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Gothic urbanism in contemporary African fiction
This project surveys representations of the African city in contemporary Nigerian and South African narratives by focusing on how they employ Gothic techniques as a means of drawing the African urban landscape into being. The texts that comprise my objects of study are South African author Henrietta...
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| Format: | Thesis |
| Language: | English |
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Department of English Language and Literature
2016
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| _version_ | 1867613188729602049 |
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| access_status_str | Open Access |
| author | Hugo, Esthie |
| author2 | Samuelson, Meg |
| author_browse | Hugo, Esthie Samuelson, Meg |
| author_facet | Samuelson, Meg Hugo, Esthie |
| author_sort | Hugo, Esthie |
| collection | Thesis |
| description | This project surveys representations of the African city in contemporary Nigerian and South African narratives by focusing on how they employ Gothic techniques as a means of drawing the African urban landscape into being. The texts that comprise my objects of study are South African author Henrietta Rose-Innes's Nineveh (2011), which takes as its setting contemporary Cape Town; Lagoon (2014) by American-Nigerian author Nnedi Okorafor, who sets her tale in present-day Lagos; and Zoo City (2010) by Lauren Beukes, another South African author who locates her narrative in a near-future version of Johannesburg. I find that these fictions are bound by a shared investment in mobilising the apparatus of the Gothic genre to provide readers with a unique imagining of contemporary African urbanity. I argue that the Gothic urbanism which these texts unfold enables the ascendance of generative, anti-dualist modes of reading the contemporary African city that are simultaneously real and imagined, old and new, global and local, dark and light - modes that perform as much a discourse of the past as a dialogue on the future. The study concludes by making some reflections on the future-visions that these Gothic urban-texts elicit, imaginings that I argue engender useful reflection on the relationship between culture and environment, and thus prompt the contemporary reader to consider the global future - and, as such, situate Africa at the forefront of planetary discourse. I suggest that Nineveh, Lagoon and Zoo City produce not simply a Gothic envisioning of Africa's metropolitan centres, but also a budding Gothic aesthetic of the African Anthropocene. In contrast to the 1980's tradition of Gothic writing in Africa, these novels are opening up into the twenty-first century to reflect on the future of the African city - but also on the futures that lie beyond the urban, beyond culture, beyond the human. |
| format | Thesis |
| id | oai:open.uct.ac.za:11427/20691 |
| institution | University of Cape Town (South Africa) |
| language | eng |
| last_indexed | 2026-06-10T12:32:11.035Z |
| license_str | Not specified — see source repository |
| provenance_str_mv | Harvested via OAI-PMH from UCTD — University of Cape Town Open Access Repository |
| publishDate | 2016 |
| publishDateRange | 2016 |
| publishDateSort | 2016 |
| publisher | Department of English Language and Literature |
| publisherStr | Department of English Language and Literature |
| record_format | dspace |
| source_str | UCTD — University of Cape Town Open Access Repository |
| spelling | oai:open.uct.ac.za:11427/20691 Gothic urbanism in contemporary African fiction Hugo, Esthie Samuelson, Meg Ouma, Christopher Literary Studies This project surveys representations of the African city in contemporary Nigerian and South African narratives by focusing on how they employ Gothic techniques as a means of drawing the African urban landscape into being. The texts that comprise my objects of study are South African author Henrietta Rose-Innes's Nineveh (2011), which takes as its setting contemporary Cape Town; Lagoon (2014) by American-Nigerian author Nnedi Okorafor, who sets her tale in present-day Lagos; and Zoo City (2010) by Lauren Beukes, another South African author who locates her narrative in a near-future version of Johannesburg. I find that these fictions are bound by a shared investment in mobilising the apparatus of the Gothic genre to provide readers with a unique imagining of contemporary African urbanity. I argue that the Gothic urbanism which these texts unfold enables the ascendance of generative, anti-dualist modes of reading the contemporary African city that are simultaneously real and imagined, old and new, global and local, dark and light - modes that perform as much a discourse of the past as a dialogue on the future. The study concludes by making some reflections on the future-visions that these Gothic urban-texts elicit, imaginings that I argue engender useful reflection on the relationship between culture and environment, and thus prompt the contemporary reader to consider the global future - and, as such, situate Africa at the forefront of planetary discourse. I suggest that Nineveh, Lagoon and Zoo City produce not simply a Gothic envisioning of Africa's metropolitan centres, but also a budding Gothic aesthetic of the African Anthropocene. In contrast to the 1980's tradition of Gothic writing in Africa, these novels are opening up into the twenty-first century to reflect on the future of the African city - but also on the futures that lie beyond the urban, beyond culture, beyond the human. 2016-07-25T11:29:04Z 2016-07-25T11:29:04Z 2016 Master Thesis Masters MA http://hdl.handle.net/11427/20691 eng application/pdf Department of English Language and Literature Faculty of Humanities University of Cape Town |
| spellingShingle | Literary Studies Hugo, Esthie Gothic urbanism in contemporary African fiction |
| thesis_degree_str | Master's |
| title | Gothic urbanism in contemporary African fiction |
| title_full | Gothic urbanism in contemporary African fiction |
| title_fullStr | Gothic urbanism in contemporary African fiction |
| title_full_unstemmed | Gothic urbanism in contemporary African fiction |
| title_short | Gothic urbanism in contemporary African fiction |
| title_sort | gothic urbanism in contemporary african fiction |
| topic | Literary Studies |
| url | http://hdl.handle.net/11427/20691 |
| work_keys_str_mv | AT hugoesthie gothicurbanismincontemporaryafricanfiction |