Research Publications (Arts and Design)
Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://ir-dev.dut.ac.za/handle/10321/214
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Item Cultural nationalism in Mashingaidze Gomo’s A Fine Madness(SciELO, 2014) Makombe, RodwellFor many years, African countries have struggled to develop an ideological framework that suits the dynamics of the African context. From the writings of literary artists to those of political figures such as Kwame Nkrumah, the call has remained consistent: Africa needs to formulate its own path of development and disentangle from the tentacles of colonialism and neocolonialism. While négritude, as a cultural movement, was a direct response to the impact of Western civilisation on Africans in the aftermath of colonization, Gomo’s A Fine Madness may be read as a response to the West’s dominance in the neoliberal global order. It interrogates the relationship between Europe and Africa in light of persistent war and instability in Africa, particularly in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Like négritude, Gomo’s work advocates the promotion of African ways of doing things politically, economically and culturally and shuns neocolonial relationships of exploitation. Adopting an anti-imperialist position, A Fine Madness holds the West responsible for fuelling conflict in some African countries for commercial gain. The article interrogates the concept of cultural nationalism as it has been appropriated in Gomo’s work. Focusing on selected poems, the article argues that A Fine Madness is a militant intervention in African politics, and a voice of resistance to the obtaining neoliberal global order.Item Apartheid, crime, and interracial violence in Black Boy(Sage Publications, 2013-03-25) Makombe, RodwellThis article critically interrogates the interplay of compatibility among crime, violence, and racial discrimination in Wright’s biographical novel Black Boy (BB). It exploits parallels between selected postcolonial and criminological theories to conceptualize crime and violence as a way of negotiating and translating hegemony in the third space of cultural enunciation. The objective of every oppressive system is to have an absolute monopoly on all structures of power, to make sure it has “total” control. This is evident in the American South where laws were enacted to exclude African Americans from the social, political, and economic spheres of life. However, that same system that was designed to silence and marginalize African Americans also, inadvertently, created spaces that led to the emergence of subcultures of resistance. This article focuses on criminal subcultures of resistance that emerged as a result of and in direct response to institutionalized racism/apartheid.