Pub Date : 2021-10-02DOI: 10.1080/02564718.2021.1997169
Susan M. Meyer
Summary Environmentally oriented literary and cultural studies, or ecocriticism for short, gained traction in the United States of America in the late 1980s. It took root in South Africa no earlier than the start of this century and has been applied to the field of Afrikaans literature only for about the last decade. At a conference in Nijmegen in 2010, the leading German ecocritic Axel Goodbody expressed concern about the slow spread of ecocriticism to non-Anglophone literatures. He highlighted the debilitating effect of the hegemony of English as medium of communication on practising ecocriticism. Goodbody warned that ecocritic debates would be poorer if they neglect the resources of theorising and critical analyses in non-English-speaking language and other contexts; and cultures that are not dominated by Anglophone traditions. Afrikaans has been part of the surge of different national voices and languages in this field. This article enters the debate about the expansion of ecocritical studies to include a more environmentally oriented world of research than the one dominated by Anglophone literatures for quite a few decades. It offers a critical-descriptive overview of how ecocritical studies centred on Afrikaans literary narratives add nuances to and amplify thematic matters of interest for ecocriticism in our country. I want to highlight the diverse and convincing contributions made by Afrikaans literary critics to “the understanding of the human relationship to the planet” (Joni Adamson & Scott Slovic, 2009: 6). These contributions are analysed in order to also evaluate the relevance of the various theoretical angles of approach in use, regarded within the broader theoretical discourse of ecocriticism.
以环境为导向的文学和文化研究，或简称生态批评，在20世纪80年代末在美国获得了关注。早在本世纪初，它就在南非生根发芽，直到最近十年才被应用到南非荷兰语文学领域。在2010年奈梅亨的一次会议上，德国生态评论家阿克塞尔·古德博迪(Axel Goodbody)对生态批评在非英语文学中的缓慢传播表示担忧。他强调了英语作为传播媒介的霸权对生态批评实践的削弱作用。古德博迪警告说，如果忽视在非英语语言和其他语境中进行理论化和批判性分析的资源，生态批评辩论将会更加贫乏;以及不受英语传统支配的文化。南非荷兰语是这一领域不同民族声音和语言激增的一部分。本文进入了关于生态批评研究扩展的辩论，以包括一个更以环境为导向的研究世界，而不是几十年来由英语文献主导的研究世界。它对以南非荷兰语文学叙事为中心的生态批评研究如何增加细微差别并扩大我国生态批评感兴趣的主题问题提供了批判性描述性概述。我想强调南非荷兰语文学评论家对“理解人类与地球的关系”(Joni Adamson & Scott Slovic, 2009: 6)做出的各种令人信服的贡献。对这些贡献进行分析，也是为了评估在生态批评的更广泛理论话语中使用的各种理论角度的相关性。
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Pub Date : 2021-10-02DOI: 10.1080/02564718.2021.1997165
H. Mohseni
Summary In Max Brook’s World War Z: An Oral History of Zombie War, the zombie world introduces moments of crisis in the governing system of world powers. Although some have read these moments as being capable of shattering conventional governance systems, the present study sides with the pessimist critics who believe that even in such apocalyptic set of circumstances, governing systems would always regulate their governance through utilising biopolitical strategies. The study divides the novel’s narrative progression into pre-apocalyptic, apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic phases so that governing bodies’ unique biopolitical strategies could be analysed in each phase. Through utilising Sherryl Vint’s conceptualisation on bio-politics and neo-liberalism, the study concludes that a series of militaristic, medical and economic miscalculations and stereotypes – which constitute the biopolitical phase of letting people die/making people live in the novel – regulate the governing bodies’ dominance in the pre-apocalyptic phase, while in the apocalyptic and zombie phase, spatial striation and its dependence on safe/unsafe and inside/outside binaries – that comprise the biopolitical phase of making people die/letting people live – become the survival key for the remaining governing bodies. In the post-apocalyptic world, a more tamed and calibrated version of conventional governance and their governing problems would be perpetuated, and no genuine change or acknowledgement of governance complicity in the transpiration of the apocalypse would emerge.
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Pub Date : 2021-10-02DOI: 10.1080/02564718.2021.1997163
Wendo Nabea
Summary Corruption is a vice that continues to afflict many countries in the world, those of Africa inclusive. It is inimical to the rule of law, honesty and integrity. Those involved in corruption subvert honesty while privileging depravity. In the final analysis, the moral fibre of a people becomes eroded as corruption takes the centre stage. Corruption has been a common subject matter in many literary works. Such works have depicted the ruling class and their henchmen involving themselves in the morass, eventually bringing nations economies to their knees. While literary critics have focused on the role of politicians and tycoons in corruption in literary works, little attention has been given to a number of minorities in the malfeasance. This article, which is hinged on African feminism as espoused by Gwendolyn Mikell and Oreyonke Oyewumi reports the findings of an investigation into the role of the prostitutes in the political economy of corruption in Tanzania’s Ben Mtobwa’s Pesa Zako Zinanuka (Your Money Stinks) and Dares Salaam Usiku (Dares Salaam by Night). The article argues that prostitution is hierarchical and asymmetrical in male-female relations. Male clients exert power and domination over the female prostitutes, and little wonder that harlots accrue any significant benefit from the trade. The article demonstrates that prostitutes are integral to corruption as they cavort with politicians and tycoons, where they are used as sidekicks, while in other instances they play the role of conduits in scams. They are also used as covert security operators for the corrupt, while playing stumbling blocks to the anticorruption crusaders. The article argues that this is evidence of the subordination of women as a section of menfolk thrive in corruption.
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Pub Date : 2021-10-02DOI: 10.1080/02564718.2021.1997162
A. Yiğit
Summary This article discusses the intriguing intersection of the literary work of prolific American writer, Henry James and the theories of German sociologist, Max Weber. In James’s oeuvre, The Ambassadors, stands out for depicting the impacts of ascending consumer capitalism in the early twentieth-century in a similar manner to Weber. Through the character representation, the novel symbolically engages with ideas of strict work discipline, moral devotion of Puritanism, and anti-Puritanical worldview. Furthermore, the embodiment of the controversy between supporters of the Puritanical order and the modern lax way of life are explored and represented in James’s work. Drawing on this relationship, this paper argues that The Ambassadors shares many of Weber’s arguments and ideas concerning the trinity of Puritanism, Protestantism, and capitalism, in spite of the fact that Weber’s magnum opus was published two years after The Ambassadors. I intend to bridge the works of Weber and James by exploring how James’s fiction forecasts Weberian approaches to Puritanism and the emergence of the capitalist spirit.
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Pub Date : 2021-10-02DOI: 10.1080/02564718.2021.1997170
H. Frankel
Summary This article discusses a selection of Holocaust poems by Abraham Sutzkever together with several written by David Fram as they epitomise how historical forces shape individual lives, highlighting how the differences in location and experience influenced their creative output. In order to do so, it locates the poets physically and aesthetically, and then compares several poems through in-depth analyses of their choice of metaphor and language. Affirming the continuing significance of Yiddish in the face of the almost-total annihilation of its speakers, the article also validates poetry as a form of testimony. Although both poets were born in the Russian Empire, by the time World War II broke out, Sutzkever became a witness-participant in the Vilna Ghetto, Lithuania, while Fram was in Johannesburg, South Africa. Sutzkever’s poems provide personal, instantaneous and localised focal points, and shed light on the immediate horrific reality, whereas Fram’s symbolic reflections wrestle with what happened in the killing fields and so illuminate a broader, more panoramic view. They also emphasise his empathy. By bearing witness, these poems provide an arena in which to address Jewish suffering and keep the Holocaust alive and visible. In resisting amnesia of what once was and is no more, the poets also memorialise the victims.
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