RT Dissertation/Thesis
T1 Michel Foucault and the un-queer politics of apartheid: homophobia and masculinity in South African gay narratives in english
T2 Michel Foucault e as políticas non-queer do apartheid: homofobia e masculinidade en narrativas gay sudafricanas en inglés
A1 Jorge Lozano, Mariana
K1 5701.07 Lengua y Literatura
K1 6202 Teoría, Análisis y Crítica Literarias
K1 5206.09 Sexo
AB My pre doctoral work at Universidad de Vigo will use the theories of the French philosopher Michel Foucault about control and dominion to analyse gay South African literature in the context of apartheid. Throughout my thesis I will try to analyse how the repression and the persecution suffered by homosexuals during the apartheid years can be explained through the influential work of Michel Foucault, taking into account basically Histoire de la Sexualité, Vol. I La Volonté de Savoir (1976); Vol. II L´Usage des Plaisirs (1984); Vol. III Le Souci de Soi (1984) and Surveiller et Punir (1975), two of the author´s most representative works.	Starting with this theoretical study, I will analyse a series of novels written by South African authors both during apartheid and in the following years, which have as a main subject the repression, persecution and bullying suffered by homosexual men under this regime. Finally, this work seeks to give an answer to the question of whether Michel Foucault can be considered as a Queer theorist and to the appropriateness of his theories in non-European contexts.It seems clear that the theoretical frame chosen to develop my project is thus the one analysed in Foucault´s work, understood basically as a Queer theorist. However, other authors such as Benedict Anderson, Zygmunt Bauman or Antonio Gramsci, will serve to sustain my analysis of apartheid as a constructed discourse. Some of the concepts developed by these authors, concepts that tend to explain how nations and power become accepted and hegemonic discourse, will serve to explain the genesis of the South African state. With this construction of the Afrikaner state, based on a segregationist and homophobic legislation, the mechanisms of surveillance, the discipline and the state´s interventionism start. It is at this point when Foucault´s work is of capital importance to analyse and understand how apartheid as a discourse functions. To Foucault, the power exerted by tyranny is never fair because it leaves no place to resistance. Taking this concept into account, I will analyse how resistance is constructed in these literary works as an exercise of personal liberation and of politics of the individual´s transformation, what constitutes an ethical and spiritual act itself. Finally, it needs to be stated that the kind of literature in which this thesis focuses on is in a constant process of evolution, meaning that the appearance of new publications relevant to its development would be taken into account. In the same way, the investigation´s theoretical frame is of a flexible nature and can be expanded to include certain disciplines such as postcolonialism in particular moments of the work.
LK http://hdl.handle.net/11093/3503
UL http://hdl.handle.net/11093/3503
LA eng
DS Investigo
RD 28-nov-2023