Re-writing history: André Brink’s An Act of Terror (1991) and On the Contrary (1993)

This article analyses the two different approaches to history and its representation demonstrated in Brink’s novels An Act of Terror (1991) and On the Contrary (1993) in terms of a response to the controversial influence of postmodernism on the historical novel in South Africa today. Although the first of these two novels, An Act of Terror, hints at the complexities of representation in historiography and fiction, it ultimately chooses against a postmodernist view of history, preferring to interpret and represent history in terms of an over-arching metanarrative and a stable subject because it facilitates effective political action. The article then argues that the second of these novels, On the Contrary, can be read as an affirmation of the postmodernist view o f history, especially when seen as an example of that variant of postmodernist historical fiction called “uchronian fiction” (Wesseling, 1991). Because uchronian fiction (the result of a cross-fertilization between historical fiction and science fiction) reconstructs the past in such as way as to propose possibilities for the transformation o f future societies, On the Contrary can also be read as a politically responsible novel, thus confirming the view that postmodernism has a political dimension

Alfred Schaffer, Shaka en die transnasionalisme

In this article, I read the Dutch poet Alfred Schaffer’s volume of poetry Mens dier ding (Man animal thing) against the background of transnationalism. I employ transnationalism as critical or hermeneutic perspective and focus on the identity of the author, the themes worked out in the volume and the use of anachronism and metapoetical references as literary strategies in support of the transnational nature of the text. Reference is made to the way in which Schaffer’s biography (his Dutch-Aruban descent, his movement between the Netherlands and South Africa, his views on poetry) facilitates a transnational reading of his volume Mens dier ding based on the history of the Zulu king Shaka as depicted in Thomas Mofolo’s novel Chaka (published in 1925). The article also reads Mens dier ding against the background of the idea that transnational literature is a particular kind of literature that emerges at a specific point in history and deals with issues and themes associated with imperialism, colonisation, decolonisationand globalisation such as migration, displacement, cultural hybridity, identity, citizenship and the status of refugees. This reading is prompted by the fact that Schaffer displaces the historical Shaka to the present and eventually also represents him as an asylum seeker in an unnamed country. I discuss the volume’s formal features, the transnational conversation with Mofolo’s novel, the use of anachronism and the insertion of metapoetical elements in the text as literary strategies to deal with transnational issues such as migration, displacement, racial hierarchies, inequality and refugee experience

Die eerste siklus.

Die eerste siklus.Etienne Leroux. Kaapstad: Human & Rousseau, 2012. 432 pp. ISBN: 978-0-7981-5627-1

Antjie Krog en haar literêre moeders: Die werking van ’n vroulike tradisie in die Afrikaanse poësie

This article looks at the way in which the Afrikaans poet Antjie Krog positions herself with regard to her female precursors or literary mothers in Afrikaans literature. A short survey is done of the different descriptions of the way in which literary tradition functions: the male-centred descriptions of T. S. Eliot and Harold Bloom are mentioned as well as descriptions of the way in which a female literary tradition functions in the work of Virginia Woolf, Elaine Showalter, Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar, Margaret Homans, Diane Sadoff and Naomi Hirsch. This is followed by an investigation into Antjie Krog’s relationship with the work of her biological mother Dot Serfontein who is also a writer, into the way in which she signals a break with the male literary tradition in Afrikaans, into her relationship with other female poets like Elisabeth Eybers and Ingrid Jonker in Afrikaans as well as with historical figures who also wrote texts (even though these texts were diaries, journals and letters rather than literary texts). The conclusion is that the existing descriptions are not able to encompass Krog’s complex relationship with her literary mothers: in her case the relationship with the female literary tradition includes connection as well as conflict and rejection