Nostalgia for the future. Gendered violence, post-apartheid spatiality and the male gaze: the troubled ‘new’ South Africa in Like Clockwork, Daddy’s Girl and Water Music, three crime novels by Margie Orford

Orford, Margaret Anne (2020) Nostalgia for the future. Gendered violence, post-apartheid spatiality and the male gaze: the troubled ‘new’ South Africa in Like Clockwork, Daddy’s Girl and Water Music, three crime novels by Margie Orford. Doctoral thesis, University of East Anglia.

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Abstract

The Clare Hart series consists of five crime novels. Submitted as the creative component of this PhD by publication are Like Clockwork, Daddy’s Girl and Water Music, the three novels that have gendered violence as their primary subject. The critical component is this essay.

Through a consideration of the critical reception of my crime novels and trauma theory, I discuss the ways in which these novels represent the gendered violence of the new South Africa, and trouble the frameworks and assumptions through which such gendered violence is put into writing. At stake in this discussion are the parameters and possibilities of the crime genre; and the blind spots and assumptions informing some influential theories of trauma. A discussion of the representational strategies of my work elicits an argument that South African crime fiction has introduced a new iteration of post-colonial nostalgia, which can be termed a nostalgia for the future.

Keywords: South Africa, gender, sexual violence, crime fiction, nostalgia

Item Type:	Thesis (Doctoral)
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Publication
Faculty \ School:	Faculty of Arts and Humanities > School of Literature and Creative Writing (former - to 2011)
Depositing User:	Chris White
Date Deposited:	21 Oct 2020 14:37
Last Modified:	21 Oct 2020 14:37
URI:	https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/77387
DOI:

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