The poetry of silence : perpetuating the profound burden : a female family narrative

[摘要] ENGLISH ABSTRACT: The thesis investigate the family narrative. While engaging specifically with my femalefamily narrative, it essentially questions how and why we create and perpetuate this narrativeof absence and presence. The acts of memory, autobiography, testimony and the subsequentcreation of the archive are probed. Such probes attempt to enter the sphere of the unsayableand unsaid, partially lifting the female existence, identity and body from the silencesurrounding the private and intimate realm she dwells in.The creation and recreation of meaning through the use and manipulation of time andlanguage is examined through-out whilst continually reading absence as presence. This isdone in order to locate and access the silent and forgotten. The thesis problematises thenotion of the 'I' and the 'initial' through looking at the repercussions of the employinglinearity. Ultimately, this writing process reveals the contradictions and dualities we bothcreate and aim to obliterate within the individual and collective composition of the familynarrative.

[发布机构] Stellenbosch University