Coetzee's haunting of Australian literature

In June 2006, the Good Weekend, the magazine supplementing Saturday’s the Age in Melbourne, ran the following cover story by Catharine Lumby: “Worried TV will turn your child into a zombie?” The cover featured a science-fiction image of a boy’s upturned face. Televisions were reflected in his pupils, giving them the effect of being square instead of round. The message, though, was ultimately non-alarmist with the subheading already instructing “Relax. It’s all good”. Stories like this appear regularly in the press, and while I am not interested in debating whether TV is good or bad for children, I am interested in the popular image of children—or, for that matter, adults—as being akin to zombies when they watch TV, if only because something similar happens when we read books. Although it is not as fashionable to talk about it, we become emptied of ourselves, possessed by something other.

Environmental education research in southern Africa: dilemmas of interpretation

These multiple framings of our reflections on environmental education research in southern Africa are written as dilemmas of interpretation that aim to disrupt any temptation to generalise or essentialise its qualities and characteristics. Recognising that research is a textual practice, we use J. M. Coetzee's portrayal of the dilemmas faced by African novelists as a point of departure in reflecting on the changing landscape of environmental education research in southern Africa as we have experienced it over six years. We provide readings framed by reference to post-colonialism, changing epistemologies and methodologies, contexts of transformation and tension, the influence of international organisations such as the United Nations and its instrumentalities, and concerns about human rights and accountability. We conclude by affirming the post-colonialist trajectories of environmental education research in southern Africa and speculating on the distinctive possibilities that recovering ubuntu (an ethic of sharing and hospitality) might offer to researchers in this region.

Unjustified enrichment : having a friend wearing different hats, who needs enemies?

The decision in the present case is important for enrichment law within the context of the confirmation and application of : (a) the general requirements of an enrichment action; and (b) the quantum rule pertaining to an enrichment claim.

Intertextual turns in curriculum inquiry : fictions, diffractions and deconstructions

This thesis is based primarily on work published in academic refereed journals between 1994 and 2003. Taken as a whole, the thesis explores and enacts an evolving methodology for curriculum inquiry which foregrounds the generativity of fiction in reading, writing and representing curriculum problems and issues. This methodology is informed by the narrative and textual 'turns' in the humanities and social sciences - especially poststructuralist and deconstructive approaches to literary and cultural criticism - and is performed as a series of narrative experiments and 'intertextual turns'. Narrative theory suggests that we can think of all discourse as taking the form of a story, and poststructuralist theorising invites us to think of all discourse as taking the form of a text; this thesis argues that intertextual and deconstructive readings of the stories and texts that constitute curriculum work can produce new meanings and understandings. The thesis places particular emphasis on the uses of fiction and fictional modes of representation in curriculum inquiry and suggests that our purposes might sometimes be better served by (re)presenting the texts we produce as deliberate fictions rather than as 'factual' stories. The thesis also demonstrates that some modes and genres of fiction can help us to move our research efforts beyond 'reflection' (an optical metaphor for displacing an image) by producing texts that 'diffract' the normative storylines of curriculum inquiry (diffraction is an optical metaphor for transformation). The thesis begins with an introduction that situates (autobiographically and historically) the narrative experiments and intertextual turns performed in the thesis as both advancements in, and transgressions of, deliberative and critical reconceptualist curriculum theorising. Several of the chapters that follow examine textual continuities and discontinuities between the various objects and methods of curriculum inquiry and particular fictional genres (such as crime stories and science fiction) and/or particular fictional works (including Bram Stoker's Dracula, J.M. Coetzee's Disgrace, and Ursula Le Guin's The Telling). Other chapters demonstrate how intertextual and deconstructive reading strategies can inform inquiries focused on specific subject matters (with particular reference to environmental education) and illuminate contemporary issues and debates in curriculum (especially the internationalisation and globalisation of curriculum work). The thesis concludes with suggestions for further refinement of methodologies that privilege narrative and fiction in curriculum inquiry.

Sexual abuse in 'Disgrace' and 'Cereus Blooms at Night': the case for hope

Abuse is rife in Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee and Cereus Blooms at Night by Shani Mootoo. Sexual violence is in both narratives, part of their richly textured social, emotional and political worlds. Fiction involving various traumas seems bleak, almost hopeless, perhaps weighted by sadness. Yet both these novels, even through depictions of rupturing, disruptive rape, trigger a recognition of possibility and potential among characters and perhaps readers. It is in this open ended potential for betterment of some kind that hope lies. What is the nature of hope and to what extent is it present in these novels? In this paper, I explore the emotion of hope in relation to the notion of becoming as elaborated on by Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari particularly in A Thousand Plateaus. They expound on Remy Chauvin‟s term “aparallel evolution” in relation to becoming (Deleuze and Guattari, 11). Deleuze also states that becoming is not a “phenomena of imitation or assimilation”. Rather, it is an encounter, “a double capture” (Deleuze and Parnet 2) between heterogeneous elements. There is no end or destination in becoming; it is constant change. I examine the transformative potential of becoming to elicit signs of hope in these novels. David Lurie, the self-absorbed womaniser and arguably rapist, becomes-dog by the end of Disgrace. How does this contribute to any sense of redemption and consequently hope? And how does hope emanate from the beaten, broken, brutally raped Mala Ramchandin in Cereus Blooms at Night? At heart, this paper is an acknowledgment of the unique relation literature has with life and the enriching insight that it may provide into the expression of hope.