SciELO - Scientific Electronic Library Online

 
vol.50 número1The traces of Raka: on rewriting and canonization (Part 1)Manifestations of love in Langsaan die vuur (A. H. M. Scholtz) índice de autoresíndice de materiabúsqueda de artículos
Home Pagelista alfabética de revistas  

Servicios Personalizados

Articulo

Indicadores

Links relacionados

  • En proceso de indezaciónCitado por Google
  • En proceso de indezaciónSimilares en Google

Compartir


Tydskrif vir Letterkunde

versión On-line ISSN 2309-9070
versión impresa ISSN 0041-476X

Resumen

NWAKANMA, Obi. The Nation and the Subaltern in Yvonne Vera's Butterfly Burning. Tydskr. letterkd. [online]. 2013, vol.50, n.1, pp.36-46. ISSN 2309-9070.

Yvonne Vera's death in 2005 brought to a tragic close the career of one of Zimbabwe's, indeed Africa's, more engaging contemporary writers. But her powerful novel, Butterfly Burning continues to mirror an aspect of Vera's enduring concern: the place of African women in the context of power both within the colonial and the postcolonial moments. This image of the "woman in shadows" also resonates in the kernel of the subaltern subject in Spivak's essay, "Can the Subaltern Speak?" I draw from Spivak's canonical essay, but simply as a critique of its notion of the burdened subjectivity of the colonized reified in the widow's self-immolation, and seen as a problematic condition of representation-a form of impotent silence. In contrast, I suggest that Vera's Phephelaphi directs our attention by a votive suicide that speaks. This essay thus proceeds from a re-reading of the discourse of subalternity to situate Yvonne Vera's novel as an act primarily of resistance against the situation of patriarchal enclosure under colonialism.

Palabras clave : colonialism; melancholia; nation; patriarchy; subaltern.

        · texto en Inglés     · Inglés ( pdf )

 

Creative Commons License Todo el contenido de esta revista, excepto dónde está identificado, está bajo una Licencia Creative Commons