The image of American in southern african literature

Abstract

Abstract - This dissertation is an attempt to trace and explain the image of ‘America’ in the Southern African literature from a psychoanalytic — and, more specifically, from a Lacanian — perspective. The paper argues that whereas in the works from the 1950s there was a wholly positive imaginary identification with the African American other, with its music, its political struggles, its achievements in the sports arena, in later works there is a symbolic renunciation of all things American. It is argued that these shifts in identification were also a response to the political events taking place both in the United States and in the region.