scholarly journals The skaz narrative mode in short stories by W. C. Scully, Percy FitzPatrick, Perceval Gibbon and Herman Charles Bosman

Literator ◽  
1993 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 1-20 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. MacKenzie
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Short Stories ◽  
South African ◽  
African Literature ◽  
Cultural Exchange ◽  
Oral Traditions ◽  
Cultural Activity ◽  
South African Literature ◽  
Narrative Mode ◽  
Made In

While an overwhelming amount of cultural activity worldwide has been (and is being) conducted in societies which had (or have) very little or no knowledge at all of writing, and which can therefore be described as predominantly ‘oral’ cultures, very little attempt has been made in the field of South African literature to examine how oral modes of cultural exchange influence and interpenetrate the more recent written (literary) modes. South Africa is a region which has several rich oral traditions and it is therefore important to explore how aspects of these traditions are incorporated into (written) literature. This paper looks at the use of the fictional narrator and skaz (the Russian Formalist term meaning 'speech') in some South African short stories by Scully, FitzPatrick, Gibbon and Bosman. It is argued that whereas Scully and FitzPatrick produce only partially successful narratives in the skaz style, Gibbon and Bosman introduce greater artistic and ideological complexity to the form.

scholarly journals Die Afrikaanse prosa, 1918 - 1926: brandpunt van die geboorte van ’n nuwe bewussyn

Literator ◽  
1991 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 107-120 ◽  
Author(s):  
P. John
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
South African ◽  
Political Power ◽  
African Literature ◽  
Social Category ◽  
Ruling Class ◽  
South African Literature ◽  
Selection Of ◽  
Massive Intervention ◽  
The Way

This study looks at a selection of Afrikaans prose texts from the period 1918 to 1926 in an attempt to establish a relation between the rapid industrialisation which South Africa was being subjected to and the literature produced during this time. Georg Lukács’ argument that "nature is a social category" is used to show that a preoccupation with certain desires and emotions with which these texts are marked is an indication that a massive intervention into ‘nature’, in the form of the emotional lives of especially white Afrikaans workers, was either on the way or being proposed through the medium of literature during this time. This intervention is seen as part of an attempt by the white Afrikaans ruling class to draw Afrikaans workers into its fold in its struggle for political power. A contiguous concern of the study is to propose this kind of approach as a basis for the study of South African literature as a whole.

A Case for a Transforming Christology in South Africa

2013 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 310-326
Author(s):  
Jakobus (Koos) M. Vorster
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
South African ◽  
African Literature ◽  
Kingdom Of God ◽  
Political Life ◽  
Historical Jesus ◽  
The Political ◽  
The South ◽  
South African Literature ◽  
Lost In Translation

Abstract In the South African discourse on the political relevance of Jesus Christ, a vast array of conceptions of Jesus emerged over the years of the struggle, the liberation, the quest for spirituality and the theology of reconstruction. This discourse has taken place within the framework of the two broad historical movements of a “high” and a “low” Christology. In a recent thought provoking and informative article Mouton & Smit investigated four of the dominant discourses on Jesus in contemporary South Africa.1 They surveyed the discussions of Jesus in the popular news and newspaper debates, academic circles and scholarship, the worship and spirituality of congregations and believers, and public opinion about social and political life. After reviewing a huge corpus of South African literature on concepts of Jesus they ask the question whether Jesus was lost in translation in the South Africa of recent times. This article is an attempt to take the argument further. First of all, the investigation will provide another outline of the Christologies in the recent South African discourse within the broad framework of a “high” and a “low” Christology. The concepts under consideration are the spiritual Jesus, the political Jesus and the historical Jesus. Then a case will be made for the transforming Jesus of the Kingdom of God as a corrective on the Christologies of Apartheid, the liberation struggle and the modern-day post-modern projections of the historical Jesus.

scholarly journals The Position of South African Children's and Youth Literature in Librarian Training in South Africa

2021 ◽  
pp. 106-118
Author(s):  
Genevieve Hart
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Children's Literature ◽  
South African ◽  
Children’S Literature ◽  
African Literature ◽  
Course Content ◽  
South African Literature ◽  
Information Association ◽  
Youth Literature

A survey of 16 South African library schools was undertaken to identify children's literature courses. Eighteen courses were found at eight institutions. The lecturers responsible were then interviewed - giving details of course content, resources available and their perceptions of their challenges. The courses are clearly under threat and very little emphasis is placed on South African literature. The intervention of the Library and Information Association of South Africa and library organisations is called for.

scholarly journals “A Sense of an Absent Future.” Pervading Post-apartheid South African Literature: Re-conceptualisations of Temporality in André Brink’s Transitional Writings

Werkwinkel ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 14 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 37-58
Author(s):  
Paulina Grzęda
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
South African ◽  
African Literature ◽  
Global South ◽  
The Other ◽  
South Africans ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Realist Novels ◽  
The Future ◽  
South African Literature

AbstractNumerous commentators have recently indicated a prevailing sense among South africans of a historical repetition, a pervasive sentiment that the country has failed to shake off the legacy of apartheid, which extends into the present, and possibly also the future. 1 Such an observation has led South African psychologist, derek Hook, to conclude that in order to adequately address the post-apartheid reality and allow the process of working through trauma, there is a need to abandon the linear Judeo-Christian model of time derived from the Enlightenment. Instead, Hook advocates to start thinking of post-apartheid South Africa not as a socio-economically or racially stratified society, but rather as a country of unsynchronized, split, often overlapping temporalities. Thus, he offers to perceive of ‘chaffing temporalities’ of the contemporary predicament. Resende and Thies, on the other hand, call for a need for a reconceptualised approach to temporality not only when dealing with heavily traumatized postcolonial countries such as South Africa, but more generally when addressing the geopolitics of all the countries of the so-called ‘Global South.’ My paper will discuss the manner in which reconceptualised postcolonial temporality has been addressed by South African transitional writings by André Brink. I will argue that, although Brink’s magical realist novels of the 1990s imaginatively engage with ‘the chaffing temporalities’ of the post-apartheid predicament, their refusal to project any viable visions of the country’s future might ultimately problematise the thorough embrace of Hook’s ‘ethics of temporality.’

scholarly journals La violence et la culpabilité en partage : le destin national du thème de l’inceste dans la fiction sud-africaine

2015 ◽  
pp. 19-30
Author(s):  
Tina Harpin
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
South African ◽  
Political Violence ◽  
African Literature ◽  
Doris Lessing ◽  
Sexual Crimes ◽  
Racial Boundaries ◽  
National Community ◽  
South African Literature ◽  
Democratic Stability

Twenty years after the end of Apartheid, violence is still a serious problem in South Africa, despite the prosperity and democratic stability of the state. Sexual violence, in particular, has become a major concern. During the decades of transition, secrets of sexual crimes were disclosed more than ever, and it was made patent that they were intertwined with political violence. Incest thus became a new important fictional theme in South African literature. Actually, the issue was already a tacit burning question for politicians and scientists at the end of the 20th century. Given the racist and eugenist background of the country, incest has long been written in the gothic mode to express White communities’ anxieties, until Doris Lessing, Reza de Wet and Marlene van Niekerk came along. They integrated irony into the gothic and rethought the question of taboo in such a way that it was made available for critical thinking beyond local or racial boundaries. Since the end of the 90s, writing fictions involving incest contributes more than ever to reflect on the possibility or the impossibility of strengthening an extended national community against violence, which I demonstrate through my reading of the novels by Achmat Dangor and of a recent play by Paul Grootboom and Presley Chweneyagae.

A New Keynesian Phillips Curve for South Africa

2013 ◽  
pp. 30-48 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rulof Burger ◽  
Stan du Plessis
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
South African ◽  
Open Economy ◽  
Economic Activity ◽  
Phillips Curve ◽  
African Literature ◽  
New Keynesian ◽  
New Keynesian Phillips Curve ◽  
The South ◽  
South African Literature

In South Africa, as elsewhere, economists have not reached an agreed upon model for the Phillips curve, despite its importance for understanding the process of inflation and its relevance for policy makers. It has been a particular challenge to identify the role of aggregate economic activity in the inflationary process in the South African literature, since the breakdown of a reasonably traditional Phillips curve, which had existed until the early seventies. A comparatively new model of the Phillips curve, often called the New Keynesian Phillips Curve (NKPC), has recently received considerable interest and support from monetary economists. The South African literature is exceptional in that these models have not yet been applied locally, despite their close association with forward looking and rules-based monetary policy regimes such as the inflation-targeting regime of the South African Reserve Bank. This chapter takes a first step towards introducing the NKPC in the South African debate, by estimating standard, hybrid, and open economy versions of the model and comparing the results with the international literature as well as South African precedents. The authors find encouraging, though tentative, evidence that research along these lines might help to identify the impact of aggregate economic activity in the domestic process of inflation.

South African Historiography and the Cape Archives

Itinerario ◽  
1984 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 27-30
Author(s):  
Robert Ross
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
South African ◽  
Social History ◽  
Driving Force ◽  
African Literature ◽  
The South ◽  
South African Literature ◽  
Attention To Detail

In the last decade and a half, the historiography - though not the society - of South Africa has been transformed. In 1970, there was not the same vitality that then characterised much of the historical work north of the Zambesi. In 1984, Southern African historical studies are by far the most lively anywhere in the continent. Indeed, even if with their typical parochialism those who survey modern trends in historiography have not noticed it, many facets of the so-called “new” social history are peculiarly well represented in the South African literature. The spectacularly fast urbanisation of South Africa since the mineral revolution at the end of the last century and the concomittant intensification of capitalist agriculture have naturally provided subjects enough, and they have been worked out with an exemplary attention to detail and texture. Perhaps the driving force behind this work has been a concentration on the ways in which Africans, both in town and in the countryside, were able to make and remake their worlds, in conflict with and in the interstices provided by the racist white society and government.

scholarly journals Oorgangsliteratuurgeskiedenis: die illusie van ’n nasionale Suid-Afrikaanse letterkunde

Literator ◽  
1997 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 41-56 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. Coetzee
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
South African ◽  
Literary History ◽  
African Literature ◽  
Discursive Formation ◽  
Language And Literature ◽  
South African Literature

Literary history in transition: the illusion of a national South African literatureThe transformation of South Africa from a divided country to a unified democracy has created a discourse of ‘one-nationness’. Although this concept may primarily be a politicial ideal, it also encompasses the diverse fields of culture, language and literature. Literary theoreticians and historians may have to fin d a methodology for describing the various literatures in terms of a 'South African literature if such a unified concept can exist where literatures are produced in eleven languages. These literatures, however, also differ in ways of expression, because the cultures and political contexts from which they originated vary. In considering the deficiencies of a recent literary history, this article attempts to determine whether a methodology based on the Foucauldian concept of the discursive formation may be able to combine the various literatures as statements within the narrative of a nation.

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