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Collaboratively Writing a Self: Textual Strategies in Margaret McCord's The Calling of Katie Makanya: A Memoir of South Africa
Linnaeus University, Faculty of Arts and Humanities, Department of Languages.ORCID iD: 0000-0002-6726-9990
2015 (English)In: Research in African Literatures, ISSN 0034-5210, E-ISSN 1527-2044, Vol. 46, no 2, p. 70-84Article in journal (Refereed) Published
Abstract [en]

This paper analyzes The Calling of Katie Makanya (1995) by Margaret McCord as a collaborative autobiography. Katie’s motive for wanting her story to be told is not a desire to find her own voice and identity through narration, but seemingly rather to add to and complete the picture presented in the narrative My Patients Were Zulus (1946), written by Katie’s employer and Margaret McCord’s father, Dr. James B. McCord. Moreover, Margaret McCord is portrayed in The Calling of Katie Makanya as finding it problematic as a white woman to write a black woman’s story. Using the theories of Judith Butler, the analyses show that the context of the narrative’s emergence creates a complex framing of The Calling of Katie Makanya. This paper aims to highlight and examine instances where the effects of this complex framing rise to the surface of the text and create tensions in the narrative.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
2015. Vol. 46, no 2, p. 70-84
Keywords [en]
Collaborative autobiography, Margaret McCord, James McCord, Katie Makanya, South Africa
National Category
Specific Literatures
Research subject
Humanities, English literature
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:lnu:diva-43426DOI: 10.2979/reseafrilite.46.2.70ISI: 000354073700005Scopus ID: 2-s2.0-84930251858OAI: oai:DiVA.org:lnu-43426DiVA, id: diva2:814879
Available from: 2015-05-28 Created: 2015-05-28 Last updated: 2023-07-07Bibliographically approved
In thesis
1. Black Lives, White Quotation Marks: Textual Constructions of Selfhood in South African Multivoiced Life Writing
Open this publication in new window or tab >>Black Lives, White Quotation Marks: Textual Constructions of Selfhood in South African Multivoiced Life Writing
2018 (English)Doctoral thesis, comprehensive summary (Other academic)
Abstract [en]

This thesis focuses on South African multivoiced and collaborative life writing. The analysed primary texts are The Long Journey of Poppie Nongena (1980) by Elsa Joubert, The Calling of Katie Makanya: A Memoir of South Africa (1995) by Margaret McCord, Finding Mr Madini (1999) by Jonathan Morgan and the Great African Spiderwriters, David’s Story (2000) by Zoë Wicomb, and There Was This Goat: Investigating the Truth Commission Testimony of Notrose Nobomvu Konile (2009), co-written by Antjie Krog, Nosisi Mpolweni and Kopano Ratele. All of these primary texts are either collaborative autobiographies about black lives, multivoiced life writing texts about black lives, or a text that problematises this kind of life writing where predominantly disadvantaged, black life writing subjects either have had their lives narrated or have had their narration steered by well educated, advantaged, Westernised and usually white writers.

The analyses of the primary texts are carried out by problematising them in the light of the South African historical and cultural context within which they were produced. The focus of the analyses is on the effects on and the consequences for textual constructions of selfhood when the writers tell or include the life writing subjects’ lives in the life writing texts. The involvement of the writers in the life writing projects is argued to greatly have impacted the textually represented selves that were created in the resulting multivoiced life writing texts.

Drawing on theory rooted in postcolonial studies, life writing in general, and self-narration in particular, this thesis concludes that the examined black South African life narratives to various extents are told on white, Western terms and thus inserted in white quotation marks. White quotation marks are defined in this thesis as a certain Western perception of self-narration and selfhood, consisting of components rooted in language, racial tropes, narrative form, and Western autobiographical traditions. Both writers and life writing subjects have been involved in creating or employing these white quotation marks. In some cases this has been an unintentional result and in other cases it has been a conscious effort.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
Växjö: Linnaeus University Press, 2018
Series
Linnaeus University Dissertations ; 314
Keywords
Antjie Krog, collaborative autobiography, collaborative life writing, Elsa Joubert, Jonathan Morgan, Kopano Ratele, Margaret McCord, multivoiced life writing, Nosisi Mpolweni, selfhood, South Africa, Zoë Wicomb
National Category
General Literature Studies Specific Languages
Research subject
Humanities, English literature
Identifiers
urn:nbn:se:lnu:diva-71410 (URN)9789188761439 (ISBN)9789188761446 (ISBN)
Public defence
2018-04-06, Homeros, 351 95 Växjö, Växjö, 13:15 (English)
Opponent
Supervisors
Available from: 2018-03-08 Created: 2018-03-06 Last updated: 2024-02-21Bibliographically approved

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