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STATES OF NOMADISM, CONDITIONS OF DIASPORA: STUDIES IN WRITING BETWEEN SOUTH AFRICA AND THE UNITED STATES, 1913 - 1936 by Rogier Philippe Courau A thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English Studies University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg 2008 ABSTRACT Using the theoretical idea of ‘writing between’ to describe the condition of the travelling subject, this study attempts to chart some of the literary, intellectual and cultural connections that exist(ed) between black South African intellectuals and writers, and the experiences of their African- American counterparts in their common movements towards civil liberty, enfranchisement and valorised consciousness. The years 1913-1936 saw important historical events taking place in the United States, South Africa and the world – and their effects on the peoples of the African diaspora were signficant. Such events elicited unified black diasporic responses to colonial hegemony. Using theories of transatlantic/transnational cultural negotiation as a starting point, conceptualisations that map out, and give context to, the connections between transcontinental black experiences of slavery and subjugation, this study seeks to re-envisage such black South African and African-American intellectual discourses through reading them anew. These texts have been re-covered and re-situated, are both published and unpublished, and engage the notion of travel and the instability of transatlantic voyaging in the liminal state of ‘writing between’. With my particular regional focus, I explore the cultural and intellectual politics of these diasporic interrelations in the form of case studies of texts from several genres, including fiction and autobiography. They are: the travel writings of Xhosa intellectual, DDT Jabavu, with a focus on his 1913 journey to the United States; an analysis of Ethelreda Lewis’s novel, Wild Deer (1933), which imagines the visit of an African-American musician, Paul Robeson-like figure to South Africa; and Eslanda Goode Robeson’s representation of her African Journey (1945) to the country in 1936, and the traveller’s gaze as expressed through the ethnographic imagination, or the anthropological ‘eye’ in the text. ii TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract..........................................................................................................ii List of Figures................................................................................................iv Acknowledgements.......................................................................................vi Declaration..................................................................................................viii CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION African Diaspora Theory, the Ghost of John Dube and the Cultural Politics of ‘Writing Between’......................................................................................2 CHAPTER 2 Establishing Trajectories: Nomadism and the Space of Worldliness in the Writings of DDT Jabavu..............................................................................36 CHAPTER 3 Performance as Text / Autobiography as Performance: Davidson Jabavu in the United States and the Signfiying of a Civilised Self, 1913....................77 CHAPTER 4 Imaginary Journeys, Autobiographical Subjects: Reading Liminalities, Limits and African-American Subjects in Ethelreda Lewis’s Wild Deer......................136 CHAPTER 5 Mrs Robeson in South Africa: Ethnographic Imaginings in an African Journey.........................................................................................................202 CONCLUSION Connecting Concerns: The Meaning of ‘Diaspora’ and the Politics of Cultural Memory in Post-apartheid South Africa....................................................258 Bibliography................................................................................................270 LIST OF FIGURES (from pages 121 to 135) 1 Photograph of a youthful Dube during his time as a student at Oberlin College. The image is from his published lecture, A Familiar Talk Upon my Native Land and Some Things Found There (1892). 2 Dube’s writing desk, preserved in his home at Inanda township near Durban. He was neighbour to Mahatma Gandhi during the Indian leader’s time in South Africa (1893-1914). The image was taken by cellular phone during my recent visit to the place (7 July 2007), which is now a museum and also houses Dube’s printing press. 3 Frontispiece of DDT Jabavu’s E-Amerika (1932a). 4 Frontispiece of the account of James Aggrey’s travels in Africa and the United States (Smith 1932 [1929]). 5 DDT Jabavu in 1911, then a student at the University of London (University of South Africa). 6 DDT Jabavu, while a student at Birmingham University in 1914 (University of South Africa). 7 Poster promoting DDT Jabavu’s musical performance of August 13, 1913, at Tuskegee. This performance is the most extensively described in the diary and the poster was pasted onto a side margin within the text. 8 A poster for a later performance that includes reference to one of the lectures that DDT Jabavu delivered to African-American audiences on Africa and South Africa. 9 DDT Jabavu, probably on board ship returning to South Africa in 1914 (University of Cape Town). 10 Hand-coloured postcard from Tuskegee Institute which had been placed in the back of Jabavu’s diary. 11 Photographic portrait of Ethelreda Lewis [from Couzens (1992a)]. 12 Cover of the 1984 reissue of Wild Deer by David Philip. Cover illustration of Robert de la Harpe by Anne Sassoon. iv 13 Paul Robeson as Othello in a career-defining performance of the Moor. 14 A photograph of Paul Robeson, after whom the character of de la Harpe is partly modelled. [from Eslanda Goode Robeson’s Paul Robeson, Negro (1930)]. 15 Photograph of Clements Kadalie from his autobiography (1970). 16 Photograph of Roland Hayes. 17 The map of Eslanda Goode Robeson’s African Journey. 18 The map of part of the South African leg of Robeson’s trip. 19 Eslanda Goode Robeson and Pauli arriving in Cape Town. (The Outspan, July 10, 1936) 20 Eslanda Goode Robeson’s son, Pauli (extreme right), with the Elders of Ngite. (African Journey) 21 Pauli and Eslanda Goode Robeson visit with the Mulamuzi, the chief justice of Buganda, at his home in Uganda. 22 The map of Robeson’s journey through Central Africa, important given that it traces the progression of her anthropological fieldwork undertaking. v ACKNOWLEDGMENTS In writing these acknowledgements I also set out a preface to this study. This project was begun and ended on opposite sides of an ocean that has been the basis of its historical and present formation. The tides of transatlantic slavery; the peopling of the New World; the journey of black South African people to this recently-formed ‘home’ in the first half of the twentieth century; the imaginings and implications of it for several transoceanic black cultures; and the return of black Americans to the tragedy of another unattainable ‘home’, frame the concerns of this thesis. What has facilitated my ability as a doctoral student to travel between such spaces has been the funding of the American government through its Fulbright scholarship programme (for nine months of research at the University of California, Los Angeles) that, historically and in the present, stands ambiguously between states of liberation in the present, and conditions of oppression in the past. The support of Deva Govindsamy and Riley Sever of the US Consulate-General in Durban were instrumental in my taking advantage of this opportunity. The first note of thanks must go to my supervisor, Dr Catherine Woeber, for guiding the progress of this project. It is her support that has given me the opportunity to access the wonderful research resources in the United States and has kept me focused throughout this process. Professor Liz Gunner played an important part in the initial stages of this project as well, providing a sense of direction in the sea of research proposal confusion. It is the South African National Research Foundation that generously funded this project for the first three years of its writing, and my Masters research (2003-2004). There are many individuals and organisations to thank as well, but I will start with the Centre for African Literary Studies (CALS) of the University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, and its three-year doctoral fellowship, extensive holdings and research facilities, that provided a stimulating base for intellectual reflection and growth. As always, I must also stress that the opinions expressed and conclusions deduced in this study are those of myself, the author, and are not necessarily to be attributed to these organisations or the institution at which I am registered for this qualification. There are also the many librarians from different parts of the country whose assistance was vital. From the University of KwaZulu-Natal’s Pietermaritzburg campus, and its Main Library Interlibrary Loans section particularly, I would like to thank Nazim Gani and Brenda Bosman for their continuous, invaluable assistance over the last three years, in locating and acquiring books and material without which the writing of this thesis could not have been possible. At the Durban (Howard College) campus, I would vi like to thank Seema Maharaj for her assistance and friendly acquaintance as well; she has been a constant aid for the last six years. At the Killie Campbell Africana Library, Hloni Dlamini, Bobby Eldridge and Simon Shezi,