Bettina Weiss

In the context of sexuality and power in African literature, a kind of writing the body, that is, to bring the body into play as a narrative paradigm as a site of pain, anxiety, conflict, subversion, recreation, and emancipation is what I find most suitable for describing my close reading of African women’s writing in Southern Africa. Corporeality is a central agent in the constitution of female identities and subjectivities in the works of writers such as Yvonne Vera, Bessie Head, Zoe Wicomb, and Dianne Case, just to name a few from the southern African region. The following article deals with Dianne Case’s Toasted Penis and Cheese, a novel which focuses on the crux of gender stereotyping, closely connected with sexual (in)activity. The body is central in the protagonist’s story. Jennifer explores this along the line of what I call “the distressing body,” “the body as discovery,” and “the recreated body”. Her distress is not only uttered to explain her torments but, above all, to u...

Bettina Weiss (ed.)
The End of Unheard Narratives
Contemporary Perspectives on Southern African Literatures

This study focuses on contemporary literatures of the southern African region and brings together the work of scholars who cover pressing questions about the constructions of Othering, about locked-away-narratives &ndash stories which are regarded as anathema to society or narratives about the female teras or the twisted “reality” of the construction of the family, the nation, or history. Their work comprises aspects of the implementation of strategic devices which are used to justify and reinforce these constructions, but it also elaborates the strategies which hold the potential to subvert and destabilise rigid conceptions. The study reflects on issues such as the diverse modes of portraying HIV/AIDS in literatures of South Africa and Zimbabwe; it examines the socio-(homo)sexual experiences of Black Men in South Africa; it traces the traumatic transitions in Namibia from the war to its aftermath, read through the prism of gender; it proposes homoerotic readings of Black women's desires; and it demonstrates how “speaking” textiles function as a recurrent image for the contradictions inherent in the postcolonial voice and how they offer new structures to tackle silence. This collection is united by the contributors' attempts to lift the veil from unheard narratives by moving them from the margin to the centre of discussion. The essays vividly demonstrate that the end of unheard narratives, as the title of this book reads, holds a double-sided implication.

The Editor: Bettina Weiss received her PhD in the field of gender and body discourse in African women's writing of Southern Africa at the Humboldt University of Berlin, Germany.

The Contributors: Lizzy Attree, Katrin Berndt, Dorothy Driver, Bevelyn Dube, Jessica Hemmings, Robert Muponde, Agnes Muriungi, Tom Odhiambo, Margie Orford, Charles Pfukwa, Meg Samuelson, Annemarié van Niekerk, and Bettina Weiss.

Julius Heinicke, Hilmar Heister, Tobias R. Klein and Viola Prüschenk (eds.)
Kuvaka Ukama – Building Bridges
A Tribute to Flora Veit-Wild

Bridges connect two entities divided by a gap. Flora Veit-Wild has been a traveler of worlds, in the flesh and in the mind. Her insistence on the emphatic modernity of African literatures have influenced academics and artists from all walks of life, as well as shaping her own research, that includes topics such as surrealism, codeswitching, “new orality”, discourses of body, gender, sexuality, madness and violence, questions of cultural translation and the history of scholarship. This volume compiles a variety of scholarly, literary and artistic contributions from her friends and colleagues in Germany, Zimbabwe and other countries. Our connections to others are bridges of the metaphorical kind, crossing the chasms of intersubjective differences – Building Bridges can be translated into Shona as kuvaka ukama, literally “building relations”. The various contributions to this volume reflect on how Flora has reached out and formed relations and alliances with a great variety of people. She has strongly influenced many upcoming scholars and has contributed immensely to the development of the studies of African literatures, especially here in Berlin, Germany.

The Contributors: Anne Adams, Ulrike Auga, Jane Bryce, Chirikure Chirikure, Lutz Diegner, Sule Egya, Susanne Gehrmann, Liselotte Glage, Ricarda de Haas, Helon Habila, Julius Heinicke, Hilmar Heister, Annekie Joubert, Eileen Julien, Tobias Robert Klein, Maria Kublitz-Kramer, Kahiudi Claver Mabana, Christine Matzke, Chiedza Musengezi, Dirk Naguschewski, Shumirai Nyota, Marion Pape, Ineke Phaf-Rheinberger, Lesego Rampolokeng, Frank Schulze-Engler, Bettina Weiss, Tobias Wendl.

Julius Heinicke, Hilmar Heister, Tobias R. Klein and Viola Prüschenk (eds.)
Kuvaka Ukama – Building Bridges
A Tribute to Flora Veit-Wild

Bridges connect two entities divided by a gap. Flora Veit-Wild has been a traveler of worlds, in the flesh and in the mind. Her insistence on the emphatic modernity of African literatures have influenced academics and artists from all walks of life, as well as shaping her own research, that includes topics such as surrealism, codeswitching, “new orality”, discourses of body, gender, sexuality, madness and violence, questions of cultural translation and the history of scholarship. This volume compiles a variety of scholarly, literary and artistic contributions from her friends and colleagues in Germany, Zimbabwe and other countries. Our connections to others are bridges of the metaphorical kind, crossing the chasms of intersubjective differences – Building Bridges can be translated into Shona as kuvaka ukama, literally “building relations”. The various contributions to this volume reflect on how Flora has reached out and formed relations and alliances with a great variety of people. She has strongly influenced many upcoming scholars and has contributed immensely to the development of the studies of African literatures, especially here in Berlin, Germany.

The Contributors: Anne Adams, Ulrike Auga, Jane Bryce, Chirikure Chirikure, Lutz Diegner, Sule Egya, Susanne Gehrmann, Liselotte Glage, Ricarda de Haas, Helon Habila, Julius Heinicke, Hilmar Heister, Annekie Joubert, Eileen Julien, Tobias Robert Klein, Maria Kublitz-Kramer, Kahiudi Claver Mabana, Christine Matzke, Chiedza Musengezi, Dirk Naguschewski, Shumirai Nyota, Marion Pape, Ineke Phaf-Rheinberger, Lesego Rampolokeng, Frank Schulze-Engler, Bettina Weiss, Tobias Wendl.

This study is the first book-length analysis of African women's writing of Southern Africa with a focus on writing the body. The thesis is that women are not voiceless, but hold a powerful, liberating potential: they "throw their voices" by implementing a strategic corporeal. Notably, this mode is not carried out in a way of emphasising corporeal difference by lack, but by attributing positive markers to the body. It reaches beyond a speaking which only represents women's thoughts and emotions physically - a mode which might render the impression that they are incapable of expressing their conceptions and sentiments linguistically. It is an empowerment that reflects their skill to break up the bonds between language and body. This study is wide-ranging in its choice of authors and themes.