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An African ecofeminist exploration of the gendered and environmental facets of the Herero and Nama genocide as depicted in selected Namibian narratives of the genocide
Thesis (DPhil)--Stellenbosch University, 2025.
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| Format: | Thesis |
| Language: | English |
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Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University
2025
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| _version_ | 1867613950498045952 |
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| access_status_str | Open Access |
| author | Andima, Eva-Liisa |
| author2 | Van der Rede, Lauren |
| author_browse | Andima, Eva-Liisa Van der Rede, Lauren |
| author_facet | Van der Rede, Lauren Andima, Eva-Liisa |
| author_sort | Andima, Eva-Liisa |
| collection | Thesis |
| dc_rights_str_mv | Stellenbosch University |
| description | Thesis (DPhil)--Stellenbosch University, 2025. |
| format | Thesis |
| id | oai:scholar.sun.ac.za:10019.1/134494 |
| institution | Stellenbosch University (South Africa) |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2026-06-10T12:44:17.380Z |
| license_str | Other — see source repository |
| provenance_str_mv | Harvested via OAI-PMH from SUNScholar — Stellenbosch University Repository |
| publishDate | 2025 |
| publishDateRange | 2025 |
| publishDateSort | 2025 |
| publisher | Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University |
| publisherStr | Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University |
| record_format | dspace |
| source_str | SUNScholar — Stellenbosch University Repository |
| spelling | oai:scholar.sun.ac.za:10019.1/134494 An African ecofeminist exploration of the gendered and environmental facets of the Herero and Nama genocide as depicted in selected Namibian narratives of the genocide Andima, Eva-Liisa Van der Rede, Lauren David, Stephen Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. Dept. of English. Namibian literature (English) -- History and criticism Genocide in literature Ecofeminism Feminism and literature -- Africa Genocide -- Namibia -- History -- 20th century UCTD Thesis (DPhil)--Stellenbosch University, 2025. Andima, E. 2025. An African Ecofeminist Exploration of the Gendered and Environmental Facets of the Herero and Nama Genocide as Depicted in Selected Namibian Narratives of the Genocide. Unpublished doctoral dissertation. Stellenbosch: Stellenbosch University [online]. Available: https://scholar.sun.ac.za/items/89d542d6-8018-48bf-962f-3b25951b124f ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This Doctoral research project is positioned within literary studies, where much research has been conducted on the Herero and Nama Genocide. However, research concerning the gendered and environmental aspects of the genocide, specifically drawing from African ecofeminist and trauma insights, is underexplored. This study examines the colonial history of genocide and ecological disruption in what was then German South-West Africa, today Namibia, by closely reading themes in Lauri Kubuitsile’s The Scattering (2016), Jasper Utley’s The Lie of the Land (2017), and Rukee Tjingaete’s The Weeping Graves of Our Ancestors (2017). The study responds to historical and legal discourses that have marginalised these dimensions of the genocide. It proposes a more inclusive conceptualisation of trauma that includes, for example, Rob Nixon’s “slow violence”, in dialogue with Cathy Caruth’s “double wound”, thus speaking not only to the psychic wounds but also the cultural injuries transmitted across generations and ecosystems. As such, the study recognises that the genocide transcended physical killing; it also involved structural forms of violence, better understood through Johan Galtung’s concept of violence as “needs deprivation”. Engaging with posthumanist and ecocritical perspectives, like those of Amitav Ghosh, Carolyn Merchant, and Evan Mwangi, the study challenges human-centred narratives of colonial violence and highlights how it also affects nonhuman life. It emphasises that the environment was a crucial site of colonial violence, resistance, and survival. It reveals that the genocide transformed children, particularly those who joined the resistance army, into liminal beings. As per Victor Turner’s concept of “liminality”, they are neither fully children nor fully adults, neither fully innocent nor fully culpable. Their embodied traumas resonate within the environment itself, serving as a carrier of affective. In this way, pain and memory circulation between humans and nonhumans echoes Sara Ahmed’s idea of “affective circulation”. Using Achille Mbembe’s “Necropolitics”, the study exemplifies how colonialism determined which colonised body was deemed ‘grievable’, reduced to bare life, stripped of human, cultural and spiritual recognition. Through Homi Bhabha’s concept of “mimicry” and Frantz Fanon’s idea of the “colonised intellectual”, I interrogate the fractured identities of indigenous characters who converted to Christianity. Subsequently, I demonstrate how colonial interactions caused cultural dissonance and ontological alienation. This positions the converts as ‘almost the same, but not quite’ to the colonisers, thus exposing the tension between assimilation and exclusion under colonialism. I employ Ngu gĩ wa Thiong’o’s concept of “cultural bomb” to contextualise cultural incoherence as depicted in indigenous characters. I turn to Sylvia Tamale to examine the instrumentalisation of indigenous women’s bodies. Through Gayatri Spivak’s “subaltern”, the study exposes how women are muted within colonial and patriarchal systems. Essentially, I argue that the literary texts critique colonial, racial, and patriarchal systems that forced women, children and the elderly to survive hostile conditions. Their accounts emphasise that physical escape from concentration camp encampment does not equate suffering. It is merely its mutation, and the work of recovery, healing, and resistance continues long after the gates of Shark Island are closed. AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Geen opsomming beskikbaar. Doctoral 2025-12-11T08:48:14Z 2025-12-11T08:48:14Z 2025-12 Thesis https://scholar.sun.ac.za/handle/10019.1/134494 en Stellenbosch University viii, 200 pages application/pdf Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University |
| spellingShingle | Namibian literature (English) -- History and criticism Genocide in literature Ecofeminism Feminism and literature -- Africa Genocide -- Namibia -- History -- 20th century UCTD Andima, Eva-Liisa An African ecofeminist exploration of the gendered and environmental facets of the Herero and Nama genocide as depicted in selected Namibian narratives of the genocide |
| title | An African ecofeminist exploration of the gendered and environmental facets of the Herero and Nama genocide as depicted in selected Namibian narratives of the genocide |
| title_full | An African ecofeminist exploration of the gendered and environmental facets of the Herero and Nama genocide as depicted in selected Namibian narratives of the genocide |
| title_fullStr | An African ecofeminist exploration of the gendered and environmental facets of the Herero and Nama genocide as depicted in selected Namibian narratives of the genocide |
| title_full_unstemmed | An African ecofeminist exploration of the gendered and environmental facets of the Herero and Nama genocide as depicted in selected Namibian narratives of the genocide |
| title_short | An African ecofeminist exploration of the gendered and environmental facets of the Herero and Nama genocide as depicted in selected Namibian narratives of the genocide |
| title_sort | african ecofeminist exploration of the gendered and environmental facets of the herero and nama genocide as depicted in selected namibian narratives of the genocide |
| topic | Namibian literature (English) -- History and criticism Genocide in literature Ecofeminism Feminism and literature -- Africa Genocide -- Namibia -- History -- 20th century UCTD |
| url | https://scholar.sun.ac.za/handle/10019.1/134494 |
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