ARTÍCULO 125

This study primarily uses a qualitative, desk top research where contemporary fiction set in different African countries will be the central nerve of the study. There will be no field work but literary analysis of narratives by black female authors from different African countries. From the chosen texts, women and environmental concerns will be critically examined in relation to their representation of the relationship between nature and humans. That way critical concepts and issues will be raised and interpreted. Works by literary critics, study books from different disciplines, journals, the internet, media sources and different publications will also be extensively referenced so as to build knowledge a more comprehensive definition of ecocriticism and also ascertain how ecofeminists are looking at the way representations of nature are influenced by gender.

A qualitative approach assumes that all knowledge is relative. The approach further assumes that there is a subjective element to all knowledge and research, and that holistic, ungeneralisable studies are justifiable (Nunan, 1999:3), especially when researching human phenomena. In addition, to assist in the analysis the internet, journals and critical works on literature in the form of secondary books will also be read so as to bring into focus what other academics think about the area of interest. The other critical tools will be research papers and academic presentations which have a bearing on the study and also the fictional and academic writers’ blogs where they post their views on fiction. These instruments will assist the researcher to gather information so that after a critical analysis the writer may be able to come up with original and well informed ideas.

Maritz and Visagie (2006: 26) suggest that good qualitative research methods focus on the research process and textual analysis is one of the tools to be used.As a site of discussion, qualitative research is difficult to define. It has no theory or paradigms that are distinctly its own. Nor does qualitative research have a distinct set of methods that are entirely its own.

analysis and even statistics to describe, rather than to interpret. Hitchcock and Hughes (1989:26) describe qualitative research therefore as “ultimately a frame of mind; it is an orientation and commitment to study the social world in certain kinds of ways.” This will help one to understand social and cultural processes in the narratives and also come up with multiple interpretations. This because the qualitative researcher prefers to study the world as it naturally occurs, without manipulating it as an experimental researcher would (Johnson and Christensen 2004:360). Qualitative methodologies are consequently “approaches that enable researchers to learn at first hand about the social world they are investigating by means of involvement and participation in that world through a focus upon what individual actors say and do” (Hitchcock and Hughes 2001:12). Should they, however, opt to additionally quantify the frequencies and compatibility of different actors’ views, it will inevitably lead to validity and confirm the reliability of the collected research data. This means that the researcher can process data immediately, can clarify, summarise as the study evolves and can explore anomalous responses. Qualitative evaluations expect a plurality of experiences and hence diversity. A multiple of narratives can be used to represent a more diverse view on the area of interest. The nature and form of this diversity will not be determined in advance. This kind of research places individual actors at the centre, focuses on context, meaning, culture, history and biography. (Adopted from Flinders and Mills 1993; Hitchcock and Hughes 2001; Soltis 1990)

1.11.2 Textual Analysis

In light of the observations above about qualitative approaches, this study will mainly rely on the textual analysis of the selected black female authored texts. Due to the nature of the research (literature), the data analysis strategy which will be applied is literary or text

analysis. This will synthesise the fictional representations in terms of their thematic inclinations and theoretical revelations. That is, using narrative forms and analysis to come up with the core issues and concerns which spell out the literary representations of the relationship between nature and humans and then present these in narrative form. In fact, Catherine Belsey (2005: 157) contends that “textual analysis is indispensable to research in cultural criticism, where cultural criticism includes English, cultural history and cultural studies, as well as any other discipline that focuses on texts, or seeks to understand the inscription of culture in its artefacts.”Textual analysis is in the end empirical; there is room for debate (ibid: 158)

Also, according to Pat Hudson, “Literature research and literary criticism, as currently practised, confine themselves almost exclusively to textual analysis, scarcely ever mentioning or using numbers. (Hudson 2005:131.) She further notes that the literature research is not quantitative because “numbers are employed to convey dates, values and amounts, but are little questioned in relation to emphasis, style or content” (ibid). This does not mean that a narrative analysis entirely escapes quantification. .

However, since my analysis does not employ statistical evidence, I find textual analysis to be appropriate in this case. Again, textual analysis allows debates since it is not exhaustive and does not embrace all the possible readings, past and future (Belsey 2005). This will help me analyse the texts from a different perspective that is the cultural and historical differences they inscribe, thus affording the researcher to come up with new ideas. In fact, delving deeper into the research problem will inevitably open unforeseen avenues that need to be investigated and incorporated into the textual analysis to present a holistic picture. If not, the

research project may remain a mere rendition of hypothesised truths, and thus compromise the validity of the results and conclusions even more seriously.

Data collection deals in words and meanings, seeing to maximise understanding of events and facilitating the interpretation of data. This explains the significance of using textual analysis in this research. Hence, I agree with Martha Nuusbaum’s (1995) argument that the “novel is uniquely able to represent the empirical experience of particular individuals and that its ethical importance is magnified in a world where most disciplines, and the language of civil society, is so oriented towards aggregated numerical data, statistical evidence and averages” (p. 26-27). Mary Poovey (1994:142) also echoes the same argument. She says that “the individual human being [...] is obliterated by the numerical average or aggregate that replaces him.” What eludes such interpretations is the fact that detailed description or narrative shares many of the same problems of categorisation, bias, rhetorical presentation and distortion that afflict quantitative approach. What is vital in any research is that research is expected to make a contribution to knowledge as it uncovers something new.

The complexity of the area under study proves that “there is no such thing as ‘pure’ reading: interpretation always involves extra-textual knowledge, some of which is derived from secondary sources”(Belsey 2005, p 160). In fact, secondary sources will benefit this research. They will make clear the place of ecocriticism and ecofeminism in narratives written by black female writers, and also provide comparisons which lead to further textual analysis. The researcher will read the sources and compare the analogues, thus will not allow one a single interpretation; instead this ensures that multiple meanings can be secured in the process of analysing the texts. “Secondary sources also provide well-informed, coherent and rhetorically persuasive arguments, which can leave the researcher convinced that whatever can be said has been said already” (Belsey 2005, p. 160).