%0 Journal Article
%T The Nation and the Subaltern in Yvonne Vera¡¯s Butterfly Burning
%A O Nwakanma
%J Tydskrif vir letterkunde
%D 2013
%I University of Pretoria
%X Yvonne Vera¡¯s death in 2005 brought to a tragic close the career of one of Zimbabwe¡¯s, indeed Africa¡¯s, more engaging contemporary writers. But her powerful novel, Butterfly Burning continues to mirror an aspect of Vera¡¯s enduring concern: the place of African women in the context of power both within the colonial and the postcolonial moments. This image of the ¡°woman in shadows¡± also resonates in the kernel of the subaltern subject in Spivak¡¯s essay, ¡°Can the Subaltern Speak?¡± I draw from Spivak¡¯s canonical essay, but simply as a critique of its notion of the burdened subjectivity of the colonized reified in the widow¡¯s self-immolation, and seen as a problematic condition of representation¡ªa form of impotent silence. In contrast, I suggest that Vera¡¯s Phephelaphi directs our attention by a votive suicide that speaks. This essay thus proceeds from a re-reading of the discourse of subalternity to situate Yvonne Vera¡¯s novel as an act primarily of resistance against the situation of patriarchal enclosure under colonialism.
%U http://www.ajol.info/index.php/tvl/article/view/85481