This article examines the representation of time in narratives of childhood experience in Es’kia Mphahlele’s Down Second Avenue (1959) and Bloke Modisane’s Blame Me on History (1963). These two ...autobiographies are among the most widely-known works by the group of South African writers who have been loosely associated with Drum magazine in the 1950s. Originating from the early years of the anti-apartheid struggle and resonating widely with the heightened anticolonial resistance movements across the continent, writings by the so-called Drum writers, many of whom later went into exile, have often been viewed and criticized as “protest literature”, as literary works whose aesthetic merits are somehow compromised by the overt political purposes they appear to serve. This article seeks to revise such a reading by revisiting the politics of the stylistic innovations in these autobiographical narratives. Themes and motifs directly derived from the rhetoric of political protest, as I argue, in fact problematize a developmental logic governing the biographical transition from childhood to adulthood and contribute to a radical critique of linear temporality and teleological historiography. While writing from polemical positions and from inside the historical juncture of political resistance, these writers’ narrative reflections on and re-orderings of the relationship between the past and the present also partake of the process of refashioning modern black subjectivity, a significant move of literary intervention that still has profound resonance in our postcolonial, post-apartheid, and post-revolutionary present.
Purpose: This study aimed to evaluate the level of progesterone and progesterone-induced blocking factor (PIBF), an immune mediator, in non-obese patients with polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS).
...Materials and Methods: Totally 72 patients were recruited into study and divided into 2 groups: The first group was patients diagnosed with PCOS (n = 36) and the second was the healthy control group (n=36). The diagnosis of PCOS was made according to Rotterdam diagnostic criteria. All patients were 18–35 years old and non-obese (body mass index (BMI) < 25 kg/m2). Follicle-stimulating hormone (FSH), luteinizing hormone (LH), estradiol (E2), thyroid-stimulating hormone (TSH), prolactin (PRL), total testosterone, and dehydroepiandrostenedione sulfate (DHEA-S) levels were measured on the third day of the menstrual cycle. On the 21st day of the same menstrual period, fasting blood glucose, insulin, progesterone, and PIBF levels were measured.
Results: Demographic and clinical characteristics of study participants were similar between the two groups. Serum FSH, E2, TSH, PRL, DHEA-S, total testosterone, fasting blood glucose, fasting insulin, homeostatic model assessment for insulin resistance (HOMA-IR), and hemoglobin A1c values were similar between the groups. Differences in LH, LH/FSH ratio, serum progesterone, and serum PIBF were statistically significant.
Conclusion: Progesterone and PIBF levels decreased in non-obese PCOS patients. We suggest that even in the absence of obesity, which is the origin and enhancer of inflammation in PCOS, low PIBF as the underlying immunomodulator will drive complications.
Amaç: Bu çalışmanın amacı obez olmayan polikistik over sendromlu (PKOS) hastalarda progesteron ve bir immün mediatör olan progesteron kaynaklı bloke edici faktör (PIBF) düzeylerini değerlendirmektir.
Gereç ve Yöntem: Hastalar iki gruba ayrıldı. Birinci grup PKOS tanısı alan hastalar (n=36), ikincisi sağlıklı kontrol grubu (n=36) idi. Rotterdam tanı kriterlerine göre PKOS tanısı konuldu. Hastalar 18-35 yaşları arasındaydı, obez değildi (Vücut kitle indeksi (VKİ)
William Bloke Modisane, the African writer and journalist, attracted wide notice with his autobiography, Blame Me on History, which was banned in South Africa in 1963, the year in which it received ...its first publication. The sociologist's interest in Modisane's autobiography can be located in several basic themes (among these can be counted the problem of his cultural dilemma as a member of the African middle class), but for present purposes, we need to note only one aspect of the book which I think has been constantly ignored, namely the sociological tradition that informs the meaning of his concept of the community- Sophiatown. The name "Sophiatown" carries a profoundly important meaning in Modisane's autobiography. I will argue that in the sociological sense in which the Drum writer uses the name, he articulates the central notions of what the German sociologist Ferdinand Tönnies regards as a Gemeinschaft social order. There is a different, though related, point that needs to be made about Modisane's use of the term "community": if we read his book carefully, we can see that it contains two different narratives about Sophiatown, a positive one which appears to have been slightly romanticised, and a negative one, which focuses on the community's darker side, showing it up to have been a Gemeinschaft in an unusual way. It is through this binary opposition that Modisane creates in his autobiography that he shows his ambiguity with regard to his Gemeinschaft community.
In 1957, American filmmaker Lionel Rogosin arrived in Cape Town, South Africa, determined to make a film about apartheid. "Anti-apartheid Solidarity Networks and the Production of Come Back, Africa" ...discusses the film's historical and cultural significance, and- a topic which deserves more attention- the film's production. The article examines the interconnected and international nature of early anti-apartheid activism. International movements against apartheid may have been relatively small between 1957 and up until March of 1960, but Come Back Africa's production shows that anti-apartheid activists and artists were becoming increasingly connected in a transnational web spanning the Atlantic with hubs in South Africa, Europe, and the United States. In the case of Come Back, Africa, relationships forged between Rogosin, black South African artists-activists (such as Lewis Nkosi, William "Bloke" Modisane, and Miriam Makeba) and white liberal anti-apartheid activists (including Father Trevor Huddleston, Reverend Michael Scott, and Mary Benson) proved mutually beneficial.
In this article I suggest a different view on Sophiatown's existence, both in terms of it standing as mythical icon and as a suburb. Instead of continuing the look 'from afar' (Hannerz
1994
), which ...positions Sophiatown within the category of desirable 'global icons', I turn my gaze deeper into Sophiatown, both as a suburb and an icon. I use the lens of transnationalism to zoom into three scenes in Sophiatown in order to examine what has been ignored and overlooked in previous narratives. Where the global icon stays and focuses on the surface, the transnational perspective focuses on the everyday lives within the icon. Through a series of vignettes, looking at women in Sophiatown's history, at coffee making with a Greek immigrant, and tales of home with Senegalese businessmen, through a consideration of Bloke Modisane's post-Sophiatown career, I examine how the time established by focusing on these transnational lives is a time of presence which spans multiple locations. I conclude the article with a final point about the 'unrepresentability' of a diverse history in the current ways of narrating history in Sophiatown; and the necessity of extending spaces of representation for other, alternative perspectives.
The article examines Modisane's self-portrayal in his autobiography, Blame Me on History (1963). The author argues that for Modisane autobiographical self-representation takes the form of a complex ...and multi-layered process of symbolic and metaphorical translation of (self) identity. Symbolic self-translation in Modisane's autobiography involves attempts by the narrator-protagonist to untangle the conundrum resulting from what is presented as an unbridgeable chasm between the kind of person he could have been in a country devoid of racial oppression and what he was forced to become in the racially segregated South Africa of the twentieth century. Central to the analysis of Modisane's chosen mode of self-portraiture is James Olney's notion of "metaphors of self" in terms of which the autobiographical self seeks to articulate its elusive ontological status through metaphors and symbols. The article also provides a critique of contradictions inherent in the ideology of liberal humanism which is presented as universally desirable in Modisane's autobiography.
This article serves to introduce a short story by Bloke Modisane found among the papers of the late Colin Legum, which are housed in the manuscripts department of University of Cape Town Libraries.
Psychologists have paid scant attention to the positive relationships and community contributions of working class men who are not in trouble, and have focused instead on men who are ‘in trouble.’ In ...addressing this oversight, we draw on insights from ethnographic observations, life narrative interviews, photographic techniques and media items, which have been compiled by 12 working class men from a shared community of practice in New Zealand. We illustrate how these men often appropriate aspects from contemporary media deliberations regarding what it means to be a man today in order to make sense of their own lives. The implications of participants’ emphasis on friendship, support, familial obligations, and community participation are discussed in relation to the place of working class men in society.
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