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Periodical article | Leiden University catalogue | WorldCat |
Title: | Nationalism and the development of identity in postcolonial fiction: Zoë Wicomb and Michelle Cliff |
Author: | Richards, Constance S. |
Year: | 2005 |
Periodical: | Research in African Literatures |
Volume: | 36 |
Issue: | 1 |
Pages: | 20-33 |
Language: | English |
Geographic term: | South Africa |
Subjects: | nationalism literature |
About person: | Zoë Wicomb (1948-) |
External link: | http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/research_in_african_literatures/v036/36.1richards.pdf |
Abstract: | This essay explains the role of nationalism as a site of awakening and identity formation in postcolonial literary texts. It dislodges the 'awakening' trope from a centre of Western feminist literary studies and relocates it in other experiences of empire where awakenings also take place. This approach sees national consciousness as a transitional step, a site that provides a certain kind of awakening, and not as the end of a process. Nationalism, or national consciousness, in the Fanonian sense, is a phase leading to transnationalism. The essay is particularly concerned with South African author Zoë Wicomb's 'You can't get lost in Cape Town' (1987) and West Indian writer Michelle Cliff's 'No telephone to heaven' (1987). These texts represent, directly or indirectly, the role Black nationalism can play in the awakening phase of female literary characters in postcolonial texts by women writers. Bibliogr., notes, ref., sum. [ASC Leiden abstract] |