SF, Infrastructure, and the Anthropocene: Reading Moxyland and Zoo City

2016 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 345-359 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brady Smith
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
South African ◽  
Urban Studies ◽  
Literary Form ◽  
Bruno Latour ◽  
New Materialisms ◽  
Growing Body ◽  
African Writer ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Do So

This essay probes the relationship between nature and infrastructure in Moxyland (2008) and Zoo City (2010), SF novels by the South African writer Lauren Beukes. I show, in one vein, how “nature” and “infrastructure” are not at all opposed in the way that ecocriticism and urban studies often suggest; in these speculative fictions, nature and infrastructure coincide, such that “nature” becomes coextensive with everyday life in these texts. At the same time, the essay uses Moxyland and Zoo City to explore a problem I take to be fundamental to literary and environmental studies in Africa, namely the place of African texts and contexts in the rapidly growing body of work on the Anthropocene, humanity’s new geologic age. Not only do these novels suggest yoking discourse on the Anthropocene to the new materialisms of scholars such as Jane Bennett or Bruno Latour, but the manner in which they do so can help us think about how to make the concept accessible to literary form.

scholarly journals The 'Cockroach' Waste and Wasted Life in World Literatures in English

Le Simplegadi ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 19 (21) ◽  
pp. 80-96
Author(s):  
Carmen Concilio
Keyword(s):  
South African ◽  
The Core ◽  
Literature And The Environment ◽  
African Writer ◽  
The Relationship

In this essay I intend to pursue a comparative reading of three postcolonial texts – in their intertextual and counter-canonical relationship with Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis (1915) – that deal with the ethics, but also the aesthetics, of the relationship between humans and animals. By doing so, and with the help of the Kafkian critical apparatuses, particularly Deleuze and Guattari’s critical contribution (1986), which will be the core of this study, I will also examine the nexus between literature and the environment, with particular emphasis on waste, also taking into consideration the paradigms of necropolitics (Mbembe 2003) and of écart (Jullien 2012). Kafka’s Curse (1997), by South African writer Achmat Dangor, Cockroach (2008) by Canadian-Lebanese Rawi Hage, and Blackass (2015) by Nigerian Igoni Barrett will be here analysed and scrutinised.

Engaging Comparative Urbanism

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julie Ren
Keyword(s):  
Urban Studies ◽  
Urban Landscape ◽  
Qualitative Investigation ◽  
Non Profit ◽  
Material Space ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Comparative Urbanism ◽  
Do So

The concepts employed to understand cities around the world are sourced form a limited set of urban experiences. Comparative urbanism seeks to address this problem, but has yet to offer concrete tools to do so. This book engages with comparative urbanisms as one of the most critical debates facing urban studies. Rather than corrective inclusion, an analysis of the premises behind comparative urbanism suggests that the focus should be on how cities and cases are compared. An epistemic inversion is necessary to redraw the relationship of models and cases. Employing an empirical study of art spaces in Beijing and Berlin to engage with this experiment, the qualitative investigation delves into their motivations and practices, discovering how non-profit art spaces claim and sustain their space in a competitive urban landscape. The nature of these art spaces as temporary is considered in the context of precarity and nomadism, but also challenged as the durability of many art spaces transcend the material space. The spaces of possibility that are exposed in a context of perceived inevitabilities reveal the function of aspiration. Aspiration, as a navigational capacity, is not only a function of the individual but also about the presence of elsewhere. This was significant for the imagination of the possible, and for their attainment.

scholarly journals The best of both worlds? some reflections on the interaction between the common law and the Bill of rights in our new constitution

2017 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
Kate J O'Regan
Keyword(s):  
South African ◽  
Judicial Review ◽  
Common Law ◽  
Constitutional Court ◽  
Bill Of Rights ◽  
Organic System ◽  
The Common ◽  
South African Constitution ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Do So

The relationship between the Bill of Rights in the South African Constitution of 1996 and the common law is analyzed in this paper. "Common law" is understood broadly to include not only the Roman-Dutch law, but also the wide variety of legal sources and traditions which make up South African law, including African tradition, Muslim practice and the English law heritage.Firstly an exposition of the chief characteristics of the hybrid system of South African common law is given. It is shown that the common law is not codified; that it is a living and organic system of law constantly under legislative and judicial review; that its sources vary from judicial precedent to civilian authorities, English, indigenous customary and Muslim law; that the style of litigation and adjudication is English rather than Continental in Character and that when a common law rule is modified, it is done retrospectively in conflict with principles of legal certainty.Secondly the chief constitutional provisions relating to the relationship between the Constitution and the common law are considered. The supremacy clause (section 2) renders a common law rule which is inconsistent with the Constitution invalid from the date of the Constitution unless a court gives a different ruling in accordance with justice and equity. Courts have the inherent power to develop the common law, but the Constitutional Court may do so only in constitutional matters. Two forms of constitutional normative effects may be distinguished: direct (as in sections 2 and 8(1)) and indirect (as in section 39(2)). In terms of the latter the spirit, purport and objects of the Bill of Rights are to guide the development of the common law.Thirdly the interaction between the common law and the Constitution is thoroughly explored with reference to common law rules that are in conflict with the Constitution as well as where the common law already provides protection for the rights provided by the Bill of Rights. These matters are explored with reference to a number of recent judgments of the Constitutional Court, in some of which the common law was effectively developed.It is concluded that the firm normative thrust of the Constitution may well prove to be a rich source of principle for the development of the common law and that the flexibility of the common law may facilitate a cross-pollination between it and the Constitution.

Introduction

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-22
Author(s):  
Justin Collings
Keyword(s):  
South African ◽  
Transitional Justice ◽  
Reference Point ◽  
Constitutional Interpretation ◽  
Constitutional Courts ◽  
Constitutional Order ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Constitutional Identity ◽  
Do So

This chapter introduces the topic of the book, which is how constitutional courts invoke historical evil as a reference and an aid in constitutional interpretation. The chapter sets forth the two principal modes by which courts do so: the redemptive mode, which treats the evil past as an aversive reference point against which the new constitutional order must aggressively define itself; and the parenthetical mode, which treats the evil past as an aberration from an otherwise noble tradition. It also discusses variations on these modes, as well as hybrid mergers of them. The chapter indicates how American mnemonic jurisprudence has tilted toward the parenthetical mode, South African toward the redemptive, and German toward a hybrid. The chapter also highlights the relationship of constitutional memory to topics such as constitutional identity, constitutional faith, and transitional justice.

scholarly journals D(i)e verhouding prediking, mus(z)iek en liturgie

2015 ◽  
Vol 71 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Cas Wepener ◽  
Mirella Klomp
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
South African ◽  
The South ◽  
Special Place ◽  
Historical Argument ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Do So

The relationship between preaching, music and liturgy. In the Reformed liturgy in South Africa the sermon has traditionally been reserved a special place, taking precedence over the liturgy and music. In this article an argument is put forward for a better balance between preaching, liturgy and music in the Reformed liturgy in churches in South Africa. In order to do so, the South African Reformed liturgical context is briefly sketched and thereafter a theological and liturgical-historical argument is presented. Existing approaches with regard to the relationship between liturgy, music and preaching by some established scholars are discussed before the implications of the argument are examined in conclusion.

scholarly journals Voice of Protest against Choice of Politics: A Study of Selected Texts in South African Literature

2016 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 39-44
Author(s):  
Roshan K. Morve
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Racial Discrimination ◽  
South African ◽  
Literary Form ◽  
Land Policy ◽  
Equal Rights ◽  
Protest Literature ◽  
The People ◽  
South African Literature ◽  
The Relationship

This paper interrogates the nature of protest literature as well as their issues and problems while addressing the discourse on apartheid South Africa underlined the politics. In this paper, I explore the connection of banned books of history with the present time. In South Africa: the numbers of the books banned, and these books never become part of a literary form. As a result, it also claims to the Censorship Act (have an authority to ban the books). This paper relates to examine the relationship between these two major research queries, which underpins as under two contexts as: (i) Protest literature and (ii) Racial discrimination. The racial discrimination needs for understanding the problems and struggle in South African. It also ignites to the fight for human rights of the people, who suffer from inequality and struggling for their identity crisis. South African novels represent the problems and concerns of people who belong to the marginal group. However, this paper focuses on South African protest literature, which demands to the end of racial discrimination, unequal educational system and segregation as divided land policy represents through the discourses. This paper has significant to demand for equality and justice through the protest literature also it demands of non-racial society as well. I come to conclude, it can be inferred in apartheid and the post-apartheid government failed to give equal rights to all.  

The Germans and their Jewish Neighbors on the Ukrainian Areas at the Second Half of the 19th Century

2020 ◽  
pp. 17-27
Author(s):  
D. Meshkov
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
19Th Century ◽  
Russian Empire ◽  
Early Years ◽  
Criminal Cases ◽  
South West ◽  
Multiethnic Population ◽  
The Russian Empire ◽  
The 19Th Century ◽  
The Relationship

The article presents some of the author’s research results that has got while elaboration of the theme “Everyday life in the mirror of conflicts: Germans and their neighbors on the Southern and South-West periphery of the Russian Empire 1861–1914”. The relationship between Germans and Jews is studied in the context of the growing confrontation in Southern cities that resulted in a wave of pogroms. Sources are information provided by the police and court archival funds. The German colonists Ludwig Koenig and Alexandra Kirchner (the resident of Odessa) were involved into Odessa pogrom (1871), in particular. While Koenig with other rioters was arrested by the police, Kirchner led a crowd of rioters to the shop of her Jewish neighbor, whom she had a conflict with. The second part of the article is devoted to the analyses of unty-Jewish violence causes and history in Ak-Kerman at the second half of the 19th and early years of 20th centuries. Akkerman was one of the southern Bessarabia cities, where multiethnic population, including the Jews, grew rapidly. It was one of the reasons of the pogroms in 1865 and 1905. The author uses criminal cases` papers to analyze the reasons of the Germans participation in the civilian squads that had been organized to protect the population and their property in Ackerman and Shabo in 1905.

Co-creating the Psychological “White Picket Fence”: Three Gay Couples’ Relationship Reconfiguration

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Prevan Moodley ◽  
Francois Rabie
Keyword(s):  
Grounded Theory ◽  
South African ◽  
Gay Couples ◽  
Core Category ◽  
Picket Fence ◽  
Open Relationship ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Porous Boundaries

Many gay couples engage in nonmonogamous relationships. Ideas about nonmonogamy have historically been theorised as individual pathology and indicating relational distress. Unlike mixed-sex couples, boundaries for gay couples are often not determined by sexual exclusivity. These relationships are built along a continuum of open and closed, and sexual exclusivity agreements are not restricted to binaries, thus requiring innovation and re-evaluation. Three white South African gay couples were each jointly interviewed about their open relationship, specifically about how this is negotiated. In contrast to research that uses the individual to investigate this topic, this study recruited dyads. The couples recalled the initial endorsement of heteronormative romantic constructions, after which they shifted to psychological restructuring. The dyad, domesticated through the stock image of a white picket fence, moved to a renewed arrangement, protected by “rules” and imperatives. Abbreviated grounded theory strategies led to a core category, “co-creating porous boundaries”, and two themes. First, the couple jointly made heteronormative ideals porous and, second, they reconfigured the relationship through dyadic protection. The overall relationship ideology associated with the white picket fence remained intact despite the micro-innovations through which the original heteronormative patterning was reconfigured.

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