Imagining the Cape Colony

Imagining the Cape Colony
Author: David Johnson
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
Total Pages: 232
Release: 2013-09-19
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 074865089X

By returning to a pivotal moment in South African history - the Cape Colony in the period 1770-1830 - this book addresses current debates about nationalism, colonialism and neo-colonialism, and postcolonial/post-apartheid culture.

Imagining the Cape Colony

Imagining the Cape Colony
Author: David Johnson
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
Total Pages: 232
Release: 2011-11-30
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0748650873

This volume explores how the Cape Colony was imagined as a political community by considering a variety of writers, from major European literati and intellectuals (Camoes, Southey, Rousseau, Adam Smith), to well-known travel writers like Francois Levaillant and Lady Anne Barnard, to figures on the margins of colonial histories, like settler rebels, slaves and early African nationalists. Complementing the analyses of these primary texts are discussions of the many subsequent literary works and histories of the Cape Colony.

South Africa a Century Ago

South Africa a Century Ago
Author: Lady Anne Lindsay Barnard
Publisher:
Total Pages: 346
Release: 1910
Genre: Cape of Good Hope (South Africa)
ISBN:

Status and Respectability in the Cape Colony, 1750–1870

Status and Respectability in the Cape Colony, 1750–1870
Author: Robert Ross
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 223
Release: 1999-07-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 1139425617

In a compelling example of the cultural history of South Africa, Robert Ross offers a subtle and wide-ranging study of status and respectability in the colonial Cape between 1750 and 1850. His 1999 book describes the symbolism of dress, emblems, architecture, food, language, and polite conventions, paying particular attention to domestic relationships, gender, education and religion, and analyses the values and the modes of thinking current in different strata of the society. He argues that these cultural factors were related to high political developments in the Cape, and offers a rich account of the changes in social identity that accompanied the transition from Dutch to British overrule, and of the development of white racism and of ideologies of resistance to white domination. The result is a uniquely nuanced account of a colonial society.

The Scientific Imagination in South Africa

The Scientific Imagination in South Africa
Author: William Beinart
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 419
Release: 2021-05-20
Genre: History
ISBN: 1108837085

An innovative three hundred year exploration of the social and political contexts of science and the scientific imagination in South Africa.

Bringing the Empire Home

Bringing the Empire Home
Author: Zine Magubane
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 233
Release: 2004
Genre: History
ISBN: 0226501779

How did South Africans become black? How did the idea of blackness influence conceptions of disadvantaged groups in England such as women and the poor, and vice versa? Bringing the Empire Home tracks colonial images of blackness from South Africa to England and back again to answer questions such as these. Before the mid-1800s, black Africans were considered savage to the extent that their plight mirrored England's internal Others—women, the poor, and the Irish. By the 1900s, England's minority groups were being defined in relation to stereotypes of black South Africans. These stereotypes, in turn, were used to justify both new capitalist class and gender hierarchies in England and the subhuman treatment of blacks in South Africa. Bearing this in mind, Zine Magubane considers how marginalized groups in both countries responded to these racialized representations. Revealing the often overlooked links among ideologies of race, class, and gender, Bringing the Empire Home demonstrates how much black Africans taught the English about what it meant to be white, poor, or female.

A Companion to African Literatures

A Companion to African Literatures
Author: Olakunle George
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 512
Release: 2021-03-22
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1119058171

Rediscover the diversity of modern African literatures with this authoritative resource edited by a leader in the field How have African literatures unfolded in their rich diversity in our modern era of decolonization, nationalisms, and extensive transnational movement of peoples? How have African writers engaged urgent questions regarding race, nation, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality? And how do African literary genres interrelate with traditional oral forms or audio-visual and digital media? A Companion to African Literatures addresses these issues and many more. Consisting of essays by distinguished scholars and emerging leaders in the field, this book offers rigorous, deeply engaging discussions of African literatures on the continent and in diaspora. It covers the four main geographical regions (East and Central Africa, North Africa, Southern Africa, and West Africa), presenting ample material to learn from and think with. A Companion To African Literatures is divided into five parts. The first four cover different regions of the continent, while the fifth part considers conceptual issues and newer directions of inquiry. Chapters focus on literatures in European languages officially used in Africa -- English, French, and Portuguese -- as well as homegrown African languages: Afrikaans, Amharic, Arabic, Swahili, and Yoruba. With its lineup of lucid and authoritative analyses, readers will find in A Companion to African Literatures a distinctive, rewarding academic resource. Perfect for undergraduate and graduate students in literary studies programs with an African focus, A Companion to African Literatures will also earn a place in the libraries of teachers, researchers, and professors who wish to strengthen their background in the study of African literatures.

South Africa a Century Ago

South Africa a Century Ago
Author: Lady Anne Lindsay Barnard
Publisher:
Total Pages: 348
Release: 1901
Genre: Cape of Good Hope (South Africa)
ISBN:

Unconfessed

Unconfessed
Author: Yvette Christiansë
Publisher: Other Press, LLC
Total Pages: 369
Release: 2024-01-23
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1635424275

PEN/HEMINGWAY AWARD FINALIST A fiercely poetic literary debut re-creating the life of an 19th-century slave woman in South Africa. Slavery as it existed in Africa has seldom been portrayed—and never with such texture, detail, and authentic emotion. Inspired by actual 19th-century court records, Unconfessed is a breathtaking literary tour de force. They called her Sila van den Kaap, slave woman of Jacobus Stephanus Van der Wat of Plettenberg Bay, South Africa. A woman moved from master to master, farm to farm, and—driven by the horrors of slavery to commit an unspeakable crime—from prison to prison. A woman fit for hanging . . . condemned to death on April 30, 1823, but whose sentence the English, having recently wrested authority from the Dutch settlers, saw fit to commute to a lengthy term on the notorious Robben Island. Sila spends her days in the prison quarry, breaking stones for Cape Town's streets and walls. She remembers the day her childhood ended, when slave catchers came — whipping the air and the ground and we were like deer whipped into the smaller and smaller circle of our fear. Sila remembers her masters, especially Oumiesies ("old Missus"), who in her will granted Sila her freedom, but Theron, Oumiesies' vicious and mercenary son, destroys the will and with it Sila's life. Sila remembers her children, with joy and with pain, and imagines herself a great bird that could sweep them up in her wings and set them safely on a branch above all harm. Unconfessed is an epic novel that connects the reader to the unimaginable through the force of poetry and a far-reaching imagination.