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The poetics of state terror in twenty-first century Zimbabwe

The poetics of state terror in twenty-first century Zimbabwe
The poetics of state terror in twenty-first century Zimbabwe
Zimbabwe's ‘patriotic history’ – the official state ideology of the new millennium – conforms to Achille Mbembe's theorization of a postcolonial ‘master fiction’ as the state's attempt to create its own world of meaning, which seeks to govern the production of all other socially produced meanings. The Zimbabwean master fiction is an accumulation of distinct narrative segments with separate official designations. The takeover of rural farmland (the so-called ‘Third Chimurenga’) was recently followed by an urban supplement – operation Murambatsvina, or ‘sweeping out the filth’. The article is centrally preoccupied with the generic properties of Zimbabwe's master fiction, claiming that in narrative terms it corresponds to what has been called the adventure narrative of ordeal. Furthermore, the current ‘patriotic’ master fiction may be seen to have been anticipated, rehearsed and reinforced by popular adventure novels of ordeal published locally since 1980 and written by authors such as Garikai Mutasa, Edmund Chipamaunga, Rodwell Machingauta, Lilian Masitera and Claude Maredza. The existence of a ‘popular’ public realm that is in contact with the domain of political discourse, with which it may be exchanging textual strategies, helps to explain why the implementation of the current master fiction has been so successful. The article examines the key generic and narrative properties of the Zimbabwean state fiction with reference to both a representative sample of popular novels and non-fictional texts generated by the state.
genre, master fiction, mbembe, mugabe, terror, zimbabwe
1369-801X
434-450
Primorac, Ranka
8e175d18-8ea8-4228-8637-671427202b10
Primorac, Ranka
8e175d18-8ea8-4228-8637-671427202b10

Primorac, Ranka (2007) The poetics of state terror in twenty-first century Zimbabwe. [in special issue: Gillo Pontecorvo's Battle of Algiers, 40 Years On] Interventions, 9 (3), 434-450. (doi:10.1080/13698010701618687).

Record type: Article

Abstract

Zimbabwe's ‘patriotic history’ – the official state ideology of the new millennium – conforms to Achille Mbembe's theorization of a postcolonial ‘master fiction’ as the state's attempt to create its own world of meaning, which seeks to govern the production of all other socially produced meanings. The Zimbabwean master fiction is an accumulation of distinct narrative segments with separate official designations. The takeover of rural farmland (the so-called ‘Third Chimurenga’) was recently followed by an urban supplement – operation Murambatsvina, or ‘sweeping out the filth’. The article is centrally preoccupied with the generic properties of Zimbabwe's master fiction, claiming that in narrative terms it corresponds to what has been called the adventure narrative of ordeal. Furthermore, the current ‘patriotic’ master fiction may be seen to have been anticipated, rehearsed and reinforced by popular adventure novels of ordeal published locally since 1980 and written by authors such as Garikai Mutasa, Edmund Chipamaunga, Rodwell Machingauta, Lilian Masitera and Claude Maredza. The existence of a ‘popular’ public realm that is in contact with the domain of political discourse, with which it may be exchanging textual strategies, helps to explain why the implementation of the current master fiction has been so successful. The article examines the key generic and narrative properties of the Zimbabwean state fiction with reference to both a representative sample of popular novels and non-fictional texts generated by the state.

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More information

e-pub ahead of print date: 16 October 2007
Keywords: genre, master fiction, mbembe, mugabe, terror, zimbabwe
Organisations: English

Identifiers

Local EPrints ID: 345351
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/345351
ISSN: 1369-801X
PURE UUID: fe9daef4-194a-45b8-bdef-f6850139dbc7
ORCID for Ranka Primorac: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0003-1127-1175

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Date deposited: 29 Jan 2013 16:21
Last modified: 15 Mar 2024 03:33

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