Migrant masculinities and spatial transformation in recent South African and Zimbabwean fiction
This study foregrounds the links between migrant masculinities and spatial transformation in recent South African and Zimbabwean fiction written by women authors. Using various postcolonial theories dealing with masculinity, I argue that the authors of the selected novels suggest that changes in the performance of masculinity by their main male characters are linked with movement between different socio-cultural spaces. This means that the male character’s sense of self and his performance of masculinity are influenced by the status of his migrancy. The novels reveal that various degrees of migrancy influence the performance of masculinities both in private and public spaces. Migrancy between two cities in the same country, between rural and urban spaces in the same country, between one urban space in one country to another country, are determinants of the resultant masculinities constructed and performed in the respective spaces. Using Nkealah’s (2014) idea of absented presences, I also demonstrate the ways in which the chosen texts foreground the performance of masculinities by women in households headed by single women where there are no men. The major significance of the study is its uses of literary and cultural analysis to shed light on the endemic crisis of problematic masculinities currently facing communities across South Africa and Zimbabwe.
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