Crossing into the space-time of memory: Borderline identities in novels by Yvonne Vera

Journal of Commonwealth Literature

Volumn 36, Issue 2, 2001, Pages 77-93

  Primorac, Ranka ^a  

^a NOTTINGHAM TRENT UNIVERSITY   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 33846336286     PISSN: 00219894     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/002198940103600207     Document Type: Article

References (31)

1. See Mike Kesby, "Arenas for Control, Terrains of Gender Contestation: Guerrilla Struggle and Counter-Insurgency Warfare in Zimbabwe 1972-1980", Journal of Southern African Studies, 22, 4 (1996), 561-84
2. M, M. Bakhtin, "Forms of Time and of the Chronotope in the Novel" in The Dialogic Imagination, trans. Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist, Austin: University of Texas Press, 1983, pp. 84-158
3. See, for example, Penny Ludicke, "Writing From the Inside-Out, Reading From the Outside-In: a Review of Yvonne Vera's Nehanda and Without a Name" in Derek Wright, ed., Contemporary African Fiction, Bayreuth: Bayreuth African Studies, 1997, pp. 67-73
4. Mandivavarira Taruvinga, "Butterfly Burning: Novel of Great Imagination", in The Independent, Harare, 5 February 1999
5. Clive Wake, review of Nehanda, Wasaflri 19 (1994), 75
6. Yvonne Vera, Nehanda, Harare: Baobab Books, 1993
7. Without a Name, Harare: Baobab Books, 1996 [1994]
8. Under the Tongue, Harare: Baobab Books, 1996
9. and Butterfly Burning, Harare: Baobab Books, 1998. Subsequent references to Vera's novels are to these editions and will be cited in the text, where titles will be abbreviated as N, WN, UT and BB respectively. In quotes, italics used for emphasis have been added throughout
10. In the African context, this perspective has been referred to, by way of Culler, by Simon Gikandi, in Reading Chinua Achebe, London: James Currey, 1991, p. 22
11. In the past, they have been centred on the work of Dambudzo Marechera. Echoes of arguments put forward in the past and glimpses of directions leading into the future can be discerned from F. Veit-Wild and A. Chennells, eds., Emerging Perspectives on Dambudzo Marechera, Trenton and Asmara: Africa World Press, 1999
12. David Lan, whose useful summary of the role of Nehanda in Zimbabwean history and tradition appears in David Lan, Guns & Rain, London: James Currey, 1987, p. 6, mentions Solomon Mutswairo's Shona novel Feso and Herbert Chitepo's poem Soko Risina Musoro
13. See also Chenjerai Hove's English-language novel Bones
14. The role of ritual (related to birth, the seasons and the war) in Nehanda deserves an essay in its own right. It has been touched on in Eldred D. Jones in "Land, War and Literature in Zimbabwe: A Sampling", in New Trends and Generations in African Literature, London: James Currey, 1996, pp. 50-61
15. and Nana Wilson-Tagoe, "Narrative, History, Novel: Intertextuality in the Historical Novels of Ayi Kwei Armah and Yvonne Vera", Journal of African Cultural Studies, 12, 2 (1999), 155-66
16. See Lan, Guns & Rain, p. 6, and the entry on Mbuya Nehanda in Katherine Sayce, ed., Encyclopedia Zimbabwe, Harare: Quest Publishing, 1989, p. 281
17. Clive Wake, review of Nehanda 75; emphasis in the original
18. Wilson-Tagoe, in "Narrative, History, Novel", refers to Nehanda's liminality, in connection with her "extraordinary ability to straddle past, present and future" (165)
19. A Kenyan example is pointed out in Elleke Boehmer, "The Master's Dance to the Master's Voice", The Journal of Commonwealth Literature, 26, 1 (1991), 188-97
20. See Wilson-Tagoe, "Narrative, History, Novel", 165
21. Such objections neglect the fact that Nehanda is, according to the semiotic view of culture propounded by the likes of J. M. Lotman, a secondary culture text: its meaning is inseparable from the fact that it rewrites a primary culture text (in this case, that of Shona ritual). Secondary culture texts are built upon primary ones, but fail to adhere to their rules in all respects. Lotman's views on culture texts are usefully summarized in Irene Portis-Winner, "Some Comments Upon Lotman's Concepts of Semiotics of Culture: Implications for the Study of Ethnic Culture Texts" in Morris Halle et al., eds., Semiosis: Semiotics and the History of Culture, Michigan: The University of Michigan, 1984, pp. 28-36
22. Such a reading emerged during the discussion following the final session of the recent symposium on Zimbabwean literature ("Scanning our Future, Reading our Past", 10-12 January 2001) held at the University of Zimbabwe in Harare
23. War is therefore not among the things that this novel cannot say. The text articulates a dimension of its meaning by choosing to talk of things to which it is contiguous. Under the Tongue is thus a good example of the ultimate arbitrariness of purely thematic criteria of novelistic classification. "The war novel" has been an important organizing category in studies of Zimbabwean fiction: see, for example, A. J. Chennells, "The Treatment of the Rhodesian War in Recent Rhodesian Novels", Zambezia 5, 2 (1977), 177-202
24. Preben Kaarsholm, "From Decadence to Authenticity and Beyond: Fantasies and Mythologies of War in Rhodesia and Zimbabwe, 1965-1985" in P. Kaarsholm, ed, Cultural Struggle & Development in Southern Africa, Harare: Baobab Books, 1991, pp. 33-60
25. and R. Zhuwarara, "Zimbabwean Fiction in English", Zambezia 14, 2 (1987), 131-47
26. Terence Ranger, "The Fruits of the Baobab: Irene Staunton and the Zimbabwean Novel", Journal of Southern African Studies, 25, 4 (1999), 697
27. Gayatry Chakravorty Spivak, "A Literary Representation of The Subaltern: A Woman's Text from the Third World", In Other Worlds: Essays in Cultural Politics, New York and London: Methuen, 1987, pp. 222-40
28. Gayatry Chakravorty Spivak, "Can the Subaltern Speak?", repr. in Patrick Williams and Laura Chrisman, eds., Colonial Discourse and Post-Colonial Theory, London: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1994, pp. 66-111
29. See Tsitsi Dangarembga, Nervous Conditions, Harare: ZPH, 1989
30. "Hence the woman looks to the husband - and therefore to the male - as protector, defender and provider. But she, by her very make-up, has another role as indispensable and important because it is complementary to his for the well-being of the family institution", Michael Gelfand, "The Shona Woman", in NADA, The Rhodesian Ministry of Internal Affairs Manual, 10, 5 (1973), 47
31. "Far from effecting positive change in the relations of power and authority between themselves and their husbands, the new breed of women under discussion only succeeds in redefining their sense of liberation in terms of a radical androgynous identity. This form of identity seeks to define a woman as an autonomous self, whose individuality has nothing to do with her relations to the man", Kennedy C. Chinyowa, "Gender Development in Shona Literature", in E. M. Chiwome and Z. Gambahaya, eds., Culture and Development - Perspectives from the South, Harare: Mond Books, 1998, p. 168