where the idealisation blatantly spills over to deification, voicing such feelings becomes sacrilegious. This paper attempts to study how the novel Burnt Sugar (2020) by Avni Doshi dares to speak the “unspeakable” and demonstrates maternal ambivalence as resulting from a combination of psychological, social, and cultural factors. The analysis looks at how the text negotiates the interspace between daughter-centricity and matrifocality in women’s writing by giving voice to ambivalences on both sides of the mother’s experience—of mothering and being mothered. Ultimately, this study investigates the manner in which these feelings, which are not acknowledged within cultural conceptions of the mother, result in ambivalence and trauma across generations.

Colonial Conflict and Cultural Symbolism in Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o’s The River Between

Sapanpreet Kaur — Tue, 06 Aug 2024 00:00:00 +0000

The River Between by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o stands as a pivotal piece in African literature, probing into the intricacies of colonialism, cultural identity, and resistance in colonial Kenya. This article aims to offer a thorough literary-symbolic analysis of Ngũgĩ’s novel, particularly its portrayal of these themes. It focuses on the central symbols and characters, especially the river dividing the Gikuyu community, which represents the conflict between tradition and modernity. The river is used as a significant metaphor for the ideological and cultural rifts within the community. It symbolises both the physical and metaphorical separation between Kameno and Makuyu ridges, encapsulating the struggle to balance indigenous beliefs with colonial influences. The characters Waiyaki and Nyambura are analysed as representations of this tension, highlighting the personal and societal conflicts encountered while navigating between tradition and progress. Additionally, the circumcision ritual is discussed as a vital symbol of Gikuyu cultural identity and its role in the broader conflict between traditionalists and advocates of Westernisation. Through meticulous textual analysis and historical context, the article elucidates Ngũgĩ’s strategic use of language and symbolism to critique colonialism and celebrate the resilience of indigenous cultures. Thus, by integrating literary analysis with historical insights, the paper achieves a nuanced understanding of the novel’s themes, demonstrating how The River Between invites reflection on the complexities of cultural identity and resistance in the face of colonial oppression.

Dystopian Futures and Posthuman Realities

Bikrambir Singh Dhillon, Diksha Sharma — Fri, 30 Aug 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Lauren Beukes’s Moxyland is a dystopian science fiction novel set in a near-future Cape Town, South Africa, which delves into the complex interplay between posthuman biopolitics, technology, authority, and the human body. This article examined the posthuman dimension through the lens of biopolitics. The article depicts the oppressive nature of pervasive surveillance and corporate control informed by the apartheid past, wherein four characters become entrapped in a society governed by these forces. Moreover, it demonstrates how the bodily integration of the regulatory technology derives from the racial idea of Western personhood, which intensifies the subjugation by altering subjects into posthuman entities. By adopting the Foucauldian theory of biopolitics as an analytical framework, this study traces the pivotal role played by biopolitics in the transformation of individuals into posthumans. The amalgamation of surveillance technologies and bioengineered enhancements leads to the commodification and perpetual manipulation of the subject, serving to uphold social order and preserve capitalist systems. The findings of this study shed light on the intensification of the control exerted by posthuman biopolitics, thereby contributing to the reconfiguration of the place of humans in academic discourse surrounding the intersection of power, technology, and the human body. By critically analysing the novel through the lens of Foucauldian theory, this article offers insights into the consequences of biopolitical control, underscoring the need for critical examination and discourse on the ethical implications of emergent posthuman societies in the Global South.

Fertile Ground

Reinhardt Fourie, Hannelie Marx Knoetze — Wed, 07 Aug 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Yellowstone is an American, contemporary Western primetime television series which has evolved into a cultural phenomenon. In this article, we critically read purposive samples from this popular cultural text through the prism of the plaasroman (Afrikaans farm novel), a seminal subgenre in Afrikaans literature. Through an analysis of a range of tropes, we identify similarities between these seemingly disparate genres in terms of the representation of the Boer and Frontier myth, ownership and belonging, centre-periphery dichotomies, and identity. The value of this analysis is two-fold: First, it lies in what such a comparative analysis reveals about the contemporary moment in both a local and transnational context. The resurgence of nostalgic yearning for a particular brand of patriarchal, heteronormative, conservative, rural simplicity in the narratives of Yellowstone is read against the background of farm, and land, as depicted in the plaasroman. This is relevant given that there is a similar propensity for nostalgia in certain South African contexts which takes the form of appropriations of the construct of the Afrikaner Boer imaginary and the concomitant utopian farm ideal. Second, and perhaps more importantly, we argue that analysing Yellowstone from the theoretical vantage point of the plaasroman, which originates from a minor language and literary system, inverts the ways in which Global North genre-lenses are usually used to read Global South genres. The research follows a controlled case comparison approach and, building on a deep description of the plaasroman, presents an analysis and interpretation of Yellowstone’s first season.

“There Is No Heaven to Go to, Because We’re in It Already. We’re in Hell, Too. They Coexist”

Chris Broodryk, Lelia Bester — Thu, 29 Aug 2024 00:00:00 +0000

This article explores the idea and articulation of place in Taylor Sheridan’s western series 1883 and Yellowstone. Through narrative and genre analysis, we critically compare these two series to demonstrate that genre semantics combine in a particular series-specific syntax to articulate place differently. Our thinking on place and adjacent concepts of trails and knots, inhabiting and occupation, as well as the differentiation between place as object and place as event, is primarily informed by the scholarship of Tim Ingold. We argue that these series’ specific and gendered articulations of place are meaningfully linked to each series’ protagonist, Elsa Dutton and John Dutton respectively. Finally, we suggest that the two series generate an additional western-genre binary that we base on Ingold’s work: occupation (particular to Yellowstone) vs. inhabiting (specifically in 1883). The Yellowstone character Beth Dutton notably reifies this binary. Yellowstone, here framed as post-heydey western, postwestern and post-Western, articulates place as nostalgic and static compared to 1883’s more expansionist and dynamic iteration of place.

My Silver Stripes and Other Poems, by Maletšema Ruth Emsley

Naomi Nkealah — Tue, 13 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Contemporary Literary and Cultural Theory: An Overview, by Jeffrey Di Leo

Alan Northover — Tue, 13 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Literary Gerontology Comes of Age: A Poetic Language of Ageing (2023), edited by Olga V. Lehmann and Oddgeir Synnes

Antoinette Pretorius — Tue, 16 Apr 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Book review

Refiguring in Black, by Tendayi Sithole

Athambile Masola — Tue, 07 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Refiguring in Black, by Tendayi Sithole

Polity Press. 2023. viii + 158.

ISBN: HB: 13: 978-1-5095-5071-1; PB: 13: 978-1-5095-5702-8

Athambile Masola

https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9550-7944

University of Cape Town

athambile.masola@uct.ac.za

Norman Ajari Book Review

Tendayi Sithole — Tue, 21 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Stiltes en stemme. ’n Huldiging van Karel Schoeman, deur Willie Burger (redakteur)

Renee Marais — Mon, 22 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0000

SA Akademie vir Wetenskap en Kuns/Naledi. pp 462.

ISBN: 978-1-991256-46-1

Geresenseer deur Renée Marais

Universiteit van Pretoria, Suid-Afrika

renee.marais@icloud.com

Veelkantige perspektief op die werk van ’n formidabele digter

Neil Cochrane — Mon, 22 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Ina Rousseau: Digter van die kwiksilwerwoord, deur Daniel Hugo (redakteur)

SA Akademie vir Wetenskap en Kuns/Naledi. pp. 337.

ISBN: 978-1-991256-44-7

Geresenseer deur Neil Cochrane

https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7630-0585

Universiteit van Suid-Afrika, Suid-Afrika

cochrn1@unisa.ac.za

Veelkantige perspektief op die werk van ’n formidabele digter