Study of the self and other: the white women's struggle of positionality in the heart of South Africa

Abstract

This dissertation will primarily focus on how colonialism created the binaries of the colonizer (Self) and the colonized (Other). The dichotomy, not only did it divide the geographical locations of East and West, or separated racial identities into black or white, but also separates gender into Self and Other. The socially constructed nature of women, their treatment and social roles are at the core of their otherness where they are colonized, both by imperial ideologies and patriarchal domination. My dissertation will focus on the three novels that are concerned with South Africa: Doris Lessing's The Grass is Singing (1950), Nadine Gordimer's Julys People (1981) and J.M. Coetzee's Disgrace (1999).