scholarly journals A study of identity in post-apartheid South African English literature: The Pickup by Nadine Gordimer

Literator ◽  
2005 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 49-68 ◽  
Author(s):  
M.J. Cloete
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
South African ◽  
English Literature ◽  
Northern Africa ◽  
First Century ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Transformation ◽  
Nadine Gordimer ◽  
Personal Freedom ◽  
Twenty First Century

In examining aspects of identity in “The Pickup” (2001), Nadine Gordimer’s latest novel, this article indicates new trends in postapartheid South African English literature as well. In the article it is indicated that identity has always been an important theme in Gordimer’s novels. Her earlier novels tend to focus on her characters’ struggle to attain political or racial rather than personal freedom, while her later novels increasingly tend to examine the construction of individual identities. “The Pickup” has continued this search for identity, but against a new and interesting perspective, a perspective that is in line with the political transformation of post-apartheid South Africa after 1994. Moreover, this theme is extremely relevant in the twenty-first century with its increased emphasis on place and globalisation. This article thus examines the theme of identity in “The Pickup”, first against a South African background and then against the backdrop of an unknown town somewhere in the desert – most probably in Northern Africa.

The future of the doctrine of economic duress in South African contract law: The influence of Roman-Dutch law, English law and the Constitution of the Republic

Acta Juridica ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 2021 ◽  
pp. 107-140
Author(s):  
D Bhana
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
South African ◽  
Bargaining Power ◽  
Contract Law ◽  
First Century ◽  
The Future ◽  
English Law ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
The Republic ◽  
Normative Content

In England, the contractual doctrine of economic duress is an important mechanism for curbing abuses of superior bargaining power. In contrast, in South Africa, the courts are yet to articulate a definitive doctrine. In this article, I argue for a twenty-first century South African doctrine of economic duress that is delineated primarily in terms of South Africa’s foundational constitutional value of equality. For this purpose, I consider English contract law and show how it is a concern for ‘equity’ that has been central to its treatment of economic duress. I then highlight the normative limitations of the English doctrine, but argue that the English legal experience of economic duress remains valuable for corresponding developments in the modern South African commercial context, especially in light of the latter’s post-apartheid constitutional framework, which provides the normative content of baseline standards that must inform its doctrine of economic duress.

American Custom, Ritual, and Holidays

2018 ◽  
pp. 255-276
Author(s):  
Jack Santino
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Life Course ◽  
First Century ◽  
The Political ◽  
Public Events ◽  
Close Study ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
The Life Course ◽  
Comprehensive Study

Since the nineteenth century, attention in folklore and folklife studies has shifted from viewing certain customary symbolic actions such as “calendar customs” and rituals of the life course to a more inclusive performance-oriented perspective on holidays and customs. Folklorists recognize the multiplicity of events that people may consider ritual and festival, and the porous nature of these categories. The concept of the “sacred” has expanded to include realms other than the strictly religious, so as to include the political and other domains, both official and unofficial. A comprehensive study of ritual and festival incorporates a close study of folk and popular actions as well as institutional ceremony. In the twenty-first century, approaching events as both carnivalesque and ritualesque allows folklorists to describe purpose and intention in public events, and to account for political, commemorative, celebratory, and festive elements in any particular event.

The Younghusband-Waddell Collection and Its People: the Social Life of Tibetan Books Gathered in a Late-colonial Enterprise

Inner Asia ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 131-171
Author(s):  
Hildegard Diemberger
Keyword(s):  
Digital Technology ◽  
Social Life ◽  
First Century ◽  
The Political ◽  
Academic Institutions ◽  
Cultural Biography ◽  
The Social ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
New Perspective ◽  
Insight Into

AbstractIn this paper I follow the social life of the Tibetan books belonging to the Younghusband-Waddell collection. I show how books as literary artefacts can transform from ritual objects into loot, into commodities and into academic treasures and how books can have agency over people, creating networks and shaping identities. Exploring connections between books and people, I look at colonial collecting, Orientalist scholarship and imperial visions from an unusual perspective in which the social life and cultural biography of people and things intertwine and mutually define each other. By following the trajectory of these literary artefacts, I show how their traces left in letters, minutes and acquisition documents give insight into the functioning of academic institutions and their relationship to imperial governing structures and individual aspirations. In particular, I outline the lives of a group of scholars who were involved with this collection in different capacities and whose deeds are unevenly known. This adds a new perspective to the study of this period, which has so far been largely focused on the deeds of key individuals and the political and military setting in which they operated. Finally, I show how the books of this collection have continued to exercise their attraction and moral pressure on twenty-first-century scholars, both Tibetan and international, linking them through digital technology and cyberspace.

Ethnic Factors in the Evolution of the South African Military

1975 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. 21-28
Author(s):  
Cynthia H. Enloe
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
South African ◽  
Political Institution ◽  
The Political ◽  
The South ◽  
Scant Attention ◽  
Ethnic Factors ◽  
The Military

Virtually all of the literature concerning the politics of South Africa analyzes the dynamics of that system within the frameworks of racism, authoritarianism, and repression. Yet, strangely, the political institution which is necessarily the bulwark of such a system—the military—has attracted scant attention except in terms of strategy and armaments.

Prophetic Imagination and Empire in Asia

2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 91-116
Author(s):  
Jude Lal Fernando
Keyword(s):  
East Asia ◽  
Personal Narrative ◽  
First Century ◽  
The Political ◽  
Empire Building ◽  
Christian Communities ◽  
Political Reality ◽  
Political Analysis ◽  
Prophetic Imagination ◽  
Twenty First Century

The aim of this article is to identify the glimpses of prophetic imagination amongst the Christian communities in Asia, particularly in Korea and Japan, who are engaged in resisting the new round of militarization in the twenty-first century. This resistance denounces the globalist security complex in the region and announces a nonmilitaristic alternative forming a praxis that is necessary for a new theology of peace in East Asia and in Asia broadly. The political reality of the new round of military empire-building will be discussed with a personal narrative and a political analysis after which the theological meaning of prophetic imagination as opposed to imperial consciousness will be analyzed, correlating the personal and political with the theological. The ways in which the resistance to militarization resonates with the prophetic imagination of an alternative consciousness and community will be examined through an analysis of memories and renunciation of war by the churches. Broad implications of these resonances for a peace theology in Asia will be identified.

‘I Have Heard from Some Teachers’: the Second-Century Struggle for Forgiveness and Reconciliation

2004 ◽  
Vol 40 ◽  
pp. 5-28
Author(s):  
Christine Trevett
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Northern Ireland ◽  
Second Century ◽  
First Century ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation ◽  
South Wales ◽  
Fictive Kinship ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
Brothers And Sisters ◽  
Forgiveness And Reconciliation

In the close-knit valleys communities of South Wales where I was brought up, some fingers are still pointed at ‘the scab’, the miner who, for whatever reason, did not show solidarity in the strike of 1984-5, cement the definition between ‘them’ and ‘us’. In trouble-torn Palestine of the twenty-first century, or among the paramilitary groups of Northern Ireland today, suspected informers are summarily assassinated. In South Africa, the Truth and Reconciliation Committee continues its work in the post-apartheid era. In second-century Rome and elsewhere, the ‘brothers’ and ‘sisters’ who made up the fictive kinship groups – the churches – in the growing but illicit cult of the Christians were conscious both of their own vulnerability to outside opinion and of their failures in relation to their co-religionists. The questions which they asked, too, were questions about reconciliation and/or (spiritual) death.

scholarly journals Anachronism and the rewriting of history: the South Africa case

2006 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Georgi Verbeeck
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
South African ◽  
Historical Thinking ◽  
Political Context ◽  
Political Transformation ◽  
The South ◽  
Political Debates ◽  
New Nation

The use and abuse of anachronism is often seen as the quintessence of the writing of history. Historians tend to conceive it as the hardcore of their métier to avoid anachronism. It designates a confusion in order of time, especially the mistake of placing an event, attitude, or circumstance too early. The awareness of historical anachronism is omnipresent in times of a radical rewriting of history, in particular as a result of political transformation. History reflects the needs and ambitions of a political context, and the sense of what is deemed historically significant does not remain unattached hereby. Chronology and anachronism are essential to particular conceptions of history, and if history is in a process of being rewritten, they are the first items to be addressed by the defenders of the old system and the advocates of a new discourse. In political debates on the use or abuse of history anachronism is often seen as ultimate proof of the (un-)reliability of new insights and conceptions. As anachronism is defined as a way of transferring contemporary sets of values, assumptions and interpretative categories, every political reorientation inevitably provokes a discussion on that level. If a ‘new nation’ is in search of a ‘new past’, a new reflection on the basic categories of historical thinking becomes necessary. The changing discourses in South African historiography since the end of Apartheid serve here as an illuminative example.

The Politics of Boundaries: The Shifting Terrain of Belonging for Zimbabweans in a South African Border Zone

2011 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 207-229 ◽  
Author(s):  
Blair Rutherford
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
South African ◽  
Asylum Seekers ◽  
Power Relations ◽  
Farm Workers ◽  
Border Zone ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Subjectivity ◽  
Border Town ◽  
Commercial Farms

Abstract This paper examines Zimbabwean immigrants in northern South Africa and the ways through which they are able to claim, or not, some form of belonging. Drawing on the concept of “political subjectivity”, I trace the changes in the power relations shaping the forms of belonging operating on the commercial farms and the border town of Musina since 2000 and the concomitant shifts in some of the Zimbabweans’ tactics in these spaces. In particular, I look at the political subjectivities of “Zimbabwean farm workers” and “Zimbabwean woman asylum-seekers”. This analysis shows what particular imaginaries have become authoritative for differently situated Zimbabwean immigrants and denizens in this region, enabling particular claims for resources, accommodation, and belonging.

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