Mr Bafana Radebe

Lecturer
Name: Bafana Radebe
Location: B Ring 712A Auckland Park Kingsway Campus
Department of English Staff  Staff Members

Contact Details:

Email: bafanar@uj.ac.za

About Mr Bafana Radebe

Qualifications:

B.Ed., BA Hons in English, MA in English (University of Johannesburg)

Teaching and Research Interests:

Bafana Radebe is a Lecturer (Temporal) in the English Department at the University of Johannesburg. His research interests include post-apartheid literature, African realisms, literary trauma, trauma theories, Blackness, and Critical Race Theories (CRT). He completed an MA thesis titled “The Tropes of Unspeakability in The Narration of Trauma in Three Post-apartheid Novels,” where he demonstrated how the trope of unspeakability in Zakes Mda’s Ways of Dying, Niq Mhlongo’s Way Back Home, and Gillian Slovo’s Red Dust shows how the trauma of black characters both intentionally and unintentionally resists representation and, thus, renders said trauma incommunicable. To prove his argument, he used frameworks of trauma, anti-blackness, liminality, power, and hegemony to show how they all substantiate the nuances he makes about the unspeakabilities of the trauma of black characters. For his PhD, he maintains focusing on Blackness by exploring Black South African and African American autobiographies and memoirs.

Presentations: Colloquia and Symposiums attended.

October 2023 (University of Southampton, UK): Theme of Symposium: “African Realisms and Related Forms.” Paper: “African Realisms, Narrativity, and Affect: The Case of Three African Texts.”

April 2023 (University of Johannesburg, Johannesburg): Theme of Symposium: “Bloke Modisane Centenary Symposium.” Paper: “The question of black ontology in Bloke Modisane’s Blame on History.”

May 2022 (University of Johannesburg, Johannesburg): Theme of Colloquium: “Democracy from below: Decolonizing and retheorizing democracy in Africa.” Paper: “A disappointing democracy in Niq Mhlongo’s Way Back Home.”