FACULTY OF ARTS
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Item Emerging trends in gender war and intimate partner violence(Department of French, Ekiti State University, Ado-Ekiti, Ekiti State, Nigeria, 2019-11) Olayinka, E. B.African feminist literary texts most often document that patterns of intimate partner violence are as a result of socio-culturally imposed structuration in the hierarchy of the sexes, due to cultural determinisms. Hence, it is in most cases assumed that only, women are victims of intimate male partner violence. There are growing concerns that men may just be as well victims of intimate female perpetrated violence. This research investigates roles of female body and sexuality in perpetrating violence against men for the purpose of subverting masculine power in two selected plays from Isaie Biton Koulibaly's anthology, Encore les femmes ... toujours les femmes! The concept of bodiliness is used to investigate the amount of power the female body is able to deploy in quest for female emancipation. The research finds that radical females in the selected short stories deploy powers resident in the body and non-normative sexuality practices to script a new trend of shift in the occurrence and performance of gender violence in intimate relationships. The subversion of hegemony and relegation of male characters is contingent upon the resoluteness of the female characters to use their bodies and sexuality as weapons to undo prescribed gender norms..Item Sexual Rights Advocacy in Selected African Fiction(2012) Okolo, I. G.Victimhood, in sexuality discourses in African literature, has, over time, become attached only to women while men have been presented as perpetrators. This perception has dominated feminist and masculinist studies, with little attention paid to men‘s victimisation and sexual rights advocacy. This study, therefore, investigates the representation of sexual rights in African fiction to ascertain African writers‘ responses to these rights. This is in an attempt to show that all individuals have sexual rights, can be victimised in given contexts which are capable of defining/redefining their Otherness, and can seek or gain liberation. The study applies aspects of the Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalytic theories which account for sexuality, otherness and the suffering generated in the clash of the self with the ―Big Other‖. Ten texts – Nawal El Saadawi‘s Woman at Point Zero, Two Women in One, She Has No Place in Paradise and God Dies by the Nile, Calixthe Beyala‘s Your Name Shall Be Tanga, Diane Case‘s Toasted Penis and Cheese, Yvonne Vera‘s Without a Name, J.M. Coetzee‘s Disgrace, Chris Abani‘s Becoming Abigail and Jude Dibia‘s Walking with Shadows – are purposively selected for analyses. The texts are subjected to literary and critical analyses to examine the contexts of sexual rights violation of the self by the ―Big Other‖, the victimisation generated by this violation, and the writers‘ contrived solutions to eliminate it. All the texts share a common denominator – sexual violence and its attendant psychological trauma and physical damages – but, specific texts show that the rights of men, women and children are violated in specific contexts that define their Otherness. Socio-cultural practices and beliefs encourage the violation of rights and victimisation in all the texts, while religion generates same in all of El Saadawi‘s and Dibia‘s texts. While women are victimised in all the texts, men are victimised in God Dies by the Nile, Case‘s and Dibia‘s texts. The role of the perpetrator is played by both men and women in texts by El Saadawi, Beyala, Case and Dibia, whereas only men are the perpetrators in Coetzee‘s, Abani‘s and Vera‘s. While Abani centres on the trafficking of the girl-child for the purpose of sex work, El Saadawi shows that the boy-child can be raped and children are violated when made to suffer for their parents‘ sexual offences. All the texts, in different ways, create avenues for bridging the gap between the self and the ―Big Other‖ and the elimination of suffering. Coetzee‘s and El Saadawi‘s uphold the provision of professional institutions to seek redress for the sexually violated while Dibia‘s and Case‘s highlight tolerance and respect for every individual‘s sexual identity and orientation. All the texts favour the taking of responsibility for sexual actions and religious and socio-cultural re-orientation through sexuality education. African prose fiction writers create sexual rights awareness through their representations of contexts of sexual rights violation, victimisation of male and female genders, and sociologically-grounded solutions to the violation. This awareness, if extended to real world situations, would ensure better understanding and protection of every individual‘s sexual rights.Item Literary Expression in Post-Apartheid South Africa(2014) Adebiyi, A. K.Literary productivity in South Africa increased dramatically with the political change from apartheid to multi-racial democracy in 1994. This surge has attracted much interest, with critics trying to map the changes observable on the post-apartheid literary landscape using race and gender. However, adequate attention has not been given to the emergent literature from the political perspective. This study, therefore, examined new themes and forms in selected post-apartheid literature in order to show the impact of political change on literary expression. The study adopted Jean-Francois Lyotard‟s and Homi Bhabha‟s models of postmodernism and postcolonialism respectively. It selected five texts, based on thematic affinities, from each of the genres of prose, drama and poetry. The prose texts are End, A Duty of Memory, The Quiet Violence of Dreams (TQVD), Thirteen Cents and Disgrace. The drama texts are Nothing but the Truth (NBTT), Ubu and the Truth Commission (Ubu), Dream of the Dog (DOD), Molora and Reach! while those from poetry are Dancing in the Rain (DITR), Handsome Jita (HJ), It All Begins, Letter to the State and The New Century of South African Poetry. The methods of analysis are literary and critical interpretations of the texts. Inscriptions of sexual acts, non-normative sexuality and open inter-racial romance, politically forbidden before 1994, are prominent thematic concerns in the novels. Linguistic vulgarism and eroticism are inscribed brazenly in End, TQVD and Thirteen Cents. Postmodern inter-textuality also inscribes eroticism in End. A Duty of Memory and Disgrace explore gay relations only between women, but with restraint. In TQVD and Thirteen Cents, characterisation establishes the inter-racial dimension of gay relations. Specific spatial settings in End and Thirteen Cents destroy the myth of secrecy about the sexual act. The drama texts thematise national reconciliation. However, while Ubu and DOD dwell on the significance of truth in reconciliation, NBTT and Reach! emphasise memory. Molora advocates forgiveness. Using „faction‟, Ubu, NBTT and Molora directly appropriate materials from South Africa‟s politically-motivated Truth and Reconciliation Commission while DOD and Reach! Do so indirectly. While characterisation is fictional in the plays, some of the spatial and temporal settings are real. In poetry, the theme of disillusionment about the hopes which multi-racial democracy had held for the people is depicted. This is done directly in all the collections, but also ironically and satirically in It All Begins, Dancing in the Rain, Handsome Jita and Letter to the State. Proverbs and wise sayings, as well as combinations of standard codes and slang, feature noticeably in DITR, HJ and It All Begins. In all the genres, postcolonial hybridity such as glossing, abrogation and linguistic pluralism features. The multiplicity of thematic preoccupations and executions in post-apartheid South African literature illustrates how political change affects the country‟s literary expression. This multiplicity, occasioned by the new political realities, defines the new trajectory of South African literature