6 research outputs found
The racist bodily imaginary: the image of the body-in-pieces in (post)apartheid culture
This paper outlines a reoccurring motif within the racist imaginary of (post)apartheid culture: the black body-in-pieces. This disturbing visual idiom is approached from three conceptual perspectives. By linking ideas prevalent in Frantz Fanonâs description of colonial racism with psychoanalytic concepts such as Lacanâs notion of the corps morcelĂ©, the paper offers, firstly, an account of the black body-in-pieces as fantasmatic preoccupation of the (post)apartheid imaginary. The role of such images is approached, secondly, through the lens of affect theory which eschews a representational âreadingâ of such images in favour of attention to their asignifying intensities and the role they play in effectively constituting such bodies. Lastly, Judith Butlerâs discussion of war photography and the conditions of grievability introduces an ethical dimension to the discussion and helps draw attention to the unsavory relations of enjoyment occasioned by such images
Hyper-compressions: The rise of flash fiction in âpost-transitionalâ South Africa
Blair, P. (2020). Hyper-compressions: The rise of flash fiction in âpost-transitionalâ South Africa', The Journal of Commonwealth Literature, 55(1), 38-60. Copyright © 2018. Reprinted by permission of SAGE Publications.This article begins with a survey of flash fiction in âpost-transitionalâ South Africa, which it relates to the nationâs post-apartheid canon of short stories and short-short stories, to the international rise of flash fiction and âsudden fictionâ, and to the historical particularities of South Africaâs âpost-transitionâ. It then undertakes close readings of three flash fictions republished in the article, each less than 450 words: Tony Eprileâs âThe interpreter for the tribunalâ (2007), which evokes the psychological and ethical complexities, and long-term ramifications, of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission; Michael Cawood Greenâs âMusic for a new societyâ (2008), a carjacking story that invokes discourses about violent crime and the âânewâ South Africaâ; and Stacy Hardyâs âKisulaâ (2015), which maps the psychogeography of cross-racial sex and transnational identity-formation in an evolving urban environment. The article argues that these exemplary flashes are âhyper-compressionsâ, in that they compress and develop complex themes with a long literary history and a wide contemporary currency. It therefore contends that flash fiction of South Africaâs post-transition should be recognized as having literary-historical significance, not just as an inherently metonymic form that reflects, and alludes to, a broader literary culture, but as a genre in its own right