This paper explores the depiction of black African refugees in The Jungle, a 2017 play by two young British playwrights, Joe Murphy and Joe Robertson. The Jungle is a theatrical recreation of the lives of refugees from the migrant camp in Calais, from which hundreds of refugees made – and still make – often fatal attempts to enter the UK through the Channel Tunnel. The graphic images of the squalid living conditions of its residents – many of them from Africa – dominated the news, as did the dramatic manner in which the camp was dismantled in 2016. This paper is interested in the textual gestures and representational decisions of the playwrights in the written play that provide clues to the possible ways in which black Africans are thought of and constructed in the minds of Europeans. In this way, this inquiry contributes to analysing literary engagements with contemporary African migration to Europe provided from European points of view.
{"title":"Depicting the Black African Refugee in The Jungle by Joe Murphy and Joe Robertson","authors":"Aghogho Akpome","doi":"10.4314/eia.v49i1.1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4314/eia.v49i1.1","url":null,"abstract":"This paper explores the depiction of black African refugees in The Jungle, a 2017 play by two young British playwrights, Joe Murphy and Joe Robertson. The Jungle is a theatrical recreation of the lives of refugees from the migrant camp in Calais, from which hundreds of refugees made – and still make – often fatal attempts to enter the UK through the Channel Tunnel. The graphic images of the squalid living conditions of its residents – many of them from Africa – dominated the news, as did the dramatic manner in which the camp was dismantled in 2016. This paper is interested in the textual gestures and representational decisions of the playwrights in the written play that provide clues to the possible ways in which black Africans are thought of and constructed in the minds of Europeans. In this way, this inquiry contributes to analysing literary engagements with contemporary African migration to Europe provided from European points of view.","PeriodicalId":41428,"journal":{"name":"ENGLISH IN AFRICA","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-06-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"70527549","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The slender poetic oeuvre of Phyllis Haring (1919–2016) is now almost forgotten. Only one collection, A Taste of Salt, was published in 1976, and a number of poems appeared in small magazines until 1991. Though she is unquestionably a “minor poet,” I argue that her dream-like, dark yet musical work is worth attention, especially as something of a local pioneer in Surrealist techniques. (Surrealism’s influence more broadly in South African poetry is apparently yet to be comprehensively explored.) This article aims to reintroduce Haring’s work, and suggest some possibilities for further, more precisely theorised study. Following a biographical sketch and brief history of her publications, I respond to selected poems to provide a preliminary taste of her salty, almost Nietzschean, world-view, her craft, and some persistent techniques, themes and images – notably of human cruelty, death, and the natural world.
{"title":"The dark surrealism of Phyllis Haring’s poetry","authors":"D. Wylie","doi":"10.4314/eia.v48i3.4","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4314/eia.v48i3.4","url":null,"abstract":"The slender poetic oeuvre of Phyllis Haring (1919–2016) is now almost forgotten. Only one collection, A Taste of Salt, was published in 1976, and a number of poems appeared in small magazines until 1991. Though she is unquestionably a “minor poet,” I argue that her dream-like, dark yet musical work is worth attention, especially as something of a local pioneer in Surrealist techniques. (Surrealism’s influence more broadly in South African poetry is apparently yet to be comprehensively explored.) This article aims to reintroduce Haring’s work, and suggest some possibilities for further, more precisely theorised study. Following a biographical sketch and brief history of her publications, I respond to selected poems to provide a preliminary taste of her salty, almost Nietzschean, world-view, her craft, and some persistent techniques, themes and images – notably of human cruelty, death, and the natural world.","PeriodicalId":41428,"journal":{"name":"ENGLISH IN AFRICA","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-03-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45477146","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In this paper, I consider By the Sea (2001) and Gravel Heart (2017) as examples of how the Zanzibari-born British writer Abdulrazak Gurnah’s fiction unsettles the disempowering frames that his refugee and marginalised migrant characters encounter as they attempt to find new homes. To understand how Gurnah engages productively with his intertexts, this paper draws on work by Judith Butler to characterise Western canonical literature as frames, as well as Ankhi Mukherjee’s description of canonicity. What becomes apparent in my examination of the selected works is a trajectory in Gurnah’s authorial project from the simple rejection of frames towards new representations of refugees and marginalised migrants as fully ethical agents rather than emblematic victims. Thus, Gurnah’s work could be read as an exemplar of the narrative recalibration of the representation of migrants called for by scholars such as Loren B. Landau and Elena Fiddian-Qasmiyeh.
在本文中，我以《海边》(2001年)和《碎石心》(2017年)为例，说明出生于桑给巴尔岛的英国作家阿卜杜勒拉扎克·古尔纳的小说是如何打破难民和边缘化移民角色在试图寻找新家时所遇到的剥夺权力的框架的。为了理解古尔纳是如何有效地处理他的互文的，本文借鉴了朱迪思·巴特勒(Judith Butler)的作品，将西方正典文学描述为框架，以及安基·慕克吉(Ankhi Mukherjee)对正典的描述。在我对精选作品的考察中，显而易见的是古尔纳的写作项目的轨迹，从简单地拒绝框架到将难民和边缘化移民作为完全道德的代理人而不是象征性的受害者的新表现。因此，古尔纳的作品可以被解读为Loren B. Landau和Elena Fiddian-Qasmiyeh等学者所呼吁的移民再现叙事重新校准的典范。
{"title":"“Nor was there any role for you”: Unsettling canonical frames in Abdulrazak Gurnah’s By The Sea (2001) and Gravel Heart (2017)","authors":"S. Bosman","doi":"10.4314/eia.v48i3.2","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4314/eia.v48i3.2","url":null,"abstract":"In this paper, I consider By the Sea (2001) and Gravel Heart (2017) as examples of how the Zanzibari-born British writer Abdulrazak Gurnah’s fiction unsettles the disempowering frames that his refugee and marginalised migrant characters encounter as they attempt to find new homes. To understand how Gurnah engages productively with his intertexts, this paper draws on work by Judith Butler to characterise Western canonical literature as frames, as well as Ankhi Mukherjee’s description of canonicity. What becomes apparent in my examination of the selected works is a trajectory in Gurnah’s authorial project from the simple rejection of frames towards new representations of refugees and marginalised migrants as fully ethical agents rather than emblematic victims. Thus, Gurnah’s work could be read as an exemplar of the narrative recalibration of the representation of migrants called for by scholars such as Loren B. Landau and Elena Fiddian-Qasmiyeh.","PeriodicalId":41428,"journal":{"name":"ENGLISH IN AFRICA","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-03-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42999967","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This paper offers an overview of the career and writings of A.S. Mopeli-Paulus, with key concerns being his Lesotho–South African transborder experience, his self-identification as a Mosotho, his sometimes rarefied attempts to account for “Sesotho being,” and his regression from resisting apartheid legislation to participation in the Bantustan administration. The paper examines his English language novels, autobiography and unpublished fiction, but also covers some of his work in Sesotho, including two little-known final publications, which, together with interview material from his son Chiefta, throw light on the more controversial aspects of his career.
{"title":"Between Rocks and Hard Places: the Controversial Career of A.S. Mopeli-Paulus","authors":"C. Dunton, Lerato Masiea","doi":"10.4314/eia.v48i3.3","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4314/eia.v48i3.3","url":null,"abstract":"This paper offers an overview of the career and writings of A.S. Mopeli-Paulus, with key concerns being his Lesotho–South African transborder experience, his self-identification as a Mosotho, his sometimes rarefied attempts to account for “Sesotho being,” and his regression from resisting apartheid legislation to participation in the Bantustan administration. The paper examines his English language novels, autobiography and unpublished fiction, but also covers some of his work in Sesotho, including two little-known final publications, which, together with interview material from his son Chiefta, throw light on the more controversial aspects of his career.","PeriodicalId":41428,"journal":{"name":"ENGLISH IN AFRICA","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-03-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48527250","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Tribute: André Rex Wepener de Villiers, 1936–2021","authors":"Gareth Cornwell","doi":"10.4314/eia.v48i3.5","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4314/eia.v48i3.5","url":null,"abstract":"No Abstract","PeriodicalId":41428,"journal":{"name":"ENGLISH IN AFRICA","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-03-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44677262","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Growing up with The Children’s Encyclopedia","authors":"J. Coetzee","doi":"10.4314/eia.v48i3.1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4314/eia.v48i3.1","url":null,"abstract":"No Abstract.","PeriodicalId":41428,"journal":{"name":"ENGLISH IN AFRICA","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-03-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43049753","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The present reading of Zakes Mda’s fifth book, The Whale Caller, aims at capturing the peculiarity of a novel which, besides bringing to the fore the basic material necessities of its characters, is also able to suggest that living beings harbour deep, less tangible and less palpable needs, which make life worth living and must, therefore, be perceived and acknowledged. Within this framework, I also suggest that the novel deals with distinctly human concerns without universalising the human perspective. I argue that The Whale Caller is too firmly anthropocentric to engage, as some scholars have maintained, with the crossing of interspecies boundaries, and at the same time that, revolving primarily around the human sphere, the novel does adopt a slanted, ‘anthropoeccentric’ outlook. The attention paid throughout the narrative to the spiritual dimension of life, one that concerns both human and non-human animals, prompts the reader to recognise the importance of taking into account both the material and the intangible aspects of existence. Besides, suggestions of a deep interconnectedness, not only among living beings, but also between them and traditionally considered non-living entities, are disseminated in the book. Accordingly, the present contribution seeks to counterbalance recent readings of the novel that – albeit particularly insightful in their analyses of eco-social global/local concerns – tend to disregard the spiritual dimension of the novel, which is shared among various characters and apparently pervades both human and non-human experience. Keywords: Zakes Mda, The Whale Caller, postcolonial ecocriticism, anthropocentrism, eccentricity, immaterial needs
{"title":"Sharing Life on Earth: Material and Immaterial Needs in The Whale Caller","authors":"G. Iannaccaro","doi":"10.4314/eia.v48i2.3","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4314/eia.v48i2.3","url":null,"abstract":"The present reading of Zakes Mda’s fifth book, The Whale Caller, aims at capturing the peculiarity of a novel which, besides bringing to the fore the basic material necessities of its characters, is also able to suggest that living beings harbour deep, less tangible and less palpable needs, which make life worth living and must, therefore, be perceived and acknowledged. Within this framework, I also suggest that the novel deals with distinctly human concerns without universalising the human perspective. I argue that The Whale Caller is too firmly anthropocentric to engage, as some scholars have maintained, with the crossing of interspecies boundaries, and at the same time that, revolving primarily around the human sphere, the novel does adopt a slanted, ‘anthropoeccentric’ outlook. The attention paid throughout the narrative to the spiritual dimension of life, one that concerns both human and non-human animals, prompts the reader to recognise the importance of taking into account both the material and the intangible aspects of existence. Besides, suggestions of a deep interconnectedness, not only among living beings, but also between them and traditionally considered non-living entities, are disseminated in the book. Accordingly, the present contribution seeks to counterbalance recent readings of the novel that – albeit particularly insightful in their analyses of eco-social global/local concerns – tend to disregard the spiritual dimension of the novel, which is shared among various characters and apparently pervades both human and non-human experience. \u0000Keywords: Zakes Mda, The Whale Caller, postcolonial ecocriticism, anthropocentrism, eccentricity, immaterial needs","PeriodicalId":41428,"journal":{"name":"ENGLISH IN AFRICA","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47236948","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article revisits the figure of the ‘staffrider’ which inspired the title of the literary journal more than forty years ago. It considers how the disruptive, radical nature of this figure regains a measure of relevance in the aftermath of developments in literary theory, in particular, what is understood as the ‘linguistic turn’ with regard to language and meaning. The discussion here follows the premise that if a white aesthetic practice as a discursive construction is susceptible to a process of dismantling, then it must follow that the same can be applied to the constructed nature of a black aesthetic. These critiques must, simultaneously, trouble the claims that what has been circumscribed as a black aesthetics in poetry constitutes a homogenous counter aesthetic and, thus, a poetic tradition inspired almost exclusively by the terms of a fixed subjectivity. As a consequence, a revision of the antithesis between a black and white aesthetic is required, one which must explode the conventional schematic of South African poetry which has remained prevalent in critical scholarship up to this point. In doing so, I suggest it may be valuable to evoke the figure of the ‘staffrider’ as a productive symbol of the troubling yet always equally dynamic nature of the literary text. Keywords: Aesthetics, deconstruction, South African poetry, Staffrider, subjectivity
{"title":"The ‘Staffrider’ figure and the Reading of South African Poetry","authors":"M. Espin","doi":"10.4314/eia.v48i2.2","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4314/eia.v48i2.2","url":null,"abstract":"This article revisits the figure of the ‘staffrider’ which inspired the title of the literary journal more than forty years ago. It considers how the disruptive, radical nature of this figure regains a measure of relevance in the aftermath of developments in literary theory, in particular, what is understood as the ‘linguistic turn’ with regard to language and meaning. The discussion here follows the premise that if a white aesthetic practice as a discursive construction is susceptible to a process of dismantling, then it must follow that the same can be applied to the constructed nature of a black aesthetic. These critiques must, simultaneously, trouble the claims that what has been circumscribed as a black aesthetics in poetry constitutes a homogenous counter aesthetic and, thus, a poetic tradition inspired almost exclusively by the terms of a fixed subjectivity. As a consequence, a revision of the antithesis between a black and white aesthetic is required, one which must explode the conventional schematic of South African poetry which has remained prevalent in critical scholarship up to this point. In doing so, I suggest it may be valuable to evoke the figure of the ‘staffrider’ as a productive symbol of the troubling yet always equally dynamic nature of the literary text. \u0000Keywords: Aesthetics, deconstruction, South African poetry, Staffrider, subjectivity","PeriodicalId":41428,"journal":{"name":"ENGLISH IN AFRICA","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45708923","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Willem Anker has been accused of stealing from Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian (1985) in his novel Red Dog (2018), the English translation of his award-winning Buys (2014). I defend Anker on the charge of plagiarism, while conceding that his novel could not have been the book that it is without the precedent of Blood Meridian. I go on to voice other reservations about Red Dog via discussion, inter alia, of Anker’s characterisation of Coenraad Buys and the rendering in English of his Afrikaans original. I conclude that the historical Coenraad Buys appears intractable to novelistic treatment, and that Anker signals his awareness of this while at the same time making a valiant attempt to bring the character to life. Keywords: Willem Anker, Red Dog, Buys, Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian, Sarah Gertrude Millin, King of the Bastards
{"title":"Willem Anker’s Red Dog, Cormac McCarthy, and the Enigma of Coenraad de Buys","authors":"Gareth Cornwell","doi":"10.4314/eia.v48i2.1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4314/eia.v48i2.1","url":null,"abstract":"Willem Anker has been accused of stealing from Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian (1985) in his novel Red Dog (2018), the English translation of his award-winning Buys (2014). I defend Anker on the charge of plagiarism, while conceding that his novel could not have been the book that it is without the precedent of Blood Meridian. I go on to voice other reservations about Red Dog via discussion, inter alia, of Anker’s characterisation of Coenraad Buys and the rendering in English of his Afrikaans original. I conclude that the historical Coenraad Buys appears intractable to novelistic treatment, and that Anker signals his awareness of this while at the same time making a valiant attempt to bring the character to life. \u0000Keywords: Willem Anker, Red Dog, Buys, Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian, Sarah Gertrude Millin, King of the Bastards","PeriodicalId":41428,"journal":{"name":"ENGLISH IN AFRICA","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44709129","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
David Johnson Dreaming of Freedom in South Africa: Literature between Critique and Utopia. 2020. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press and Cape Town: UCT Press, 2020. 231 pp. ISBN 9781775822608
{"title":"Review: Dreaming of Freedom in South Africa: Literature between Critique and Utopia.","authors":"C. Sandwith","doi":"10.4314/eia.v48i2.5","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4314/eia.v48i2.5","url":null,"abstract":"David Johnson \u0000Dreaming of Freedom in South Africa: Literature between Critique and Utopia. 2020. \u0000Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press and Cape Town: UCT Press, 2020. \u0000231 pp. \u0000ISBN 9781775822608","PeriodicalId":41428,"journal":{"name":"ENGLISH IN AFRICA","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41773007","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
京公网安备 11010802042870号
京ICP备2023020795号-1
扫码关注我们
求助内容：
应助结果提醒方式：