Date of Award
6-1-2017
Thesis Type
phd
Document Type
Thesis (Restricted Access)
Divisions
fac_med
Department
Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences
Institution
University of Malaya
Abstract
This thesis examines how autobiography and its variants such as the memoir transforms from being the story of the writing-‘I’ to that of its other. In this regard, the thesis specifically looks at how the texts under study turn their narratives into a process of objectification of the non-self “other” by framing their narratives through the trajectory of overarching social hierarchies such as us/them, clean/dirty, native/stranger, visible/invisible, peaceful/violent, etc. This strategy enables the writers to turn the autobiographical act into a space for accentuating differences between themselves and others. Consequently, they turn the non-self into an object and subject of difference through ridicule, disdain, mockery, and demonisation. The main aim of this strategy is to objectify the non-self by ascribing some negative qualities to it. It is the contention of this thesis that objectification as it occurs in these texts is in the main a process of identity formation based on the taxonomy of difference in the social world of the author-narrators shaped by their beliefs and ideologies. The thesis concludes that in Mahathir’s, Mandela’s, and Gandhi’s texts the “other” is used as a narrative device to construct and project a chosen and preferred positive identity of the self. In this sense, the “other” becomes a trope for self-articulation and enunciation within the textual-world of each of these writers. Viewed in this way, the “other” becomes the surface created and sustained by autobiography which could be viewed as a discourse of power on which to bounce off the contrasted image of the self.
Note
Thesis (PhD) – Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, University of Malaya, 2017.
Recommended Citation
Mustapha, Bala Ruma, "Political autobiography as objectification of an/other: A study of Mahathir Mohamad’s a doctor in the house, M.K Gandhi’sthe story of my experiments with truth, and Nelson Mandela’s long walk to freedom / Mustapha Bala Ruma" (2017). Student Works (2010-2019). 4521.
https://knova.um.edu.my/student_works_2010s/4521