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Peripheral Realism and the Bildungsroman in Tsitsi Dangarembga's Nervous Conditions
- Author(s):
- Gabriele Lazzari (see profile)
- Date:
- 2018
- Subject(s):
- Literature, Fiction, Criticism and interpretation, Realism
- Item Type:
- Article
- Tag(s):
- Dangarembga, postcolonial, bildungsroman, mimesis, Postcolonial English literature, World literature, Novel (genre), Novel criticism
- Permanent URL:
- http://dx.doi.org/10.17613/qt59-fx60
- Abstract:
- This essay analyzes Tsitsi dangarembga’s Nervous Conditions and argues that this novel appropriates and resignifies the bildungsroman, thus demonstrating that this genre cannot provide a symbolic resolution for the “nervous condition” of the colonized subject. To do so, I integrate a world- systemic approach with a formalist analysis of genre. Starting from the premise that the modern world-system has been constituted by capitalist modernization and colonial expansion, I read Dangarembga’s novel as a localized literary response to these two world-historical forces and analyze the entanglements between formal choices and socioeconomic transformations, as well as their impact on the characters’ psyche. By appropriating the realist bildungsroman from a peripheral perspective, Nervous Conditions frames the tense relations between a self-reflecting individuality and her social totality. In so doing, Dangarembga rejects the ideological premises of a genre tied to European bourgeois subjectivity and simultaneously reactivates realism and mimesis as dynamic and flexible modes of representation.
- Metadata:
- xml
- Published as:
- Journal article
- Status:
- Published
- Last Updated:
- 4 years ago
- License:
- All Rights Reserved
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