Department of English

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Browsing Department of English by browse.metadata.advisor "Grundlingh, A."

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    Biography of a vanished community : South End, Port Elizabeth
    (Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2017-03) Hendricks, Shaheed; Viljoen, S.; Grundlingh, A.; Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. Dept. of English.
    ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This study attempts to construct a biography of the community of South End, Port Elizabeth, in space and time. This project arises from a need to understand the birth, growth, zenith, decline and demise of this community. The need also exists to capture aspects of the heritage, history, experiences and perceptions of South End. A biographical approach will be used rather than a historical one because aspects of the lives of individuals are reconstructed as part of the life of a place. Furthermore, the study will deal with lives collectively of former residents of South End in its different facets, namely emotional, experiential, political, social and others. The community will thus be viewed as a complex and multi-faceted being. The intention here is to gather as much relevant information as possible on the historical, social, geographical and cultural context of the life of the community. This study will also explore what constitutes biographical writing and in what respect this biography differs from the traditional understanding of the term biography. A number of aspects namely history, the subjects and the subjects in relation to the community are explored in reconstructing this community. History forms an important aspect of this study, therefore it deals with issues such as what constitutes history and how it is written; a brief overview of the history of Port Elizabeth and the emergence of South End as a community and key legislation that affected the community. In addition to this the focus will also be on geographical space and specifically on the relationship between space and identity and space and community. The emphasis will be on the question of identifying how the individual identity is constituted in relation to community and how the individual assumes complex subject positions. Lastly, this study will focus on the discoveries I have made in the course of the research, it will reflect on the difficulties encountered in this project and the significance of the study and what the study has yielded.