502353

2013

JCL0010.1177/0021989413502353The Journal of Commonwealth LiteratureDonnelly

This is the rst page of my article "Metactions of Development." To read the rest, visit the jcl.sagepub.com.
THE JOURNAL OF

Article

C O M M O N W E A LT H L I T E R A T U R E
The Journal of Commonwealth Literature 0(0) 118 The Author(s) 2013 Reprints and permissions: sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/0021989413502353 jcl.sagepub.com

Metafictions of development: The Enigma of Arrival, You Cant Get Lost in Cape Town, and the place of the world in world literature
Kara Lee Donnelly

University of Notre Dame, USA

Abstract
This article examines two works of fiction: V.S. Naipauls The Enigma of Arrival and Zo Wicombs You Cant Get Lost in Cape Town. Although these are works by authors who write out of different cultural formations, both link their narrators development to his or her success at becoming a published author. To be fully mature, the narrator must recognize his or her own experiences as a disenfranchised subject from the colonial hinterland as the appropriate subject for literature. In conjunction with this particular form of character development, both Naipaul and Wicomb use metafiction to reflect on the complex and unequal structures that shape world literary markets. They integrate their protagonists into global markets by strategically deploying the Bildungsroman. These formal features allow these works to serve as a critique of world literature even as they participate in world literary culture and markets. Taking the impetus from these works of fiction, this article proposes a redefinition of world literature as literary works that develop strategies of representation that respond to fundamental global inequalities.

Keywords
bildungsroman, metafiction, V.S. Naipaul, Zo Wicomb, world literature

In V.S. Naipauls novel The Enigma of Arrival (1987), the narrator reflects on his first journey to England and his aspiration to become a published author, a desire so intense that he cannot see his own life as a colonial subject and migrant as a suitable subject for literature. For Frieda Shenton, the narrator of Zo Wicombs You Cant Get Lost in Cape Town (1987), her desire to escape the daily horrors of apartheid South Africa pushes her out of her Afrikaans-speaking coloured community into the English language,
Corresponding author: Kara Lee Donnelly, University of Notre Dame, 356 OShaughnessy Hall, Notre Dame, IN 46556, USA. Email: kdonnel3@nd.edu