Towards Reclaiming the Colonised Mind: The Liberating Fantasies of Duiker and Ihimaera
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.21153/pecl2008vol18no2art1166Keywords:
story, transformation, fantasy fiction, colonialisation, Bruno Bettelheim, K. Sello Duiker, Witi IhimaeraAbstract
Ursula le Guin once observed that `'the story - from Rumpelstiltskin to War and Peace - is one of the basic tools invented by the human mind, for the purpose of gaining understanding' and that while `'there have been great societies that did not use the wheel there have been no societies that did not tell stories' (1989, p.27). By comparing the story to the wheel, she gently reminds the technology-obsessed reader that verbal structures have as much, if not more, to offer our world than mechanical ones and that while one tells or listens to stories one is not merely taking part in an idle entertainment but performing an action with vital and potentially transformative functions.
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