Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Notes on Contributors
- EDITORIAL ARTICLE
- ARTICLES
- Gender Politics, Home & Nation in Zulu Sofola's King Emene:
- The Militant Writer in Sembène's Early Fiction:
- Psychological Violence in Bessie Head's
- Constructing the Destructive City:
- History, Progress & Prospects inthe Development of African Literature:
- Dispelling the Myth of the ‘Silent Woman’:
- Interrogating Dichotomies, Reconstructing Emancipation:
- Es'kia Mphahlele's Enduring Truth in Down Second Avenue
- A Tribute to Cyprian O.D. Ekwensi (26 September 1921–4 November 2007): The Writer, the Man & His Era
- REVIEWS
Psychological Violence in Bessie Head's
Maru & A Question of Power
from ARTICLES
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 April 2013
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Notes on Contributors
- EDITORIAL ARTICLE
- ARTICLES
- Gender Politics, Home & Nation in Zulu Sofola's King Emene:
- The Militant Writer in Sembène's Early Fiction:
- Psychological Violence in Bessie Head's
- Constructing the Destructive City:
- History, Progress & Prospects inthe Development of African Literature:
- Dispelling the Myth of the ‘Silent Woman’:
- Interrogating Dichotomies, Reconstructing Emancipation:
- Es'kia Mphahlele's Enduring Truth in Down Second Avenue
- A Tribute to Cyprian O.D. Ekwensi (26 September 1921–4 November 2007): The Writer, the Man & His Era
- REVIEWS
Summary
THE NATURE OF PSYCHOLOGICAL VIOLENCE IN THE SOUTH AFRICAN NOVEL
Violence is initiated by those who oppress, who exploit, who fail to recognize others as people not by those who are oppressed, exploited, and unrecognized. It is not the unloved who cause disaffection but those who cannot love because they love only themselves. It is not the helpless, subject to terror, who with their power create the concrete situation which begets the rejects of life. (Freire 1972: 32)
Bessie Head is a South African writer who has written several novels and short stories. Her works helped to expose the dehumanization and inhuman treatments meted on the non-white South Africans in the era of apartheid. The apartheid policy and racism of the South African government at the time made life unbearable for the non-whites who were its victims, and these dehumanized people found it difficult to accept the white oppression. The regime also offered great challenges to South African writers who were not able to exercise their mental and emotional thoughts as much as they would want. However, Bessie Head, through her works Maru and A Question of Power exposes some aspects of the psychological violence meted to the non-whites in South Africa.
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- Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2012