A study of the theme of borderland in Nadine Gordimer's fiction

Abstract

This doctoral project is an analytical study of South African writer, Nadine Gordimer's fiction produced from 1949 to 1994. She presents a theme similar to the post-colonial critic, Homi Bhabha's notion of borderland which he propounds as a place of creativity and cultural hybridity in his work The Location of Culture (1994). The "borderland" in Gordimer's fiction acts as a liminal space and becomes a connective tissue in her characters' lives. It emerges in the form of crossing physical frontiers and mental barriers which existed in South African society. Through moments of transition, Gordimer makes her characters aware of a liberal person's marginal position, between the reactionary colonial past and the "inbetween-ness" of the borderland in radical future of South Africa. Along with this introductory background, Chapter One establishes the dual working of physical and psychological processes through which Gordimer develops the theme of "borderland" in her fiction. The subsequent three chapters focus on the variety in the presentation of "borderland" encounters in her fiction written before and after Sharpeville (1960). The thesis concludes that the dual development of physical and psychological processes is a central narrative strategy which determines a link between chronology and the presentation of "borderland" in Gordimer's fiction.

Date of Award	Jan 2007
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	University of Bedfordshire