In this article I appraise the aesthetic and ideological implications of the use of the topical as source material for literary creation, with special focus on poetry. I underscore how the shared knowledge between the writer and the audience influences the craft of poetry and is equally crucial for the reception of a work of art. I link postcolonial writers’ fixation on the topical to Edward Said’s influential revaluation of Western historiography and privileging of the political in literary scholarship. I demonstrate my thesis primarily by examining selected poems from the anthology World on the Brinks: An Anthology of Covid-19 Pandemic (2020) as an instance of literary responsiveness to a topical global experience. I highlight and appraise the poets’ obvious allusions to, replications, appropriations, and interrogations of well documented discourses on the Covid-19 pandemic as a contestation of imperialistic theories and assumptions, and show how the topical and its discourses fundamentally influence the reception of the work of art. Focusing on the poets’ examination of the international politics of healthcare, and dispensing of palliatives, I interrogate the politics of the notion of common humanity vaunted in the wake of the pandemic’s exposure of the intangibility of territorial borders. In this article I equally reflect on the mechanisms of the survival and transformation of the topical in poetry.
{"title":"Preliminary notes on topicality and recent pandemic poetry","authors":"I. Diala","doi":"10.17159/tl.v59i3.12061","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.17159/tl.v59i3.12061","url":null,"abstract":"In this article I appraise the aesthetic and ideological implications of the use of the topical as source material for literary creation, with special focus on poetry. I underscore how the shared knowledge between the writer and the audience influences the craft of poetry and is equally crucial for the reception of a work of art. I link postcolonial writers’ fixation on the topical to Edward Said’s influential revaluation of Western historiography and privileging of the political in literary scholarship. I demonstrate my thesis primarily by examining selected poems from the anthology World on the Brinks: An Anthology of Covid-19 Pandemic (2020) as an instance of literary responsiveness to a topical global experience. I highlight and appraise the poets’ obvious allusions to, replications, appropriations, and interrogations of well documented discourses on the Covid-19 pandemic as a contestation of imperialistic theories and assumptions, and show how the topical and its discourses fundamentally influence the reception of the work of art. Focusing on the poets’ examination of the international politics of healthcare, and dispensing of palliatives, I interrogate the politics of the notion of common humanity vaunted in the wake of the pandemic’s exposure of the intangibility of territorial borders. In this article I equally reflect on the mechanisms of the survival and transformation of the topical in poetry. ","PeriodicalId":41787,"journal":{"name":"Tydskrif vir letterkunde","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-09-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46138966","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This contribution shines a critical light on the representation of Afrikaans as a language of the Church in external histories about the development and advancement of the language, inclusive histories particularly. It seems the history of Afrikaans within a Christian or Church context has escaped the critical attention which since the 1970s created awareness of the politicisation of and silences in the history, and the way in which the history is documented. Therefore, the history of Afrikaans as a language of the Christian faith is still told from an exclusively white Reformed perspective and held as a 20 th century phenomenon, despite research pointing to its usage in the Moravian Church (Genadendal) in the 18 th century and the Anglican Church in the 19 th century. Though various denominations are included in so-called inclusive histories, it is done in a manner that suggests the dominance of the white Reformed Churches. These conclusions were primarily drawn from a content analysis of two inclusive histories, subjecting them to the same penetrating, sceptical questions of decades ago, focused primarily on the representation of Afrikaans as a language of the Church. For this purpose, the inclusive histories were analysed within the framework of poststructuralist tendencies which shifted the focus to historiography as a function of power, a meaning-making practice and history as a construct, not a reconstruction of the past. As such it creates space to imagine alternatives to the dominant discourse. To this end, the attention is drawn to the mobilisation of Afrikaans in the Roman Catholic Church since the 1820s as an alternative history of a spoken Afrikaans praying at the altar long before it was formalised and allowed to ascend the pulpit in the Reformed Churches since 1916.
{"title":"’n Geskiedenis van Afrikaans as kerktaal: van altaar tot kansel","authors":"Anastasia De Vries","doi":"10.17159/tl.v59i3.12301","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.17159/tl.v59i3.12301","url":null,"abstract":"This contribution shines a critical light on the representation of Afrikaans as a language of the Church in external histories about the development and advancement of the language, inclusive histories particularly. It seems the history of Afrikaans within a Christian or Church context has escaped the critical attention which since the 1970s created awareness of the politicisation of and silences in the history, and the way in which the history is documented. Therefore, the history of Afrikaans as a language of the Christian faith is still told from an exclusively white Reformed perspective and held as a 20 th century phenomenon, despite research pointing to its usage in the Moravian Church (Genadendal) in the 18 th century and the Anglican Church in the 19 th century. Though various denominations are included in so-called inclusive histories, it is done in a manner that suggests the dominance of the white Reformed Churches. These conclusions were primarily drawn from a content analysis of two inclusive histories, subjecting them to the same penetrating, sceptical questions of decades ago, focused primarily on the representation of Afrikaans as a language of the Church. For this purpose, the inclusive histories were analysed within the framework of poststructuralist tendencies which shifted the focus to historiography as a function of power, a meaning-making practice and history as a construct, not a reconstruction of the past. As such it creates space to imagine alternatives to the dominant discourse. To this end, the attention is drawn to the mobilisation of Afrikaans in the Roman Catholic Church since the 1820s as an alternative history of a spoken Afrikaans praying at the altar long before it was formalised and allowed to ascend the pulpit in the Reformed Churches since 1916.","PeriodicalId":41787,"journal":{"name":"Tydskrif vir letterkunde","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-09-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47145799","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The intellectual history of Coloured intelligentsia in the middle of the previous century is often characterised by a sharp division between moderates and radicals. The historiography of Coloured people is relatively limited but a few scholars have studied their intellectual formation against the background of historical circumstances, their specific biography and institutional operations. In this article I give a broad overview of the intellectual history and historiography of Coloured intelligentsia. I focus in more detail on the poet and educationist P. J. Philander. He is associated with the moderate grouping and characterised as a political gradualist who favoured steady and incremental changes in the political towards democracy. I argue for further engagement with the ideas and actions of the poet and propose that liberal sentiments in his life and work provide further and important perspectives. This would also explain his disenchantment with the apartheid regime and his consequent decision to emigrate to the United States of America where he pursued a long and illustrious career as an educator at a Quaker School in New York. I analyse two texts with an autobiographical purview to indicate these strands of liberal influence and thought.
{"title":"Die intellektuele geskiedenis van bruin intelligentsia: ’n herbesoek aan P. J. Philander (1921–2006)","authors":"Steward Van Wyk","doi":"10.17159/tl.v59i3.12510","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.17159/tl.v59i3.12510","url":null,"abstract":"The intellectual history of Coloured intelligentsia in the middle of the previous century is often characterised by a sharp division between moderates and radicals. The historiography of Coloured people is relatively limited but a few scholars have studied their intellectual formation against the background of historical circumstances, their specific biography and institutional operations. In this article I give a broad overview of the intellectual history and historiography of Coloured intelligentsia. I focus in more detail on the poet and educationist P. J. Philander. He is associated with the moderate grouping and characterised as a political gradualist who favoured steady and incremental changes in the political towards democracy. I argue for further engagement with the ideas and actions of the poet and propose that liberal sentiments in his life and work provide further and important perspectives. This would also explain his disenchantment with the apartheid regime and his consequent decision to emigrate to the United States of America where he pursued a long and illustrious career as an educator at a Quaker School in New York. I analyse two texts with an autobiographical purview to indicate these strands of liberal influence and thought.","PeriodicalId":41787,"journal":{"name":"Tydskrif vir letterkunde","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-09-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46440850","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The epic poem about the Soweto uprising, “Laboraro le lesoleso”, written in Sepedi (Northern Sotho) by H. M. L. Lentsoane has only recently been translated into English by Biki Lepota as “Black Wednesday” and published in the anthology Stitching a whirlwind (2018). In this article I suggest that, by discarding English, some crucial shifts from the bulk of protest poetry written in English must have taken place. Lentsoane wants to speak directly to fellow mother tongue speakers and not a national or broader African or international ear. It becomes clear that, by deploying various strategies based in orality, the poet manages to contribute new material and new approaches to creative texts of black protest during the apartheid years, e.g., a release from specific apartheid content about their oppression that every indigenous speaker had common knowledge of; an adherence to orality in terms of presentation, vocabulary, and form; and a linkage with the ancestors and a release from trying to reach the conscience of whites. This manifests through the poem’s particular perspective and emphasis as narrative, as telling, combined with vivid visceral poetic imagery of the event. The poem evocatively captures the unfolding of incidents while at the same time shifting the focus to an ancestral demand to stand up for righteousness in a universal field of justice.
{"title":"Some new perspectives on the Soweto uprising: H. M. L. Lentsoane’s poem “Black Wednesday” (“Laboraro le lesoleso”)","authors":"Antjie Krog","doi":"10.17159/tl.v59i3.12197","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.17159/tl.v59i3.12197","url":null,"abstract":"The epic poem about the Soweto uprising, “Laboraro le lesoleso”, written in Sepedi (Northern Sotho) by H. M. L. Lentsoane has only recently been translated into English by Biki Lepota as “Black Wednesday” and published in the anthology Stitching a whirlwind (2018). In this article I suggest that, by discarding English, some crucial shifts from the bulk of protest poetry written in English must have taken place. Lentsoane wants to speak directly to fellow mother tongue speakers and not a national or broader African or international ear. It becomes clear that, by deploying various strategies based in orality, the poet manages to contribute new material and new approaches to creative texts of black protest during the apartheid years, e.g., a release from specific apartheid content about their oppression that every indigenous speaker had common knowledge of; an adherence to orality in terms of presentation, vocabulary, and form; and a linkage with the ancestors and a release from trying to reach the conscience of whites. This manifests through the poem’s particular perspective and emphasis as narrative, as telling, combined with vivid visceral poetic imagery of the event. The poem evocatively captures the unfolding of incidents while at the same time shifting the focus to an ancestral demand to stand up for righteousness in a universal field of justice.","PeriodicalId":41787,"journal":{"name":"Tydskrif vir letterkunde","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-09-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43033200","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The legacy of the Middle Dutch epic Vanden vos Reynaerde and the many ways in which we still see traces of Reynaert the fox and his companion, Iesegrim the wolf, in Afrikaans, are discussed in this article. The indestructible fox gets a second life under the Southern Cross, perhaps most notably in the many tales about Jackal and Wolf which are well known as part of a shared oral heritage by white and Khoi speakers of Afrikaans. Our focus is not these stories, however, but rather the following question: does the Reynaert of the epic indeed live on in Afrikaans literature? We argue that the epic itself and its literary heritage has not received as much attention as did the stories of the sly jackal and the gullible, even dim-witted, wolf. These extremely short stories do not exhibit the carefully planned structure, sharp social commentary and ruthless exposing of human weaknesses as does the epic. In our opinion, the only text in which the medieval epic itself functions as intertext, is in the brilliant adaptation by Eitemal. Eitemal created a story which is in many ways so different from the Dutch Reinaert, that it truly is a story written on African soil. In the Eitemal text, the sly fox becomes a typical Afrikaans crook—and what’s more, he is a villain who is not foreign to modern readers due to his essentially human character. In Reinaard die Jakkals the intrepid, extremely cruel but also clever fox lives on.
本文将讨论中古荷兰史诗《Vanden vos Reynaerde》的遗产，以及我们在南非荷兰语中仍然可以看到狐狸Reynaert和他的同伴狼Iesegrim的痕迹。坚不可摧的狐狸在南十字星座下获得了第二次生命，也许最引人注目的是在许多关于豺狼和狼的故事中，这些故事众所周知，是白人和说南非荷兰语的科伊人共同口述遗产的一部分。然而，我们关注的不是这些故事，而是下面的问题:史诗中的雷纳特真的存在于南非荷兰语文学中吗?我们认为，史诗本身及其文学遗产并没有像狡猾的豺狼和容易上当受骗甚至愚蠢的狼的故事那样受到那么多的关注。这些极短的故事不像史诗那样展现出精心策划的结构、尖锐的社会评论和无情地揭露人类的弱点。在我们看来，中世纪史诗本身作为互文发挥作用的唯一文本是Eitemal的精彩改编。Eitemal创造了一个在很多方面与荷兰Reinaert如此不同的故事，它确实是一个写在非洲土地上的故事。在Eitemal文本中，狡猾的狐狸变成了典型的南非荷兰骗子，更重要的是，由于他本质上是人类的性格，他是一个对现代读者来说并不陌生的恶棍。在《莱纳德之死》中，这只勇敢、极其残忍但又聪明的狐狸活了下来。
{"title":"Vanden vos Reynaerde se transformasie tot Reinaard die Jakkals","authors":"Nerina Bosman, J. Stander","doi":"10.17159/tl.v59i3.13286","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.17159/tl.v59i3.13286","url":null,"abstract":"The legacy of the Middle Dutch epic Vanden vos Reynaerde and the many ways in which we still see traces of Reynaert the fox and his companion, Iesegrim the wolf, in Afrikaans, are discussed in this article. The indestructible fox gets a second life under the Southern Cross, perhaps most notably in the many tales about Jackal and Wolf which are well known as part of a shared oral heritage by white and Khoi speakers of Afrikaans. Our focus is not these stories, however, but rather the following question: does the Reynaert of the epic indeed live on in Afrikaans literature? We argue that the epic itself and its literary heritage has not received as much attention as did the stories of the sly jackal and the gullible, even dim-witted, wolf. These extremely short stories do not exhibit the carefully planned structure, sharp social commentary and ruthless exposing of human weaknesses as does the epic. In our opinion, the only text in which the medieval epic itself functions as intertext, is in the brilliant adaptation by Eitemal. Eitemal created a story which is in many ways so different from the Dutch Reinaert, that it truly is a story written on African soil. In the Eitemal text, the sly fox becomes a typical Afrikaans crook—and what’s more, he is a villain who is not foreign to modern readers due to his essentially human character. In Reinaard die Jakkals the intrepid, extremely cruel but also clever fox lives on.\u0000 ","PeriodicalId":41787,"journal":{"name":"Tydskrif vir letterkunde","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-09-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42231730","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In this article, we canvass some of the ideas around Hein Willemse’s focus on hidden histories, conscious oppositionality, and literature that falls outside the canon, which began to coalesce following contemporary calls for decolonial approaches in the (South) African academy. While the decolonial turn has focused attention on shared histories within Global South contexts, it is through Willemse’s postcolonial teachings that we first came to understand the importance and meaning of reclaiming the lost African ontological space. This article is, therefore, located in postcolonial and decolonial scholarship in the sense that it is not driven by a particular method but rather by questions that emerged from larger social contexts. We draw on Willemse’s visionary understanding of the importance of hidden histories and what it might mean to listen with postcolonial and/or decolonial ears. This, amongst other things, requires an acute awareness of history, heritage, and legacies both in society and in the academy. We incorporate a random selection of his work to unpack how his disruptive intervention serves to reformulate the idea of Afrikaans and Afrikaans literature in ways that are more inclusive of those silenced by the apartheid project, including Africa and the Global South at large.
{"title":"To listen with decolonial ears: Hein Willemse, hidden histories, and the politics of disruptive intervention","authors":"Viola c. Milton, Hannelie Marx-Knoetze","doi":"10.17159/tl.v59i3.13123","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.17159/tl.v59i3.13123","url":null,"abstract":"In this article, we canvass some of the ideas around Hein Willemse’s focus on hidden histories, conscious oppositionality, and literature that falls outside the canon, which began to coalesce following contemporary calls for decolonial approaches in the (South) African academy. While the decolonial turn has focused attention on shared histories within Global South contexts, it is through Willemse’s postcolonial teachings that we first came to understand the importance and meaning of reclaiming the lost African ontological space. This article is, therefore, located in postcolonial and decolonial scholarship in the sense that it is not driven by a particular method but rather by questions that emerged from larger social contexts. We draw on Willemse’s visionary understanding of the importance of hidden histories and what it might mean to listen with postcolonial and/or decolonial ears. This, amongst other things, requires an acute awareness of history, heritage, and legacies both in society and in the academy. We incorporate a random selection of his work to unpack how his disruptive intervention serves to reformulate the idea of Afrikaans and Afrikaans literature in ways that are more inclusive of those silenced by the apartheid project, including Africa and the Global South at large. ","PeriodicalId":41787,"journal":{"name":"Tydskrif vir letterkunde","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-09-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43863721","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Die kernfeite rondom Heinrich Stephen Samuel Willemse is in die openbare domein. Hy is op 18 September 1957 op Ladismith in die destydse Kaapprovinsie gebore en gaan skool op Mosselbaai en daarna Worcester, waar hy aan die Hoërskool Esselenpark matrikuleer. Hy studeer voorgraads regte aan die Universiteit van Wes-Kaapland, maar behaal sy meestersgraad in die Afrikaanse letterkunde in 1984 en sy D.Litt in 1996 (ook aan die UWK). In 1981 publiseer hy ’n digbundel, Angsland, en in 1985 is hy ’n besoeker by die Universiteit van Iowa in Amerika se program in kreatiewe skryfkunde. Benewens sy betrekking as lektor by UWK is hy oor die jare gasdosent aan onder andere die Universiteite van Mexico, Namibië, Fort Hare en Stellenbosch. In 1996 verlaat hy tydelik die akademie en word aangestel as uitvoerende bestuurshoof van OLM Kommunikasie, ’n mediamaatskappy toegespits op die ontwikkeling en publikasie van Afrikaanse geletterdheidsmateriaal (Willemse, “Om te leef in Afrika: Oorlewing, saambestaan en die Suid-Afrikaanse letterkunde” 2). Hy behaal ’n bestuurskwalifikasie aan die Skiereilandse Technikon en ’n meestersgraad in Bestuursleiding aan die Universiteit van Suid-Afrika (2). Hy was en is deel van die direksie of trustees van verskeie korporasies en organisasies, vernaam Naspers en later Media24. Hy tree op as adviseur en/of beoordelaar by kunstefeeste en ander liggame wat literêre pryse toeken. In September 2000 word hy aangestel as hoof van die Departement Afrikaans aan die Universiteit van Pretoria, ’n pos wat hy tot 2009 beklee. Sedertdien is hy as professor nog steeds aktief betrokke in dieselfde departement. Van 2003 tot 2019 is hy hoofredakteur van Tydskrif vir Letterkunde. Hy tree einde 2022 af en sal voortaan as emeritusprofessor aan UP verbonde wees. As gratifying as it is to celebrate the life and career of a remarkable scholar, one cannot forget that the occasion for this issue is the retirement of a beloved Redaksionele nota | Editorial
海因里希·斯蒂芬·塞缪尔·威廉姆斯周围的子弹是公开的。Hy于1957年9月18日在Worcester的Mosselbaai的Kaapprovinsie gebore en gaan skool的Ladismith行动中，在Hoërskol Esselenpark的matrikulier行动中。他在西开普大学学习高级权利，但于1984年获得非洲文学硕士学位，并于1996年（也在英国）获得D.Litt学位。1981年，他出版了一本杂志《英格兰》，1985年，他参观了爱荷华大学的美国创意写作项目。尽管他在英国担任讲师，但他在墨西哥、纳米比亚、黑尔堡和斯泰伦博斯的其他大学花了数年时间研究天然气剂量。1996年，他暂时离开了学院，被任命为OLM传播公司的负责人，这是一家专注于非洲传统材料的开发和出版的媒体公司（Willems，《生活在非洲：生存、合作和南非信件》）。他拥有南非大学斯基兰技术和管理硕士学位的管理资格（2）。他也是各种公司和组织的目录或信托的一员，这些公司和组织被命名为Naspers，后来被命名为Media24。他在艺术节和其他认可文学价格的机构担任顾问和/或协调员。2000年9月，南非荷兰语系和比勒陀利亚大学成立，2009年成立。从那时起，他仍然是同一系的活跃教授。从2003年到2019年，他是信件总部的负责人。他将在2022年结束工作，并继续作为应急经理与up联系。尽管庆祝一位杰出学者的生活和职业生涯是令人欣慰的，但人们不能忘记，本期的主题是一位深受爱戴的Redaksionele nota的退休
{"title":"Hein Willemse: Teen die grein / Against the grain","authors":"Jacomien Van Niekerk, Steward Van Wyk","doi":"10.17159/tl.v59i3.14341","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.17159/tl.v59i3.14341","url":null,"abstract":"Die kernfeite rondom Heinrich Stephen Samuel Willemse is in die openbare domein. Hy is op 18 September 1957 op Ladismith in die destydse Kaapprovinsie gebore en gaan skool op Mosselbaai en daarna Worcester, waar hy aan die Hoërskool Esselenpark matrikuleer. Hy studeer voorgraads regte aan die Universiteit van Wes-Kaapland, maar behaal sy meestersgraad in die Afrikaanse letterkunde in 1984 en sy D.Litt in 1996 (ook aan die UWK). In 1981 publiseer hy ’n digbundel, Angsland, en in 1985 is hy ’n besoeker by die Universiteit van Iowa in Amerika se program in kreatiewe skryfkunde. Benewens sy betrekking as lektor by UWK is hy oor die jare gasdosent aan onder andere die Universiteite van Mexico, Namibië, Fort Hare en Stellenbosch. In 1996 verlaat hy tydelik die akademie en word aangestel as uitvoerende bestuurshoof van OLM Kommunikasie, ’n mediamaatskappy toegespits op die ontwikkeling en publikasie van Afrikaanse geletterdheidsmateriaal (Willemse, “Om te leef in Afrika: Oorlewing, saambestaan en die Suid-Afrikaanse letterkunde” 2). Hy behaal ’n bestuurskwalifikasie aan die Skiereilandse Technikon en ’n meestersgraad in Bestuursleiding aan die Universiteit van Suid-Afrika (2). Hy was en is deel van die direksie of trustees van verskeie korporasies en organisasies, vernaam Naspers en later Media24. Hy tree op as adviseur en/of beoordelaar by kunstefeeste en ander liggame wat literêre pryse toeken. In September 2000 word hy aangestel as hoof van die Departement Afrikaans aan die Universiteit van Pretoria, ’n pos wat hy tot 2009 beklee. Sedertdien is hy as professor nog steeds aktief betrokke in dieselfde departement. Van 2003 tot 2019 is hy hoofredakteur van Tydskrif vir Letterkunde. Hy tree einde 2022 af en sal voortaan as emeritusprofessor aan UP verbonde wees. As gratifying as it is to celebrate the life and career of a remarkable scholar, one cannot forget that the occasion for this issue is the retirement of a beloved Redaksionele nota | Editorial","PeriodicalId":41787,"journal":{"name":"Tydskrif vir letterkunde","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-09-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41610621","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
South African author André Brink and the Algerian Assia Djebar have been described as a uo of literature and struggle. Various parallels exist between the authors’ oeuvres: both authors strive to create a chain of voices for those who have been ignored or silenced; they attempt to re-evaluate the colonial experience while problematising the complexities of present-day South Africa and Algeria; their narratives foreground language, space, and power struggles between coloniser and colonised, master and slave, man and woman. Their characters represent a desire for freedom and the need for resistance in the quest for liberation. In this article I focus on the comparable role of space, and more specifically spaces of exclusion, in a selection of the authors’ works. Postcolonial theories serve as a framework for establishing Brink and Djebar’s similar stance regarding the notion of exclusion. Amongst others, Homi Bhabha’s concept of the ‘beyond’ and Édouard Glissant’s notion of ‘relation’ are employed to strengthen arguments made concerning the characters’ desire for movement which results from them being excluded from certain spaces. In this article I demonstrate how their characters feel attracted to cross borders that exclude in a quest for inclusion. An endless, open, and powerful movement is the result of the opposing forces of exclusion and attraction their characters experience.
{"title":"The power of exclusion in the works of André Brink and Assia Djebar","authors":"C. Steenekamp","doi":"10.17159/tl.v59i3.13304","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.17159/tl.v59i3.13304","url":null,"abstract":"South African author André Brink and the Algerian Assia Djebar have been described as a uo of literature and struggle. Various parallels exist between the authors’ oeuvres: both authors strive to create a chain of voices for those who have been ignored or silenced; they attempt to re-evaluate the colonial experience while problematising the complexities of present-day South Africa and Algeria; their narratives foreground language, space, and power struggles between coloniser and colonised, master and slave, man and woman. Their characters represent a desire for freedom and the need for resistance in the quest for liberation. In this article I focus on the comparable role of space, and more specifically spaces of exclusion, in a selection of the authors’ works. Postcolonial theories serve as a framework for establishing Brink and Djebar’s similar stance regarding the notion of exclusion. Amongst others, Homi Bhabha’s concept of the ‘beyond’ and Édouard Glissant’s notion of ‘relation’ are employed to strengthen arguments made concerning the characters’ desire for movement which results from them being excluded from certain spaces. In this article I demonstrate how their characters feel attracted to cross borders that exclude in a quest for inclusion. An endless, open, and powerful movement is the result of the opposing forces of exclusion and attraction their characters experience.","PeriodicalId":41787,"journal":{"name":"Tydskrif vir letterkunde","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-09-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42642648","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Taking recent debates on ‘How to write Africa’ in general and the allegations of sexism in Fiston Mwanza Mujila’s novel Tram 83 in particular as a starting point, I analyze three texts by the Austria-based Congolese author in this article. Considering the scope of each text, namely Tram 83 (2014), the play Zu der Zeit der Königinmutter (The Times of the Queen Mother, 2018), and the latest novel La danse du vilain (The Dance of the Villain, 2020), shifting images and meanings of gender dichotomies are explored alongside Mujila’s aesthetic literary devices. The article is structured around the omnipresent setting of bars that develop from a disputable ‘African’ bar in Tram 83 to a radically global bar in Zu der Zeit der Königinmutter and to referentially set bars of Central Africa’s postcolonial history in La danse du vilain. I argue that recurrence of the bar as a focal lieu of mingling people in Mujila’s writing underlines its function as satirical microcosm that goes beyond a realistic representation of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Multilayered cultural references in Tram 83 and Zu der Zeit der Königinmutter construct the setting into a worldly space whereas La danse du vilain privileges a historical approach. As further pointed out, the metatextual level that is woven into the texts comments on the difficulty of the adequate representation of ‘Africa’ and the pitfalls of the global literary market place.
本文以最近关于“如何书写非洲”的辩论，以及菲斯顿·姆万扎·穆吉拉(Fiston Mwanza Mujila)的小说《Tram 83》中对性别歧视的指控为出发点，分析了这位奥地利籍刚果作家的三篇文章。考虑到每一篇文本的范围，即《电车83》(2014)、戏剧《太后时代》Königinmutter(2018)和最新小说《恶棍之舞》(2020)，性别两分法的形象和意义的变化与穆吉拉的审美文学手法一起被探索。本文围绕着无处不在的酒吧环境展开，这些酒吧从《Tram 83》中有争议的“非洲”酒吧发展到《Zu der Zeit der Königinmutter》中彻底的全球酒吧，并参考了《La danse du vilain》中中非后殖民历史的酒吧。我认为，在穆吉拉的作品中，酒吧作为人们交往的焦点场所的反复出现，突显了它作为讽刺微观世界的功能，超越了对刚果民主共和国的现实再现。《电车83》和《时代之歌》Königinmutter的多层次文化参考将背景构建为一个世俗的空间，而《恶棍之舞》则采用了历史的方法。正如进一步指出的那样，融入文本的元文本层次评论了充分代表“非洲”的困难以及全球文学市场的陷阱。
{"title":"The world is a bar: Fiston Mwanza Mujila’s writing beyond ‘Africa’","authors":"Susanne Gehrmann","doi":"10.17159/tl.v59i3.13717","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.17159/tl.v59i3.13717","url":null,"abstract":"Taking recent debates on ‘How to write Africa’ in general and the allegations of sexism in Fiston Mwanza Mujila’s novel Tram 83 in particular as a starting point, I analyze three texts by the Austria-based Congolese author in this article. Considering the scope of each text, namely Tram 83 (2014), the play Zu der Zeit der Königinmutter (The Times of the Queen Mother, 2018), and the latest novel La danse du vilain (The Dance of the Villain, 2020), shifting images and meanings of gender dichotomies are explored alongside Mujila’s aesthetic literary devices. The article is structured around the omnipresent setting of bars that develop from a disputable ‘African’ bar in Tram 83 to a radically global bar in Zu der Zeit der Königinmutter and to referentially set bars of Central Africa’s postcolonial history in La danse du vilain. I argue that recurrence of the bar as a focal lieu of mingling people in Mujila’s writing underlines its function as satirical microcosm that goes beyond a realistic representation of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Multilayered cultural references in Tram 83 and Zu der Zeit der Königinmutter construct the setting into a worldly space whereas La danse du vilain privileges a historical approach. As further pointed out, the metatextual level that is woven into the texts comments on the difficulty of the adequate representation of ‘Africa’ and the pitfalls of the global literary market place. ","PeriodicalId":41787,"journal":{"name":"Tydskrif vir letterkunde","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-09-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45915954","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In this article I analyze the political bifocal discourse that the display of Congolese political figures reveals at the Gouvernorat du Haut-Katanga (State House of the Province of Haut-Katanga) in Lubumbashi, Democratic Republic of the Congo that was inaugurated in 2018. The display reflects the potency of a discourse dictated by a period of time’s circumstances reflective of new ways of thinking. It is the performative self-affirmation focusing on the politics of proximity and not exclusively that of distanciation seen in its worst form in ethnic cleansing. Within the global atmosphere marked by public demonstrations heightened by the death of George Floyd (1973–2020) calling for the toppling of monuments honoring Robert E. Lee; Cecil Rhodes; George Colston’s in Bristol, England; King Leopold II in Belgium; honoring busts of King Leopold next to Doňa Beatriz Kimpa Vita’s; and Moïse Tshombe’s next to Patrice-Emery Lumumba’s, inevitably leads observers to question the arrangement. It articulates in plain sight a twofold political discourse positing, on one hand, its unitary aspiration, on the other hand, the uniqueness of the Katanga province with its strengths, its expectations, and its vulnerabilities. My analysis relies on Michel Foucault’s concept of discourse, on Pierre Nora’s notion of lieux de mémoire, and François Hartog’s idea of presentism. Hartog’s presentism accommodates an analytical exercise that uncovers a discourse of continuity allowed by the necessities of the present. Specific discursive elements become building blocks towards the aspiration to social stability reflected and re-articulated throughout the materiality and rationalizing of figural representations.
{"title":"Battling statues enter into dialogue at the Gouvernorat du Haut-Katanga","authors":"K. M. Kapanga","doi":"10.17159/tl.v59i3.12535","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.17159/tl.v59i3.12535","url":null,"abstract":"In this article I analyze the political bifocal discourse that the display of Congolese political figures reveals at the Gouvernorat du Haut-Katanga (State House of the Province of Haut-Katanga) in Lubumbashi, Democratic Republic of the Congo that was inaugurated in 2018. The display reflects the potency of a discourse dictated by a period of time’s circumstances reflective of new ways of thinking. It is the performative self-affirmation focusing on the politics of proximity and not exclusively that of distanciation seen in its worst form in ethnic cleansing. Within the global atmosphere marked by public demonstrations heightened by the death of George Floyd (1973–2020) calling for the toppling of monuments honoring Robert E. Lee; Cecil Rhodes; George Colston’s in Bristol, England; King Leopold II in Belgium; honoring busts of King Leopold next to Doňa Beatriz Kimpa Vita’s; and Moïse Tshombe’s next to Patrice-Emery Lumumba’s, inevitably leads observers to question the arrangement. It articulates in plain sight a twofold political discourse positing, on one hand, its unitary aspiration, on the other hand, the uniqueness of the Katanga province with its strengths, its expectations, and its vulnerabilities. My analysis relies on Michel Foucault’s concept of discourse, on Pierre Nora’s notion of lieux de mémoire, and François Hartog’s idea of presentism. Hartog’s presentism accommodates an analytical exercise that uncovers a discourse of continuity allowed by the necessities of the present. Specific discursive elements become building blocks towards the aspiration to social stability reflected and re-articulated throughout the materiality and rationalizing of figural representations. ","PeriodicalId":41787,"journal":{"name":"Tydskrif vir letterkunde","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-09-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42250823","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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