On The Memory In The Stone Virgins

After the independence of Zimbabwe in the 1980s,Zimbabwean English literature has developed rapidly.Most Zimbabwean writers devoted themselves to describing beautiful sights of the country after independence.However,a group of native writers represented by Yvonne Vera(1964-2005)showed a tendency far from nationalism in their literary creation.Vera is courageous in exploring taboo themes.She is obsessed with recording historical truth in the form of texts and attacking the "patriotic nationalism" claimed by the Mugabe government.In the 1990s,the Assmanns proposed the theory of cultural memory,emphasizing the interaction between psychology,consciousness,society and culture.Given the circumstances of complex political situation in post-independence Zimbabwe,cultural memory in Zimbabwean novels has social and historical significance.So far,many foreign scholars have focused on researches of themes,feminism,postcolonialism and comparison,mentioning memories in The Stone Virgins lightly and not exploring it in depth;while domestic scholars have not paid much attention to this work.Taking Vera’s last novel The Stone Virgins as the study object and the cultural memory theory as the theoretical basis,this thesis tries to analyze the reconstructive process of hero’s and heroine’s individual memories and study how Vera reconstructs collective memory on the basis of describing individual memory in post-independence Zimbabwe.What’s more,this thesis tries to explore the social and cultural functions behind these memories.In view of this,this thesis discusses the form and the reconstructive process of individual memory of the hero and heroine in The Stone Virgins,discussing how Vera reconstructs missing collective memories from the aspect of the condensation of collective memories and the reconstruction of memory space.In addition,this thesis analyzes the individuality and commonality of individual memory and collective memory in The Stone Virgins.It explores the functional role and the historical significance of memory,and reveals the cultural conflict between the memory of the victim group and the official historical memory.From above,it can be seen that the victims’ individual memories in Gukurahundi massacre are powerfully persuasive in restoring historical events.Memories of these individuals who have the same experience constitute the collective memory of the entire victim group,which in turn has an impact on the collective memory of the entire nation.Vera uses the form of texts to illustrate individual and collective memory,and puts the individual memories of several characters into the collective memory of Ndebele people,which reflects her writing intention to speak for the subaltern people and deconstruct official historical narratives.