TSITSI DANGAREMBGA's Nervous Conditions: The Confluence of Colonialism, Education, and Patriarchy

This episode focuses on Tsitsi Dangarembga’s Nervous Conditions and the ways in which it illustrates the confluence of colonialism and patriarchy in pre-Independence Zimbabwe (then called Rhodesia). While the story is told from the perspective of Tambu, who moves from her village homestead to live with her uncle Babamukuru and his family to go to school, her close friendship with her cousin Nyasha reveals a number of contradictions pertaining to colonial modernity and women’s place in it. We will see how the context of Zimbabwe’s liberation war is placed firmly in the background to the events depicted and how the novel instead locates the women’s position in within a patriarchal system as the source of the nervous conditions of the title. We will see also that Tambu and Nyasha’s youthful life stories define contrasting narrative arcs that move in opposite directions due to their completely different understandings of the value of the colonial education system. While for Tambu education represents opportunities for self-fashioning and for freedom, Nyasha understands colonial education as an abyss, and something that cannot be disentangled from the oppressive patriarchy she experiences at the hands of her father, who is the principal of the school that the girls attend.
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Suggested Reading
-Terry Adams, “Reconsidering the Bildungsroman: Tsitsi Dangarembga’s Nervous Conditions,” Lexia: Undergraduate Journal in Writing, Rhetoric, and Technical Communication,” Volume 5.2 (2016-2017); commons.lib.jmu.edu/cgi/viewc...
-Lindsey Pentolfe Aegerter, “A Dialectic of Autonomy and Community: Tsitsi Dangarembga’s Nervous Conditions,” Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature, 15.2 (1996): 231-240.
-Clare Barker, “Hunger, Normalcy, and Postcolonial Disorder in Nervous Conditions and The Book of Not,” in Postcolonial Fiction and Disability: Exceptional Children, Metaphor and Materiality, London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011.
-Muzna Rahman, “Bodily Secrets: The History of the Starving Body in Tsitsi Dangarembga’s Nervous Conditions,” Forum for Modern Language Studies, 50.3 (2014): 275-288.
-Hamza Mustafa Njozi, “Utilitarianism versus Universalism in Dangarembga’s Nervous Conditions,” Nordic Journal of African Studies 14.1 (2005): 1-14.

[@olwethusthandiwemahlangu9625]

Great! giving thanks all the way from the University of Pretoria, South Africa

[@chijiokeonah4930]

Powerful as always. Thanks for making African Literature come alive!

[@CriticReadingWriting]

Thanks, Chijioke. Much appreciated.

[@akwasiaidoo1078]

Made my day! It gave me more insight into the novel, and has inspired me to read it again!!! Many thanks for another great analysis!

[@CriticReadingWriting]

Thanks, Akwasi. I am glad that it stirred you up to think about the novel in new ways. Always a welcome effect of the episodes.

[@flowerpower000]

Brilliant lecture, Professor. Thank you so much for sharing your wisdom.

[@gladysagyeiwaadenkyi-manie3691]

Thanks a lot, prof. I read this text thrice in the past, but your reading of that extract is something else. You are a true inspiration. I attempted an intertextual reading of Nervous Conditions and Purple Hibiscus sometime ago and it was a great exercise. I never thought of the connection between NC and Armah's Beautiful ones. Thanks again.

[@CriticReadingWriting]

Thanks, Agyeiwaa. It is always to interleaf what we are reading with other things we have read. It enriches our experience of the texts.

[@peterlees7581]

Thank you so much, Mr. Quayson!

[@lungelodlamini8308]

thank you for this, currently in the process of writing a critical analysis of this novel and this video has really helped.

[@cara5670]

absolutely loved this video. it really helped with my AP english exam!!!

[@liliyatzimoulis2462]

Thank you for the detailed review. I enjoyed the book and you helped me put certain things in context.

[@faithgumede3274]

Thank you prof, this is very helpful.

[@carolinekongai3490]

Wow...this is great...thankyou so much professor

[@mrsmett5512]

Hi, thank you for the summary it clear. I am busy with the analysis of the same book and I am stuck.

[@user-ty2zn6vk8r]

27:50 explanation for the important scene in Nervous Conditions

[@edwinantonio4975]

Can you tell me about the sisterhood in nervous conditions pls ASAP

[@attiyaqamar1279]

Hi Sir. May i have your email address? I'm working on this novel for my M.Phil Thesis and would like to discuss some points with you. Thankyou.

[@deon-daniiowusu6442]

🎉❤thank you very much, please can l get your email for further interaction because l am doing a project on this book