Crossing Borders,

Dissolving Boundaries
C
ROSS
ULTURES
157
Readings in Post / Colonial
Literatures and Cultures in English

SERIES EDITORS
Gordon Collier Bénédicte Ledent Geoffrey Davis
(Giessen) (Liège) (Aachen)
CO-FOUNDING EDITOR
Hena Maes–Jelinek
 Crossing Borders,
Dissolving Boundaries

Edited by
Hein Viljoen

Amsterdam - New York, NY 2013

Cover Image
Strijdom van der Merwe, Line of Red Flags
between Wellington and Gouda (1994)
Photo courtesy of the artist (www.strijdom.co.za)

Cover design:
Inge Baeten

The paper on which this book is printed meets the requirements of “ISO
9706:1994, Information and documentation - Paper for
documents - Requirements for permanence”.

ISBN: 978-90-420-3638-3
E-Book ISBN: 978-94-012-0908-3
© Editions Rodopi B.V., Amsterdam – New York, NY 2013
Printed in The Netherlands
Table of Contents

Acknowledgements vii
Illustrations ix
Introduction xi

Representing the Unpresentable: Between the Secular

and the Spiritual in Gordimer’s Post-Apartheid Fiction
ILEANA DIMITRIU 1
Narrative Dynamics and Boundaries:
The Undermining of Event and Eventfulness in
The Book of Happenstance by Ingrid Winterbach
HEILNA DU PLOOY 27
Deneys Reitz and the Bounds of Self-Understanding
JOHN GOUWS 51
Challenging and Negotiating National Borders:
Sámi and Tornedalian AlterNative Literary History
ANNE HEITH 75
The Visual Representation of the Boundary
Between Past and Present: Chekhov’s The Cherry
Orchard and Suzman’s The Free State
LIDA KRÜGER 93
Earth as Home: Nature and Refuges /Living
Spaces in Some Afrikaans Narratives
SUSAN MEYER 113
Borders and Abjection in Triomf
ADÉLE NEL 135
Body, Corpus, and Corpse: Delineating Henrik
Ibsen in A.S. Byatt’s The Biographer’s Tale
ELLEN REES 155
Pronouncing it the Porder: Ascribing Aesthetic
Values to External and Internal National Borders
in Frank A. Jenssen’s The Salt Bin
JOHAN SCHIMANSKI 181
The Normal and the Carceral: Boundaries
in Thomas Harris’s The Silence of the Lambs
TONY ULLYATT 199
The Aid of Rhetoric and the Rhetoric of A I D S :
Eben Venter’s Ek stamel ek sterwe
PHIL VAN SCHALKWYK 229
Navigating the Interstitial: Boundaries
in Lady Anne by Antjie Krog
HEIN VILJOEN 251

Notes on the Contributors 279

Acknowledgements

This book is the result of collaboration between the project Crossing Borders
in and of Literature at the North-West University (Potchefstroom Campus)
and the Border Poetics Research Group at Tromsø University and was partly
developed during two boundary seminars that linked north and south by
video. I am very grateful to the contributors for their enthusiastic participation
in the project and for their patience with me. A special word of thanks to
Gordon Collier, the technical editor of the Cross /Cultures series at Rodopi,
for believing in the book and for his careful editing of the text.
I also wish to thank Stephen Wolfe and Holger Pötzsch in Tromsø and
Marita Wenzel, Betsie van der Westhuizen, Ralph Goodman, Cheryl Stobie,
and Elzebet Stubbe in South Africa for participating in the seminars and
loyally supporting the project. Rilette Swanepoel, Susan Smit–Marais, Attie
de Lange, Andries Visagie, and Dolly Dlavane participated in the first boun-
daries seminar. Many thanks to them as well. Tony Ullyatt language-edited
most of the essays in the collection. For that I am very grateful. Thanks is also
due to my research assistant, Bella du Toit, for her swift help with searches
and queries and with converting the Harvard style into footnotes.
The essays were all reviewed anonymously by two peer reviewers each. I
would like to acknowledge the time and effort they gave to the project and the
many helpful suggestions they made toward improving the essays.
The project Crossing Borders in and of Literature was supported by the
National Research Foundation of South Africa (N R F ) from 2008 to 2011 and
by the North-West University’s Research Unit: Languages and Literature in
the South African Context. The Border Poetics Group contributed financially
to the publication of the book. The support of these institutions is gratefully
acknowledged. The views, findings, and conclusions expressed in this book
are those of the authors and should not be attributed either to the N R F or to
the Research Unit.
viii CROSSING BORDERS, DISSOLVING BOUNDARIES a

The illustrations from Commando and from Deneys Reitz’s unpublished

manuscript are used with the kind permission of the Brenthurst Library. Bengt
Pohjanen, the publisher, kindly gave permission to use illustrations from the
Tornedalian Literary History.
We could not establish who the copyright holder is of the diagrams used in
Ullyatt’s essay, but we will acknowledge any breach in any subsequent edi-
tion.
The extracts from Lady Anne are used with permission of the present copy-
right holder, Human & Rousseau. Random House South Africa gave permis-
sion to use the extracts from Down to My Last Skin.
Strijdom van der Merwe allowed us to use a photo of his striking land-art
work for the cover of the book. Thanks to him as well.

HEIN VILJOEN
POTCHEFSTROOM
OCTOBER 2012

a
Illustrations

Figure 1: Map of Reitz’s travels (Kommando, 316) 55

Figure 2: “Under British ‘Protection’ in the Springfontein
Concentration Camp 1901,” Herinneringen van
1899–1902, M S 272/6, facing p. 604 67
Figure 3: “Lapp Prototype, relatively pure,” illustration in
The Racial Characters of the Swedish Nation, ed. Herman
B. Lundborg & F.J. Linders (1926). The photographs were
taken by Gunhild Sandgren in 1925 76
Figure 4: Photograph of male models aiming at illustrating racial diffe-
rentiation: illustration in The Racial Characters of the Swedish
Nation, ed. Herman B. Lundborg & F.J. Linders (1926) 77
Figure 5: Map of Meänmaa, ‘our land’: back-cover illustration of
Pohjanen and Johansson’s Tornedalian Finnish literary history 82
Figure 6: David Cooper’s model (Psychiatry and Anti-Psychiatry)
adapted 201
Figure 7: David Cooper’s model (Psychiatry and Anti-Psychiatry) 202
Figure 8: Title page of Bentham’s Panopticon 217

a
Introduction
Crossing Borders, Dissolving Boundaries

H EIN V ILJOEN

Borders at Encounters of Bamako 9

A T F I R S T G L A N C E , the present volume may seem to enact the idea of

a borderless world, as it steps as it were with thousand mile boots
from South Africa to Norway and Sweden and even across the
Atlantic to the U S A , taking Russia and South Africa’s Free State Province in
its stride. On the other hand, it shows how fissured literary texts and ways of
thinking about them are with all kinds of borders, thus bearing witness to the
overarching importance of – and the many similarities between – borders and
bordering processes across the globe. It thus gestures towards a borderless
world, but also shows how literary texts model and remodel borders and bor-
dering processes in rich and meaningful local contexts.
Michket Krifa and Laura Serani, the artistic directors of Encounters of
Bamako 9 (the eighth edition of the African Photography Biennial, 2009),
wrote an introduction to Borders, the central theme of the biennial. Under the
heading “The Relationship to the Other,” they sum up some of the implica-
tions of borders:
Thus the border implies an idea of a limited territory beyond which is
the elsewhere, the otherwise and the foreign. It comforts us in our
national, social and cultural identity, and secures individuals and
groups through proximity networks and ties. Beyond that, the border
opens onto otherness, difference. This other can be close, the neigh-
bour, or more remote, the immigrant. The theme of the alien, corollary
to the theme of the border, can thus be seen from the point of view of
integration, segregation or exchange. Nevertheless, though it marks a
limit, the border is also a place of meetings and exchanges within this
xii CROSSING BORDERS, DISSOLVING BOUNDARIES a

in-between, aptly called No Man’s Land. And so, perceived as a space

of demarcation or of transit, the border can become a place of
transformation and exchange, a real or imagined territory of openness.
“Crossing” borders can also take on a symbolic aspect and represent a
kind of initiation or transgression.1

This paragraph foregrounds the relation to the other. It also offers a number of
insights into what borders and the crossing of borders mean: precisely the
questions that are central to this volume.
In Africa – and in all the postcolonies – borders remain highly problematic.
Nuruddin Farah has good reason to speak of the borders in Africa as estab-
lished at the Berlin Summit of 1884 and accepted by the Organization of
African Unity in 1963 as “a curse of our continent.”2 Bruno Boudjelal, the
photographer of the theme exhibition Goudron, Tanger/Le Cap, or the Impos-
sible Journey as part of Bamako 2009, bemoans the fact that “Africans are
not at liberty to circulate on their own continent” and regards the barriers to
free circulation in Africa as important factors in the underdevelopment of the
continent.3 As Krifa and Serani point out, borders serve to safeguard sove-
reignty and identity, but also to put such ideas at risk by allowing people to
meet and exchange goods, money, art, music, ideas, stories, and technology.
Crossing topographical borders thus entails physical and spiritual disloca-
tion and alienation, but, conversely, also enriches and opens up new possibi-
lities. Contact with other cultures and the crossing and mixing of different
cultures are thus among the strongest sources of innovation in literature, art,
and music. Under globalization, the crossing of real as well as symbolic and
social boundaries has acquired greater salience, though, of course, crossing
boundaries is an age-old theme in Western literature. Many of the great clas-
sics, the Iliad and the Odyssey, Beowulf, the Divina Commedia, Don Quixote,
Robinson Crusoe, and Ulysses, are tales of peregrination and boundary cross-
ing.

1
Michket Krifa & Laura Serani, “Borders,” in Encounters of Bamako 9: Borders,
ed. Michket Krifa & Laura Serani (African Photography Biennial; [Paris]: Cultures-
france / Actes Sud, 2009): 14.
2
Nuruddin Farah, “Borders: A Curse of our Continent,” in Encounters of Bamako
9: Borders, 18–19.
3
Bruno Boudjelal, “Goudron, Tanger/Le Cap, or the Impossible Journey,” in En-
counters of Bamako 9: Borders, 268.
a Introduction xiii

Through the study of borders and boundaries, we endeavour to move texts

across linguistic and cultural borders into English and international discus-
sion. Translation is thus an important part of the rhetoric of this collection. As
such, the book aims to serve as a bridge and point of communication between
the local and the global, showing that ‘local’ texts are also internationally
highly relevant for issues around borders. The translation of ideas, texts, and
narratives between north and south, Europe and South Africa, is particularly
important, as the global south is often still perceived as “the elsewhere, the
otherwise and the foreign” beyond the border. On this axis the border often
still “opens onto otherness, difference” as Krifa & Serani4 write. We are thus
writing back to the centre.
The cultural boundary between the West and its colonies – or between im-
perial centre and colonial periphery – is one important boundary that we want
to negotiate, though we are aware that the ‘other’ beyond the border can often
only be understood – and in a skewed way at that – in terms of the self and the
categories of the ‘we’. Insofar as Orientalism, for example, is a specifically
Western cultural way of understanding the Orient,5 to understand the other
often comes down to a kind of misrecognition of the self; an understanding of
the other only to the extent that it can be understood as a kind of mimicry of
the self; an imaginary image of the other.

Borders in a borderless world

One of the reasons for this dialectical understanding of self and other is that,
in Yuri Lotman’s words,6 a boundary is “the primary mechanism of semiotic
individuation.” He defines a boundary as “the outer limit of a first-person
form” (131). This means that the primary boundary, and the basis for semio-
tization or meaning, is the one that divides ‘us’ from ‘them’ and ‘our’ own
safe, cultured, and ordered world from ‘their’ unsafe, barbaric, and chaotic
world. The world of the other is a negative mirror image of our own, since
what is forbidden in our world is allowed there.
4
Krifa & Serani, “Borders,” 14.
5
S.N. Balagangadhara & Marianne Keppens, “Reconceptualizing the Postcolonial
Project: Beyond the Strictures and Structures of Orientalism,” interventions 11.1
(2009): 58–68.
6
Yuri M. Lotman, Universe of the Mind: A Semiotic Theory of Culture, tr. Ann
Shukman (Bloomington & Indianapolis: Indiana U P , 2000): 131. Further page refer-
ences are in the main text.
xiv CROSSING BORDERS, DISSOLVING BOUNDARIES a

Lotman regards the spatial axis of “internal space, external space and the
boundary between them” (133) as a central feature of the organization of what
he calls the semiosphere: i.e. “the space necessary for the existence and func-
tioning of languages” (123). Boundaries are for him semiotic hotspots, be-
cause they are the regions where the self-descriptions of the centre of semiotic
systems become strained or start conflicting with the realities at the periphery.
Boundaries both separate and unite, serving as mechanisms for translating the
texts of an alien semiotics into ‘our’ language. Lotman also likens the boun-
dary to a membrane with the function “to control, filter and adapts the
external into the internal” (140). At the same time, the semiosphere is a multi-
level system riven by semiotic boundaries of different languages, texts, and
levels, where new meanings are continually being created. The whole semio-
sphere therefore seethes like the sun with semiotic activity (150).
Boundaries divide and differentiate both conceptually and in social life, but
are also sites where communication and exchange can take place. Literature
does represent borders and does deal with symbolic boundaries: i.e. the con-
ceptual distinctions and categorizations people make and struggle over or
agree upon in order to define reality. On the other hand, literature itself is also
a border that is crossed by the reader, the translator, or the interpreter and not
only a representation of borders. Such literary representations are not passive,
but take part in the bordering process. To the extent that all borders are repre-
sentations, literary renderings of borders are essentially no different from
other parts of the bordering process.
Studying these boundaries helps capture the dynamic interactions between
people and the way in which similarity and group membership are contested
or agreed upon.7 Social boundaries: i.e. the objectified forms or stable patterns
of social differences that give rise to unequal access or distribution of re-
sources, are present in literature in a represented and encoded form – often as
barriers that the character has to overcome and that, as such, constitute the
core of the plot. In studying boundaries, it is the articulations between sym-
bolic and social boundaries that Michele Lamont and Virag Molnar find most
interesting. The crucial point here is that boundaries are “fertile thinking
tools” because they “capture a fundamental social process, that of rela-
tionality” (169).

7
Michèle Lamont & Virág Molnar, “The Study of Boundaries in the Social
Sciences,” Annual Review of Sociology 28 (August 2002): 168.
a Introduction xv

Bridges and barriers: Relationality and discontinuity

In its most abstract form, “the border marks a relation, in both spatial and
temporal terms, between a limit/horizon and a connection.”8 The idea of a
border thus involves both discontinuity and relationality. Svend Erik Larsen
defines a boundary as “a meaning-producing difference between at least two
domains.” A boundary is not given but emerges or occurs “when certain fields
can be separated in order for meaning to be produced.”9 Larsen’s argument is
that even the most objective of boundaries, like the curb of a street, has a
Janus face: it is both a boundary between and boundary to. As such, it con-
fronts any living creature with an interpretation: it must decide whether to
regard it as a barrier or as a gate. It is through this element of interpretation
that the boundary produces meaning.
Larsen distinguishes two levels in any boundary: the level of its tangible
manifestation; and the level of its conditions of manifestation (99). The link
between these two levels is a medium that allows the boundary to become
manifest and the conditions to produce change. Border aesthetics, in his view,
deals with the manipulation of signs, and he defines them as “the study of
human interaction with already existing boundaries with the possibility of
changing them” (100). Borders are therefore signs – aesthetic facts that, fol-
lowing Georg Simmel, can take on a spatial form. Larsen also thinks that four
facets are important in analysing boundaries: boundaries as themes in the text;
the medium of manifestation; the boundary between the object of study and
its context; and the border between the system of signs and its readers or
audience – the communicative boundary.

8
Johan Schimanski & Stephen Wolfe, “Entry Points: An Introduction,” in Border
Poetics De-Limited, ed. Johan Schimanski & Stephen Wolfe (Hannover: Wehrhahn,
2007): 11–12.
9
Svend Erik Larsen, “Boundaries: Ontology, Methods, Analysis,” in Border Poetics
De-Limited, ed. Johan Schimanski & Stephen Wolfe (Hannover: Wehrhahn, 2007):
98.
xvi CROSSING BORDERS, DISSOLVING BOUNDARIES a

The context of this book

This book of essays is the result of collaboration between the Boundaries Pro-
ject (Grensprojek) at the Potchefstroom Campus of North-West University,
South Africa, and the Border Poetics Group of Tromsø University in Norway.
The project Crossing Boundaries in and of Literature was a continuation of
the two previous projects, loosely held together under the rubrics of space and
identity that culminated in our two previous collections of essays, Storyscapes
and Beyond the Threshold.10
Storyscapes was centrally concerned with the history of the places in
which one feels safe or at home – hence the idea of spaces created by narra-
tion: i.e. storyscapes. These scapes were organized conceptually around Gas-
ton Bachelard’s view of the house, an analogue of the mollusc’s shell, as the
primary mode of human habitation. A house has two dimensions, or axes, in
his view: the cellar–attic dimension, or the axis from earthly and bodily de-
sires to airy fantasy and dreams; and the dimension of centrality: i.e. the idea
of being thrown into the world – the cosmic or sacred dimension.11 One thing
that emerged clearly from the essays collected in Storyscapes is the strong
human need for centrality, wholeness, and coherence.
In the Grensprojek, the focus fell more specifically on borders, their nature,
and on processes of demarcation /bordering. We set out to discover the nature
and modalities of boundaries in literature by studying what boundaries and
crossing boundaries mean in literature. This question entails research into the
ways in which boundaries are reflected, modelled, and enacted in and through
literature, focusing on the following:

™ the nature and attributes of boundaries (like permeability, salience,

durability, visibility, degree of exclusiveness or of tolerance) in
texts and in literature in general;
™ the role of boundaries as categorizing and meaning-generating
devices as well as the struggles and contests over categories and
classifications that serve as drivers in texts and in the literary field;

10
Storyscapes: South African Perspectives on Literature, Space & Identity, ed. Hein
Viljoen & Chris N. van der Merwe (New York: Peter Lang, 2004); Beyond the
Threshold: Explorations of Liminality in Literature, ed. Hein Viljoen & Chris N. van
der Merwe (New York: Peter Lang, 2007).
11
Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space, tr. Maria Jolas (La Poétique de l’espace,
1958; Boston M A : Beacon, 1969): 5, 17.
a Introduction xvii

™ the relationality of boundaries: i.e. boundaries as devices for creating,

articulating, maintaining, crossing or negotiating relations between
‘self’ and ‘other’ or a range of ‘others’, self and world, text and
world, text, and nature, etc.;
™ the articulations between symbolic and social boundaries in different
contexts as presented and contested in texts and in the literary field;
™ boundaries as interstitial spaces, border zones and contact zones in
texts, but also the interaction, mixing or creolization of texts and
literary periods and conventions on different textual, literary, and
cultural levels; and
™ the transcendence of borders, worldly constraints, conceptual boun-
daries or human and social limits in texts and in literature in gene-
ral.

Border poetics
As described on their web site, the aims of the Border Poetics Research Group
are:
to develop theoretical and practical strategies (a "border poetics") for
examining the function of [narrative and symbolic] forms of repre-
sentation in the intersection between territorial borders and aesthetic
works. Analysing primarily border-crossing narratives in literary texts,
it aims to test two main theses: 1) that narrative and symbolic repre-
sentation is a central element in border formation and experience; 2)
that textual or medial borders within or around aesthetic works are
related to the borders represented in these works.12

Whereas Beyond the threshold focused on issues of liminality in literature –

the strange in-between state that is typical of the second phase of a rite of
passage,13 a place that is not a place,14 the no-where and no-place of the in-
between – the present volume foregrounds the crossing of borders and boun-

12
Anon., “Border Poetics,” Border Poetics Home Page (2012), http://uit.no/ansatte
/organisasjon/artikkel?p_document_id=107781&p_dimension_id=88147&p_menu=28
713 (accessed 2 July 2012).
13
Victor W. Turner, From Ritual to Theatre: The Human Seriousness of Play (Per-
formance Studies 1; New York: Performing Arts, 1982): 24.
14
Betwixt and Between; Essays in Liminal Geography, ed. Philip C. Sutton (Madrid:
Gateway, 2002).
xviii CROSSING BORDERS, DISSOLVING BOUNDARIES a

daries, how such crossings are represented, and what they mean. Grens in
Afrikaans (as in Norwegian, Swedish, and German) can mean ‘border’,
‘limit’, ‘edge’, and ‘boundary’.
The Border Poetics Group has developed a useful typology of borders,
wryly aware that the creation of such categories is in itself a bordering pro-
cess,15 since to distinguish between categories is to create a conceptual or
symbolic border that “maps the difference between two territories in a mental
landscape” (13). Such categories can be regarded as ‘hard’, useful ways of
ordering the field, but also as open to other possibilities; not only as divisions
but also as “joins, fuzzy areas, overlaps, in-between zones” (13). Schimanski
and Wolfe, indeed, suggest that borders should be seen as dynamic pheno-
mena, “constantly undergoing processes of both fixing and blurring” (13). It is
therefore more appropriate to talk about bordering processes: i.e. ways of
demarcating and managing borders. Borders in this sense are narratives and
rhetorical strategies that elites use to regulate and to discipline (14).
Since borders can be formed in many ways and studied on different scales
and levels, Schimanski and Wolfe prefer to talk about border planes and to
make a primary distinction between the border in “the world of the text and
the border of the text itself” (15): i.e. the border as presented in the repre-
sented world in the text and the borders of the textual presentation itself. This
is basically the distinction between borders in the histoire or fabula and bor-
ders in the discours or sjužet.
Schimanski further distinguishes five dimensions in border-crossing narra-
tives: namely, textual, topographical, symbolic, temporal, and epistemological
dimensions.16 Textual borders are segmentations in the text or medium itself
and also between the medium and the world. Schimanski regards symbolic
borders as differences between “the lived life of humans and other agents”
(55). Temporal borders are “transitions between two periods of time” (55),
whereas epistemological borders “build on the difference between the known
and the unknown” (56). Finally, topographical borders indicate the spatial
dimension of all borders, whether geographical, borders of ownership such as
walls, or bodily borders such as skin (56). Schimanski further remarks that
topographical borders may be described (and function) on different scales,

15
Schimanski & Wolfe, “Entry Points,” 13. Further references are in the main text.
16
Johan Schimanski, “Crossing and Reading: Notes Towards a Theory and a
Method,” Nordlit 19 (2006): 41–63, http:// septentrio.uit.no/index.php/nordlit/article
/view/1835 (accessed 12 September 2012). Further references are in the main text.
a Introduction xix

ranging from the micro-scale of bodily borders to the macro-scale of borders

between nations or power-blocs (57). The two-part model does not map di-
rectly onto the five-part model. Thus, a border presented in a text may be
epistemological (e.g., the border to an unknown part of the world), but one of
the borders of the textual presentation may also be epistemological (e.g., the
border between the reader and the meaning behind the surface of the text).

Crossing semantic borders: Events and eventfulness

Crossing “the border in the world of the text” is Yuri Lotman’s definition of
an event: the movement of a hero agent across the boundary of a semantic
field17 set up in the world of the text. Events, changes of state, are generally
regarded as central to any narrative. Although a particular narrative can con-
tain many events, the ‘events I’, in some narratives events acquire signi-
ficance by the way in which they are rendered and represented in the narrative
discourse so that they, in that context, become decisive turning points in the
narrative or deviate significantly from the expected course of events (that is,
‘events II’).
This is the point of departure of H E I L N A D U P L O O Y ’s essay on eventful-
ness in the intriguing novel The Book of Happenstance by Ingrid Winter-
bach.18 Du Plooy attempts to unravel some of the complexities of narrative
eventfulness in order to identify key aspects of the dynamics in the novel. She
is therefore interested in “the specific and subtle uses of boundaries as psy-
chological and epistemological categories in Winterbach’s novel [.. . ], where
every meaningful event can be regarded as the crossing of a boundary on
account of the specific system of meanings generated by the novel itself.”
Such events thus refine and expand the readers’ cognitive models and world-
view (the frames and scripts we use to make sense of the world). Many con-
temporary novels, du Plooy writes, “interrogate rather than underwrite, and
disrupt rather than identify with” the expected frames and scripts.
In her analysis of The Book of Happenstance, du Plooy shows that major
events such as the death of Theo Verwey do happen, and that these key events

17
Jurij M. Lotman, The Structure of the Artistic Text, tr. Gail Lenhoff & Ronald
Vroon (Struktura khudozhetsvennogo teksta, 1971; Michigan Slavic Contributions 7;
Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 1977).
18
Ingrid Winterbach, The Book of Happenstance, tr. Dirk and Ingrid Winterbach
(Die boek van toeval en toeverlaat, 2006; tr. Cape Town: Human & Rousseau, 2008).
xx CROSSING BORDERS, DISSOLVING BOUNDARIES a

are also about crossing boundaries, but, rather, that it is the small events, such
as the theft of the protagonist Helene Verbloem’s collection of shells, that are
really important (‘events II’), as they force Helena and the reader alike to con-
front their own limitations and the final boundary of death. The boundary
around Verwey’s dead body, which Helena finds is a threshold she cannot
cross, forms the model for other thresholds in the novel, and especially for
Helena’s inability to accept loss. The theft of Helena’s shells is a gross trans-
gression of her personal boundaries, but she mourns her shells excessively
and refuses to accept their loss. Du Plooy regards the shells as “beautiful
empty signifiers” of the snails that built them and therefore as metaphors for
all that is beautiful and valuable but without commercial value. For Helena,
they become symbols for an individual’s right to a private value-system.
The archaic Afrikaans words Theo and Helena were collecting are like-
wise, in du Plooy’s view, examples of seemingly useless things that people
nevertheless value “and which make their lives bearable and worthwhile.”
The lists of obsolete words in the novel are signs of a lost life-world, but are
also iconic of inevitable, irretrievable loss in a general sense. After all, they
were working on the letter d for death when Theo died. In a more specific
sense, the obsolete words indicate the loss of cultural memory and its under-
lying systems of thought. In short, listing the obsolete words is a kind of
mourning of the possible loss of the Afrikaans language and the richness of
contextual meanings embedded in it. The small events in the novel are thus,
for du Plooy, inflections of larger issues such as cultural rights, individuality,
and identity. The small events become, in the presentation and discourse of
the novel, significant ‘events II’.
The same goes for the long conversations between Helena and Hugo Hat-
tingh, the palaeontologist, about evolution and origin of the universe. The
blind process of evolution as Hattingh describes it forces Helena to come to
terms with the deaths of her mother and her sister. Du Plooy sees in the series
of small events in the novel the pattern of a specific individual’s struggle “to
come to terms with the human condition.” Helena has to cross an inner psy-
chological boundary before she can acknowledge that her mourning for her
shells is a pretext for mourning all her losses. Du Plooy regards the novel as
iconic of transcending boundaries within both the collective and the indivi-
dual psyche towards finding new meanings and new possibilities.
The psychological boundaries are therefore the ones that really matter, but
the excessive narrative time spent on Helena’s sense of loss can only be
understood, du Plooy writes, if we link the events to Lotman’s views that it is
a Introduction xxi

the world-picture behind the events that provides the scale for assessing their
significance. Helena has to come to understand her place in the world in a
broader, more universal sense; she has to learn to understand processes “be-
yond the normal human horizon.” Du Plooy regards that which really happens
in the novel as hidden “under the surface of the characters’ actions and
events.” The really significant events are those that transcend the character’s
limitations and the framework set by the novel itself. The novel empowers
readers, du Plooy writes, to transcend their own limitations by generating
“alternative meanings and systems of meanings” that bring them up against
boundaries that are essential to human understanding; boundaries such as the
final one of death. In Winterbach’s novel, symbolic (or semantic) borders are
projected onto temporal borders (events). Their significance is partly based on
the epistemological borders that the protagonist crosses, and on their relation-
ship to the borders of the text as a whole.

National borders (and what they mean)

Death is the final boundary, but the boundaries that many people would con-
sider prototypical are national borders – those that mark the furthest extent of
a state’s authority and bestow a comforting cultural identity on the people
they enclose. Borders are marked and demarcated in many different ways,
ranging from lines on a map, a set of markers like white stones, a wire fence,
a topographical feature like a river or a mountain range, to constructions like
the Berlin Wall or the heavily guarded and fortified walls between Israel and
Palestine. Borders are, in other words, not naturally given but are the result of
bordering processes.19 They are demarcated, marked, maintained, and media-
tized by humans, both physically and mentally. In short, borders have a “per-
formative dimension.”20
That national borders can also have an aesthetic function, and that crossing
them can constitute an event, is obvious. They can, however, have other func-
tions besides the proairetic, as J O H A N S C H I M A N S K I ’s essay on the novel

19
David Newman, “The Lines that Continue to Separate Us; Borders in Our
‘Borderless’ World,” in Border Poetics De-Limited, ed. Johan Schimanski & Stephen
Wolfe (Hannover: Wehrhahn, 2007): 35.
20
Schimanski & Wolfe, “Entry Points,” 12.
xxii CROSSING BORDERS, DISSOLVING BOUNDARIES a

Saltbingen21 by Frank A. Jenssen shows. His essay is an incisive border poetic

reading of the novel. The main border that the novel attempts to cross, mainly
through its shocking, grotesque elements, is the epistemological (and ideo-
logical) border blocking access to a history of trauma. By reading the novel in
a perspective consonant with the Northern Borderscape, “an ethical and
aesthetic negotiation with the borders of Northern Norway,” Schimanski en-
deavours to make a contribution to the study of the aestheticization of borders
as well as nuancing the categories of postcolonial theory.
The main liminal plane Schimanski sees in the text is the racial border be-
tween Sámi and Norwegian, “constantly driven home through the motif of
badly-spoken Norwegian.” This border overlaps with borders between social
classes, periphery and centre, rural and industrial societies. These borders are
spatialized as topographical thresholds and demarcationss, such as stairs,
doors, and the Tysfjord itself, acting as a divide between the main character’s
home and the Norwegian sphere of town, industry, and school. The internal
fissures of the Tysfjord region, one of the narrowest parts of Norway, are con-
nected to the national border, the Krensen or ‘Porder’, as the Sámi mispro-
nounce it. The national border is figured as a zone of circulation and as the
domain of the indigenous Lule Sámi. Schimanski also regards the border as
an idyllic counterbalance to the grotesque traumas that are inflicted on the
characters as representatives of the Sámi around which the novel is built.
Schimanski describes the grotesque as connected to the abnormal, fantas-
tic, and transgressive, but also points out that the grotesque combines a repul-
sive imaginary with a sympathetic identification that awakens an ethical re-
sponse. In this regard, the grotesque has close affinities with Kristeva’s notion
of the abject that Adéle Nel also explores in her essay on the film Triomf.
Schimanski describes Saltbingen as a tragic novel in which the grotesque epi-
sodes are read as symptoms of oppression and trauma, thereby awakening
sympathy and pity. He also points out that the grotesque is “an essentially
hybrid form, well-suited to the identities of border subjects.”
The idyllic counterbalance is achieved by the way in which topographical
borders acquire aesthetic values in what Schimanski calls the symbolic geo-
graphy of the main character, Agnar Amundsen. For Agnar, the borderlands
between Norway and Sweden are positively associated with berry-picking,
falling in love, and the culture of his grandmother. On a vertical axis, Agnar

21
Oslo: Aschehoug, 1981, tr. R. Thorstensson, The Salt Bin: A Novel ([Svolvær:
Nord], 1998).
a Introduction xxiii

sees the mountains and glaciers as filled with the positive values of a sublime
and liberating world without borders. Ambivalently, he also finds the same
values in a downward movement – for example, in comparing his attraction to
Lisa to the breaking-away of ice from the glacier Giccecokka or recognizing
in her eyes the light in the ice caves (grottos) beneath the glacier. Schimanski
regards this “sublime which is more grotesque than ecstatic” as presaging Ag-
nar’s death by water.
In sum, Schimanski remarks that, in the border configurations that he
traces, the postcolonial themes of mimicry and humiliation are played out –
both in deed and in speech. By submitting to eating the flies in a flytrap, Ag-
nar, for example, tries to live up to the racist image of the Sámi as “essentially
grotesque figures.” He therefore illustrates for Schimanski what Bhabha calls
“a borderline condition of ambivalence and confusion.” The novel shows that
internalized borders can become “grotesque divisions of the whole,” but it
also maps the external national borders, albeit temporarily, onto the sublime.
This mapping, Schimanski maintains, helps create a sense of sympathetic
identification “in the face of the grotesque, central to the naturalistic project of
the novel.”
Like ‘author’ and ‘work’, national borders are central organizing principles
of literary histories. This is the theme that A N N E H E I T H takes up in her essay
“Challenging and Negotiating National Borders: Sámi and Tornedalian Alter-
Native Literary History.”22 Heith argues that the writing of alternative literary
histories and the projection of alternative ethnicities are performances that
fracture and challenge the narratives of national homogeneity which have
excluded and othered ethnic minorities. This goes against the racial hierarchy
that has Swedish Nordic racial character at the top and glosses over the fact
that the Nordic nation-states were multi-ethnic spaces long before the present-
day borders were established.
Heith discusses two such performances. The first is the Swedish Torne-
dalian literary history by Bengt Pohjanen and Kirsti Johansson, published in
2007 and 2009, in which the authors consciously challenge the establishment
of a Swedish national literary canon by emphasizing the existence of an alter-
native Tornedalian tradition: the history of the literature of Meänmaa (lit. ‘our
land’), a geographical space on both sides of the Swedish–Finnish border.

22
‘Tornedalian’ is a now widely used epithet to refer to the valley (‘dal’) of the
river Torne running along the border between Sweden and Finland.
xxiv CROSSING BORDERS, DISSOLVING BOUNDARIES a

The other example, Vuokko Hirvonen’s thesis analysing the emergence,

genealogy, historical, and ideological setting of a Sámi women’s literary
tradition, published in North Sámi in 1998 and in an English translation in
2008, highlights both the existence of a Sámi literary tradition distinct from
the mainstream national traditions and the implications of gender and feminist
perspectives for a diversification of the Sámi literary tradition. The game-
playing presented in Hirvonen’s thesis delegitimizes the values and practices
of the male-centred games of anti-colonialism and postcolonialism by con-
fronting them with anti- and postcolonial feminist games, in which the over-
arching rule is to strive for gender equality.
Heith uses the Norwegian anthropologist Fredrik Barth’s emphasis on the
contextual, contingent character of ethnified identity politics as a backdrop for
explaining the performances of Sámi and Tornedalian cultural mobilizers as
performative, since Barth’s metaphor of culture as ‘playing the same game’
makes explicit the ethnic basis of cultural production. The majority tend to
assume, without much reflection, that their identity is normal and normative.
Traditional literary histories thus present narratives of a people with a com-
mon language, culture, and country. The recognition that such histories may
be described as tacitly ethnified constructions for which the implicit norms
and ideas of the nation are constituted by the ethnic majority may thus pro-
mote alternatives to the paradigm of cultural homogenization. Both the writ-
ing of a Tornedalian literary history and the study of a Sámi women’s literary
tradition contribute to opening up a space for the production and dissemina-
tion of alternative knowledge.
The tendency of Heith’s essay is to make visible through literary histories
the cultural differences that exist within a borderland: topographical liminal-
ities thus serve as a frame for epistemological crossings, achieved symbolic-
ally through the negotiation of temporal borders. Much similar work needs to
be done in South Africa, where a generally accepted inclusive idea of the
nation and a history or a literary-historical narrative of its peoples has not yet
emerged – a difficult (and maybe inappropriate) crossing of symbolic borders
in a country with eleven official languages and ten literary traditions.

Crossing temporal and historical boundaries:

Losing the estate – and the farm as well
The Afrikaner national myth is closely tied to the land. The farm is its proto-
typical site and the Afrikaner is presented primarily as boer, farmer – a name
a Introduction xxv

that has been turned into a derogative term, indicating ignorance and lack of
civilization (boorishness). This is a theme that both Gouws and van Schalk-
wyk touch on in their essays. It also gave birth to the protean genre of the
farm novel, which was transformed not only into secondary forms but also re-
created in parodic postmodern and postcolonial guise. In such a framework, to
lose the land means losing a way of life. In this regard, there are striking re-
semblances between the passing away of an aristocratic way of life in Russia
and the end of apartheid in South Africa as it is portrayed in Janet Suzman’s
The Free State, a South African rewriting of Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard,
the texts that L I D A K R Ü G E R analyses in her essay.
Krüger shows that the boundary between past and present is not only de-
scribed in Chekhov’s play and Suzman’s South African rewriting of it but is
also performed visually in the attempts by the characters to re-create the past.
She frames her analysis in terms of Bakhtin’s idea of the chronotope – the
coincidence of space and time – and compares a number of chronotopes in the
two plays.
In The Cherry Orchard, the nursery scene presents the past as chrono-
topically present, even though it might be a static image or nostalgic imago of
the past. The juxtaposition of past and present in the third act, in which the
characters try to re-create the memorable balls of the past, shows up their un-
willingness to accept the passage of time. They are, as it were, attempting to
re-create the past with an inadequate ‘cast’. The ball becomes factitious nos-
talgia, a parody of the glorified past, with the line between past and present a
transparent and permeable membrane.
In The Free State, it is postcolonial boundaries that are presented visually.
As a rewriting of Chekhov, this play, Krüger argues, shows a process of ac-
culturation whereby the boundaries between the contexts of late-imperial
Russia and post-apartheid South Africa become blurred. The play emphasizes
the nostalgia-tinged political associations with place. Lulu and Leo keep
enacting the past. The orchard, house, and nursery also act as chronotopes,
recalling as they do the histories of the characters who have inhabited them.
In contrast to The Cherry Orchard, the scene where the characters evoke a
kind of political nostalgia is set in the in-between space of a South African
garden.
The painting of the patriarch Rademeyer, represented in The Free State as
a hero of the resistance to apartheid, is for Krüger also a visual chronotope.
Like Chekhov, Suzman visually juxtaposes the past and the present in Act
Three. The interaction between past and present is not so clear in The Free
xxvi CROSSING BORDERS, DISSOLVING BOUNDARIES a

State as in The Cherry Orchard. Yet this scene still acts as a chronotope, pre-
senting a state in which the veranda and garden constitute a type of postcolo-
nial liminal space. These spaces form a boundary, not only topographically
(between the wilderness and the safety of home) but also temporally (between
past, present, and future).
While Chekhov presents the reader /audience only with the boundary be-
tween past and present, and its accompanying trauma, Krüger sees Suzman as
appropriating The Cherry Orchard for her own purposes, turning the interface
between present and future into an optimistic beckoning of things to come.
Chekhov shows the complexity of the relationship between the characters and
their pasts without taking sides, whereas Suzman adopts an overtly optimistic
and liberal political stance.
By using these visual elements as transformable sign-vehicles, Chekhov
and Suzman create an interesting opportunity for the characters as well as the
reader /audience to engage with the chronotopes on more than one level. The
transposition of the manifestations of boundaries from late-nineteenth-century
Russia to contemporary South Africa is also viewed by Krüger as an invita-
tion to compare the two contexts. Visually performing the boundary between
past and present paradoxically shows that the central social boundaries in both
texts – the class divide between nobility and serfs, and the racial divide be-
tween black and white – have become obsolete. Krüger’s article thus involves
the use of textual borders (intertext) to push at the limits of the motifs of
temporal borders (nostalgia) and topographical borders (garden) in order to
cross the epistemological (and symbolic) borders of class and race.

Boundaries and identity/self-understanding

Suzman’s rewriting of Chekhov’s play demonstrates that not only characters
can cross boundaries. In both written and oral form, whether told or per-
formed, stories can also easily cross borders. Printed texts in particular are
designed to be read and understood beyond their immediate contexts. A case
in point is Deneys Reitz’s Commando, which not only relates the adventures
of a very active hero agent but itself also involved the literal crossing of a
number of borders. As an account of Reitz’s experiences during the South
African War (1899–1902) published in 1929, the book is far removed from
our present-day understanding of ourselves and the world. Yet it contains
some intriguing border-crossings, as J O H N G O U W S ’ analysis shows.
a Introduction xxvii

Gouws’ focus is not on borders in themselves, but on how borders relate to

identity (or self-understanding). Gouws’ main thesis is that boundaries should
not be regarded as objective givens, outside human agency, but can only be
understood as “as functions of self-understood human conduct” in the frame-
work of Michael Oakeshott’s views in On Human Conduct (1975). His essay
is therefore a study of human agency and its ingenuity in overcoming ob-
stacles and in re-inventing itself, both textually and in real life.
Commando has remained a popular book and was reprinted twenty-two
times, has been translated into French, German, and Gaelic, and has even
appeared in a Kindle edition. The full text is available on at least three sites on
the internet.23 Its avowed purpose was to reconcile English- and Afrikaans-
speaking South Africans after the union of 1910, but Gouws regards the
author’s youthful exuberance and relish in adventure as the main reason for its
continuing popularity.
Gouws describes Commando as a book about borders and the crossing of
them, but the book itself is also a manifestation of crossings and abrogations
of borders. Gouws’ analysis highlights “the thematic disregard of contain-
ment” in the book. The main narrative, Reitz’s account of the incursion of a
commando under General Smuts across the Orange River deep into the Cape
Colony, is one of the manifestations of this disregard, but is also a function of
the “uncompromising understanding” of Reitz and his companions “as guer-
rilla combatants.” The topographical boundaries of the fortified railway lines,
the Orange River, and even the borders of the newly constituted British colo-
nies are examples of bounds that a hero agent with an active and resourceful
self-understanding like Reitz can overcome.
Commando ends in Madagascar in 1903. The ending thus creates the im-
pression that the author was still in exile in Madagascar, though the preface
by General J.C. Smuts is dated 1929. The textual boundaries thus indicate
“further boundaries and transitions, this time undeclared ones.” Gouws shows
that there is in fact a “great divide” between the first manuscript version of the
text in Cape Dutch and the one published in 1929 for an international reader-
ship. Although Reitz translated it into English himself, the published version
was “systematically pruned of potentially inflammatory material” such as
Reitz’s description of the effects of the British scorched-earth strategy and the
concentration camps for women and children. Gouws also shows how Reitz’s

23
Inter alia David Biggins’ AngloBoerWar.com – see http://www.angloboerwar
.com/books/35-reitz-commando (accessed 11 July 2012).
xxviii CROSSING BORDERS, DISSOLVING BOUNDARIES a

rhetoric develops from of a kind of brooding about defeat towards a new ideal
by finding a new language and a new self-understanding.
Reitz’s revised self-understanding as a South African has its own limits,
however, as Gouws shows. One limit that would be very obvious to post-1994
readers is the fact that Reitz remains blind to what we would call his racism.
Gouws, however, cites a passage in the manuscript omitted from Commando
in which Reitz relates a moment of shared self-understanding and mutual
compassion between himself and an Indian cook as colonial subalterns at the
end of the negotiations for surrender at Vereeniging.
Gouws’ conclusion is that Commando only tells the version of the story
that Reitz wanted to tell in 1929 and that readers need to cross the boundary
between the suppressed manuscript and the published version for a compre-
hensive understanding. Gouws deals mainly with temporal and textual limi-
nalities in connection with a body of material that emphasizes the topogra-
phical borders formed and crossed in combat. The elements of racism and
selectivity bring in symbolic and epistemological borders respectively, with
the latter coalescing with the textual border between the text and its readers:
i.e. the contextual boundary (or horizon) of our own time and history.

The communicative boundary

A book much closer to our own time and to issues we regard as important,
and one that also foregrounds movements across several borders, is Eben
Venter’s novel Ek stamel ek sterwe.24 Thematically, P H I L V A N S C H A L K -
W Y K ’s essay discusses the crossing of a number of borders in the way that
Venter depicts gay identity and A I D S -related suffering in the novel. The
protagonist journeys from the farm to the city, and eventually to another
country and a big city there: Sydney. The novel also thematizes the crossing
of borders between illness and health, life and death, as well as the negotiation
of the borders of sexual identity, of the male body – the “queering of modes
and notions of masculinity.” Van Schalkwyk’s chief focus, however, is on the
communicative boundary: the special rhetoric of concealment and the subver-
sive aesthetic of silence that the author practises.
Van Schalkwyk argues that Venter links up in a covert way with the cri-
tique of artists on the male discourse of the twentieth century that tries to re-
place authoritarian male voices with one of boyish playfulness linked to Dada

24
Eben Venter, Ek stamel ek sterwe (Cape Town: Queillerie, 1996).
a Introduction xxix

and the figure of Marcel Duchamp. Characteristic of this discourse are clan-
destine agreements and negotiations between men in crisis and a boyish swap-
ping of “knowing allusions.” There is an “urge to transgress, to snub decor-
um,”25 a strong interest in embodied male subjectivity, and a (clandestine)
interest in the breaching of borders of the male body (191). Van Schalkwyk
regards the clandestine manner in which Venter continues this boyish male
discourse as one of the great achievements of this novel. In the English trans-
lation,26 the original’s rhetoric of concealment was discarded, maybe because,
a decade after its original publication, A I D S and gay identity have become
more acceptable in South Africa, or maybe, van Schalkwyk surmises, because
the translation compromised the novel’s “ingenious rhetorical integrity.” For
the novel is exquisite in the way it both veils and unveils A I D S and gay
identity and toys with the reader’s gender expectations by keeping the sexual
identity of the antagonist Jude androgynous until the end. In the English trans-
lation, Jude is unambiguously portrayed as a gay male. The novel, particularly
in its Afrikaans original, thus excels in a rhetoric of veiling and unveiling of
the boundaries between male and female, illness and health, naming and not
naming, living and eventually dying. This rhetoric, van Schalkwyk thinks, is
not primarily in the service of writing a gay identity but is, rather, aimed at
achieving literariness, exploring themes of personal quest, and enriching the
Afrikaans literary tradition.
Van Schalkwyk situates the novel in the subgenre of the postmodern Afri-
kaans rewriting of the farm novel, claiming that its positive reception has
much to do with the entrenched acceptance of the aesthetic autonomy of the
literary text among critics. At the same time, this opens the door for a more
subtle rhetorical Trojan-horse strategy of slipping its subject-matter in under
an aesthetic guise. In this case, the novel foregrounds its own technique of
veiling and unveiling, erasing and affirming the self. Van Schalkwyk shows
that the novel enacts a hidden subtext of the martyrdom of St Sebastian (as
expressed, for example, in Jasper Johns’s Target with Plaster Casts, 1955),
but also regards the novel ultimately as a forward-looking affirmation – not an
erasure but a deconstruction – of gay embodied subjectivity. This emerges
also in the way the novel ends: the word “I” crosses the textual border as a
sign that the subject crosses the border between life and death, but the “I” re-

25
David Hopkins, Dada’s Boys: Masculinity after Duchamp (New Haven C T &
London: Yale U P , 2007): 10.
26
Eben Venter, My Beautiful Death, tr. Luke Stubbs (Cape Town: Tafelberg, 2006).
xxx CROSSING BORDERS, DISSOLVING BOUNDARIES a

mains in a liminal zone with “the promise of rebirth, reacceptance, and re-
integration.” Van Schalkwyk’s article, in short, is itself a fine example of
closeting and erasure as well as of affirmation. It focuses on major temporal
borders (illness and death), but also involves topographical borders (country/
city, the borders of the body) and the strong symbolic borders of A I D S and
perceptions of transgression. The clandestine and veiling /unveiling constitute
an epistemological border which also seems to be textual in nature.

Abjection and urban configurations

Narrowing the spatial focus further brings us to an account of a farmer family
that has had to move to the city – a further development of the old theme of
the exodus of the country boy.27 The family in question is that of the margin-
alized Benades in the Raeburn film of the award-winning Afrikaans novel
Triomf by Marlene van Niekerk.28 A D É L E N E L ’s essay on the film explores
the powerful but repellent effects that a national myth can have, for the
Benades live according to their own very literal notion of how families should
stick together. In the film, set just before the transition to democracy in 1994,
they also have to confront the end of the national myth of apartheid. Nel
argues that the film is a study in abjection, with Kristeva’s notion of the abject
explaining not only the fear, loathing, and disgust the film triggers but also the
importance of the materiality of the subject’s body. Nel accordingly argues
that borders are closely linked to abjection, the latter constituting a liminal
zone between being and non-being. For Kristeva, abjection is “what does not
respect borders, positions, rules.”29 The film is full of border experiences and
abjection that show how impossible it is to draw clear-cut borders between the
proper and the improper, the clean and the unclean. The idea of the border is,
in other words, central to the construction of the abject: that which crosses or
threatens to cross the border is abject. Yet the abject is ambiguous, as it repels
but at the same time attracts. Abjection is “a composite of judgment and

27
In South Africa it is know as the ‘Jim goes to Jo’burg’ theme. One canonical
example is Alan Paton’s Cry the Beloved Country (1956).
28
Michael Raeburn, dir. Triomf (Focus Films¸ G H Films¸ Giraffe Creations, South
Africa¸ France¸ U K 2008; 118 min.).
29
Julia Kristeva, Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection, tr. Leon S. Roudiez
(Pouvoirs de l’horreur, 1980; New York: Columbia U P , 1982): 4.
a Introduction xxxi

affect, of condemnation and yearning, of signs and drives.”30 It refers to a pro-

cess of expulsion by which the abject is rejected and, at the same time, this
rejection is disavowed.
Nel consequently describes the urban space of Johannesburg as a spatial
form for abjection in the politics of borders and fear, and at the borders of
cinematic bodies – the impact that abjection has on the characters and plot of
the film as well as the way in which abjection produces meaning. She shows
that, spatially, abjection refers to begin shifted out of the centre and onto the
margins. The Benades are trapped in a state of abjection behind topographical
and symbolic borders that separate them from the affluent middle class as
well as from the black population on the margins of the city. The spatial lay-
out of Johannesburg, with black people and the poor moved out to the urban
fringes, thus reflects the process of abjection, the history of which is revealed
in Triomf when Lambert, digging a grave for their beloved dog, Gerty, throws
up remnants of the life of the people who lived in Sophiatown before they
were forcibly removed and the township razed. Ironically, he digs up a flute –
a symbol of the vibrant cultural life of Sophiatown in the 1950s.
Nel cites Derek Hook’s postulation that abjection is border anxiety:31 an
urgent response to the need to safeguard one’s self from a potentially over-
whelming external entity. In the case of the Benades (and many white South
Africans), it is the fear of being overwhelmed by a new black government.
The anxiety is projected onto the stranger, the alien, the black, who is in the
film already moving into the Benade family’s street. The gist of the film deals
with the Benades as a family trapped in poverty but also in history which
threatens the collapse of their world, both individually and collectively. What
is at stake is the loss of white power, the disintegration of social structures, of
Afrikaner identity, and even of a coherent self. This dystopic vision, projected
onto the black other, breeds an irrational fear of miscegenation and paranoia.
Ironically, it is this fear that precipitates the final catastrophe in the film.
Nel argues that cinema forces the spectators to cross a medial boundary by
confronting them with the abject body – “a confrontation with disgust but also
with a pleasure in perversity.” Lambert’s grotesque body, the one that loses
control, form, and integrity in epileptic fits, the one that exceeds its own
boundaries, is a model of the corporeal abject – one that further transgresses

30
Powers of Horror, 10.
31
Derek Hook, “Racism as abjection: A psychoanalytic conceptualisation for a post-
apartheid South Africa,” South African Journal of Psychology 34.4 (2004): 685.
xxxii CROSSING BORDERS, DISSOLVING BOUNDARIES a

the borders to become monstrous in its unnatural relationship to the mother.

Nel argues that the spectator is forced to witness abjection at work when
Lambert abusively has intercourse with his mother, Mol, thereby crossing the
boundaries of the mother–child relationship and the universal incest taboo –
one of society’s strongest constitutive rules.
In the final apocalyptic crossing of borders, the secret of Lambert’s inces-
tuous origin is revealed as violence erupts from within the family. Lambert
murders both his possible fathers and burns down his room with the petrol he
has hoarded to trek northwards, away from the new black government. Nel
finds a final irony in the fact that the mother who gave birth to the monster
succeeds in saving the unconscious Lambert from the flames with the help of
Sonny, the black manifestation of their fears. The film ends with the image of
Sonny’s T-shirt that bears a picture of Nelson Mandela, the epitome of peace
and reconciliation.
Nel concludes that the film brings the spectator into an extreme confronta-
tion with the abject in order to “eject the abject” and to redraw the boundaries
between the human and the nonhuman, the clean and the unclean. It is a
catharsis par excellence, as it functions to purify the abject – precisely by de-
picting it unforgettably. Nel’s essay thus takes up the symbolic borders of the
abjection motif, with their topographical aspect of inside /outside in urban
space, and examines them under the aspect of a major temporal transition
involving the symbolic borders of nation and family.

The normal and the carceral

With Triomf we have moved into the city, into the claustrophobic space of the
Benade’s house, and across the borders of the normal. It is precisely the ex-
tremely fuzzy conceptual borders between ‘normal’, ‘abnormal,’ and ‘mad-
ness’ that T O N Y U L L Y A T T examines in his essay, using Thomas Harris’s
novel The Silence of the Lambs32 as a test case. He also examines the im-
plications of the way in which these fuzzy borders are concretized in different
structural forms of incarceration. Since the abnormal is defined through the
normal, the endeavour to accurately define non-normal states of mind “repre-
sents a threshold area between non-verbal realities and the inadequate attem-
pts to transmute the unspeakable into definitionally accurate diagnoses of

32
Thomas Harris, The Silence of the Lambs, with Red Dragon (1989; London:
Arrow, 2004).
a Introduction xxxiii

pathology.” Ullyatt argues that “society pursues a possibly delusional fantasy

of itself as a good, healthy, stable, even sacred place.” The good, normal citi-
zen is therefore the obedient, well-conditioned one – the one who conforms to
all the norms and rules society sets up to protect itself and to punish those
who deviate from them. ‘Normality’ in this form is stifling, alienating, a state
of lack of awareness, of “arrested development” and inertia. Sanity is there-
fore not the opposite of madness but, rather, like madness, entails “the rejec-
tion of normality and its systems of control, labelling, and conformity.” Sanity
as ‘abnormality’ in this sense adds to the confusion in defining mental states
and in diagnosing different kinds of abnormal behaviour. Ullyatt notes that
the fuzzy boundaries between mental states make it highly problematic to
define boundaries between sanity and madness or different degrees of abnor-
mality.
The two abnormal characters in the novel, Hannibal Lecter and Jame
Gumb, have to be apprehended and imprisoned. In other words, the concep-
tual distinction between ‘normal’ and ‘abnormal’ has to be realized physi-
cally, topographically. The novel starts with “the trope of the threshold be-
tween the earthly and the chthonic.” This is for Ullyatt emblematic of the
F B I ’s Behavioural Science Unit’s function as “custodian of the threshold
area” between good and evil. One has to cross this threshold to reach Lecter’s
subterranean cell and the oubliette sunk deep into the floor of Gumb’s cellar
where he holds Catherine Martin captive in order to harvest her skin.
Ullyatt draws out the link between the cellar and the dark, subterranean
forces of the unconscious that Bachelard makes and shows how closely
Gumb’s and Martin’s dilemmas are tied to the “buried madness, walled-in
tragedy” that Bachelard reads in the cellar.33 Gumb, namely, is confined to his
house in his own madness and Martin “symbolically buried in the oubliette.”
The cellar and the oubliette are physical manifestations of Gumb’s abnormal-
ity and the place where he can realize his fantasies in the hope of being trans-
formed into a woman. Martin, in the oubliette or ‘realm of the forgotten’, is in
darkness, on the threshold of death and of hell; beyond human reach. Ullyatt
points out that many thresholds are crossed as the plot unfolds: between
human and subhuman, above and below ground, life and death, darkness and
light, male and female, pupa and butterfly. The F B I agent Clarice Starling
also becomes trapped in darkness, on the threshold of solving the case and of
death. Gumb is eventually moved across the life /death and supraterranean/

33
Bachelard, The Poetics of Space, 20.
xxxiv CROSSING BORDERS, DISSOLVING BOUNDARIES a

subterranean boundaries and permanently entombed. Catherine Martin is

rescued, moved up, and out of the house; she is “symbolically resurrected”
and “reborn from the dark womb of the oubliette.”
This restoration of society’s fantasy is only temporary, as it forms part of
Lecter’s plan to escape from the total institution of the mental hospital where
he is confined underground behind strong walls with only a few heavily forti-
fied portals. This is also a space of the chthonic and oblivion, but also under-
ground, in the sense of being “subversive,” as Ullyatt points out.
Lecter is kept under permanent panoptical surveillance, deprived of vir-
tually all privacy in a cell without a door behind a wall of bars and strong
nylon net, but he has enough time to plan his escape by manipulating the
people involved to become “co-conspirators in his escape.” Lecter is moved
to Memphis to help with the Buffalo Bill case, but escapes from the “cruel
ingenious cage” in which he was confined by combining “his boundless in-
ventiveness with inexorable brutality.” Ullyatt writes that he is resurrected
from the chthonic and moved to a place of light above, and, in the end, “takes
flight in more ways than one.”
Ullyatt’s essay is a perceptive study of thresholds and borders (real and
conceptual), their concretization, and their symbolic implications. In pointing
to society’s fantasy of normality, he ultimately raises the question of the wis-
dom of present ways of defining abnormal behaviour and of incarceration as
the best way of dealing with that, as “institutions of incarceration are proble-
matic by their very existence.” Is the individual who rebels against society’s
violent imposition of its rules more evil than the society that imposes these
rules? The study and analysis of borders and boundaries in aesthetic texts
clearly cannot be divorced from the social and political questions that such
texts raise. Ullyatt’s study thus shows how symbolic boundaries are connec-
ted to topographical borders.
No doubt Jame Gumb and Hannibal Lecter are monsters – abjectly con-
signed to a border zone between and being and non-being – but Lecter as
brutal and ingenious hero agent can cross these boundaries and thus lives on,
beyond the textual border; still a threat to others and a fascinating figure
around whom new stories can accrue.

a
a Introduction xxxv

Corps, corpus, and corpse:

Boundaries of the writer and of writing
Stories also accrue around the lives of writers, but writers want to tell their
story in their own way, often sparking further speculation, more stories. In her
essay, E L L E N R E E S investigates how the fictionalization of the life of Henrik
Ibsen in A.S. Byatt’s novel The Biographer’s Tale34 questions received
notions about fact and fiction and changes the image of the author’s life, the
reception of his work, and the boundaries of fiction itself.
The theoretical context for Rees’s essay is Foucault’s distinction between
author and author function. In Foucault’s view, the empirical writer, who
wants to control his public image by hiding behind his writing, is competing
with the critical and public reception of his work that creates an author func-
tion (often in conflict with the image that the writer wants to project). The
factual status of biographical information can be questioned, as such accounts
are constructed narratives that finally have no absolute truth value. At issue
here are the conceptual and ethical boundaries between the text and the real;
between a life and writing about it – and the processes of bordering and other-
ing that come into play in the process.
Rees provides three instances of how these theoretical considerations play
out in Byatt’s novel: how Byatt deals with Ibsen’s physical body and his (re-
pressed) sexuality; Byatt’s appropriation of Ibsen’s literary corpus to create an
image of the author; and Byatt’s use of a photograph of Ibsen’s corpse.
Byatt inserted three relatively long narrative sequences on the lives of
Linnaeus, Galton, and Ibsen into The Biographer’s Tale. The fictive narrator,
Phineas G. Nason, ascribes these passages to the fictive biographer Scholes
Destry–Scholes. Byatt thus challenges the boundaries of the novel and what it
should contain. In the long narrative about Ibsen, Rees writes, Byatt problem-
atizes the deliberate construction of his public persona by using an image of
his physical body as a “lined parchment sac containing blood, bones, and busy
creatures,” an empty vessel on the border between human and animal that also
questions the distinction between the inside and the outside of the human
being. This image, in Rees’ view, goes against the idea that Ibsen’s body was
complete hidden behind the male fashions of the late 1800s and his public
persona as a writer.
“The most outrageous proof of Ibsen’s corporeality” that Byatt provides,
according to Rees, is the fictive meeting with his illegitimate son that she

34
A.S. Byatt, The Biographer’s Tale (2000; London: Vintage, 2001).
xxxvi CROSSING BORDERS, DISSOLVING BOUNDARIES a

inserts into the novel. This meeting has, for Rees, interesting boundary im-
plications, as Byatt moves the meeting from the private sphere to the much
more complex in-between zone of a café and, by lending legitimacy to an in-
cident based purely on rumour, crosses an ethical boundary. Rees thinks that
Byatt, by canonizing this incident, suggests a critique of Ibsen’s ethics, often
regarded as an example of enlightened attitudes.
Rees also points out that the conversation between Ibsen and his bastard
son, with its oblique references to Ibsen’s works, thematizes the boundary
between the body and the façade. Byatt presents the son physically and intel-
lectually as Ibsen’s double who mimics Ibsen’s own style and strongly indicts
Ibsen’s denial of his body. Rees argues that Byatt thus transforms the author
into a character in an Ibsen play and undermines his public image. This is all
part of Byatt’s ostensible aim in this novel: to problematize biographical writ-
ing as a whole.
Byatt’s treatment of Ibsen’s corpus likewise negotiates a number of con-
ceptual boundaries. In the novel, the narrator explores two shoeboxes that
serve as a kind of research archive for the fictive biographer – one containing
a set of notes on index cards; the second a large number of photographs and
other images. All the texts on the index cards are actual documents from the
corpus of writing by and on Ibsen, while the long narratives contain clearly
fictional material. Byatt thus “cobbles together” factual and fictional material.
Rees shows that the citations from Ibsen that Byatt uses represent a very nar-
row selection from the complex corpus of his works. This selection suggests a
critique of his position as dramatist and engages with the idea that Ibsen is
pure façade or pure boundary behind which a hideous animal nature may lurk.
Byatt, in other words, narrows the scope of Ibsen’s work to suit her particular
reading. She selects statements that focus on his “vanity and lack of insight”
and thus presents a highly skewed image of Ibsen that, nevertheless, through
“fictive biographic irreversibility,” Rees argues, is likely to influence the
popular and critical image of Ibsen profoundly.
In the last section of her essay, Rees discusses Byatt’s use of post-mortem
photographs of Ibsen and Galton. Byatt takes the photographs out of the Vic-
torian cultural context where they were widely used as expressions of mourn-
ing, and instead seems to suspend the biographical subjects in a border zone
between life and death. Rees writes that Byatt reframes the photographs as
documentary evidence as is customary in biographies, but lets her narrator
discover some traces of humanity in Ibsen but also a sense of “complete ex-
haustion.” Rees suspects that Byatt, by transforming Ibsen’s body into a char-
a Introduction xxxvii

acter in one of his plays and by severely abridging his corpus, is committing a
kind of ritual parricide. The photograph is thus no longer a sign of mourning
but, rather, evidence of the end of Ibsen’s (creative) life – Rees likens it to the
photographs that prove that a dictator is really dead.
The composite portrait of Ibsen that Byatt constructs for her three biogra-
phical subjects, Rees concludes, marks them with “a certain touching ob-
solescence.” Rees asks why Byatt’s metafictional criticism of biographical
writing perpetuates the reductive myth of Ibsen as the “masked genius” found
in all the major biographies. Byatt’s novel gives her readers a “short” (and
maybe reductive) version of Ibsen’s life and work and thus “raises more
questions about the untidy boundaries between fact and fiction than it re-
solves.”
Rees’ article thus deals mainly with textual borders (writing) and symbolic
borders (ethics). Topographical borders are involved through the dominant
motif of corporeality, while textual/ medial motifs (notes with topographical
borders in the form of boxes, photographs which also evoke the temporal bor-
ders of death and mourning) are important in Byatt’s novel.
The boundary between fact and fiction is also a central concern in Antjie
Krog’s poetry collection Lady Anne,35 analysed by H E I N V I L J O E N in his
essay. The collection is framed from the beginning as a crossing of a series of
boundaries between north and south, civilization and (barbaric) colony, male
and female, and reality and representation. Going under water – drowning,
literally and socially – is presented as the main danger the characters face, but
also as a strategy for survival. In that sense, it is one of the central metaphors
of the book. The collection is a kind of historiographical metafiction, with the
poetic persona, Antjie Krog, entering into dialogue with the late-eighteenth-
century figure of Lady Anne (Lindsay) Barnard across the two centuries that
separate them. Krog partly uses Lady Anne as an objective correlative of her
own situation and rewrites Lady Anne’s letters and diaries for her own pur-
poses: namely, to bring out the parallels between their lives in a time of poli-
tical change and uncertainty and to try and understand her own situation as a
white woman in the interregnum before the political transition in South Africa
in 1994.
The position and powerlessness of women – and the possibility of artistic
expression – in such tumultuous times is a central issue, figured mainly in the
complex relationship between the epic hero, here Lady Anne, and her bard,

35
Antjie Krog, Lady Anne (Bramley, Johannesburg: Taurus, 1989).
xxxviii CROSSING BORDERS, DISSOLVING BOUNDARIES a

Antjie Krog. As the narrative of the collection unfolds, this relationship devel-
ops from close identification across time, language, and class barriers into a
kind of love affair, total rejection, and finally a dramatic farewell. By appro-
priating Lady Anne’s voice for her own, the poetic persona creates a marvel-
lously hybrid voice that talks back to the erstwhile colonizer. She creates
highly resonant parallels between her own liminal situation and Lady Anne’s,
making the historical distance a prerequisite for a moving exploration of in-
between, interstitial spaces in different senses of the word.
Central to the poetic of the collection is the idea of sailing through inter-
stitial light and space, a kind of material medium closely associated with
women and the boundaries of the body. It is an organic process akin to breath-
ing, light, opening up, and creating silence. The enclosures in the collection,
especially the violence enclosing every word, are broken down by confronting
them with fluid, liminal, in-between states like being just on or just below the
surface of water, diffused with light. That is why ‘transpire’ and ‘transpar-
ency’ are key words in the book. In such states, boundaries between past and
present, as well as the ideological limits of power, class, race, and sex, can
dissolve so that a new alphabet can be articulated, and a new language of
compassion can become possible. In the end, both the self and its alter ego
have to be cut loose as the collection is set adrift on the seas of time, as it
were.
The essay thus involves many combinations of borders: the temporal bor-
ders of history, the topographical borders of north and south, the symbolic
borders of civilization and barbarism, and male and female, and the both
epistemological and textual borders of fact and fiction, representation and
reality, and metafiction.

Boundaries of the spiritual

In her essay, I L E A N A D I M I T R I U addresses the symbolic boundary between
literature and spirituality that was inspired by the gap she perceives between
“the continuing preoccupation with things religious in the postcolonies and
their literatures” and the lack of attention to this phenomenon in literary
criticism. This is surprising, as the interdiscipline of religion and literature has
been trying for more than seventy years, since T.S. Eliot essay “Religion and
a Introduction xxxix

literature” (1935),36 to define and broaden a common ground. Trying to find

an answer to the question of how we should talk about spirituality in literary
criticism, Dimitriu discusses recent studies by Jennifer Wenzel and Mark
Mathuray of South /African texts that she regards as paradigmatic of attitudes
towards spirituality in literary criticism: Wenzel secularize the spiritual
whereas Mathuray is sympathetic towards the spiritual but maintains a critical
distance.37 She thinks Wenzel reads a spiritual phenomenon, in this case the
effort to recover the “unfulfilled potential of the Xhosa cattle-killing of 1857,”
an expression of anticolonial nationalism, in a secularizing way. Dimitriu
regards this approach as one-dimensional, as Wenzel insists on the “linear,
teleological, Christian-inspired, nationalistic and anti-colonial consequences
of prophecy” and does not integrate the indigenous /African dimension into
her view.
In contrast, Mathuray “focuses on the ancient blueprints of indigenous
knowledge systems that valorize the sacred.” He finds that “the spiritual and
the secular can co-exist,” linking up with Robert Young’s criticism of “the
absolute division between the material and the spiritual in postcolonial stud-
ies”38 and literary criticism’s unreflected indifference towards the persistence
of the spiritual in African thought. Dimitriu regards Mathuray’s work as part
of a spiritual turn, in that Ashcroft, Griffiths, and Tiffin discern in postcolo-
nial studies “a renewed sense of the sacral as offering an alternative to Euro-
pean models of thought.”39 Dimitriu likewise tries to move beyond the
sacred /profane dualism, primarily by using the idea of ‘secular spirituality’:
i.e. a concern for the “experiential embeddedness in the proximate.” This is a
form of postmodern holism that regards experienced life as a form of the
sacral and aims to serve “as a bridge between faith and reason, nature and
grace, science and theology”.

36
T.S. Eliot, “Religion and Literature,” in Eliot, Selected Essays (1935; London:
Faber & Faber, 1951): 388–401.
37
Jennifer Wenzel, Bulletproof: Afterlives of Anticolonial Prophecy in South Africa
and Beyond (Pietermaritzburg: U of KwaZulu–Natal P , 2009); Mark Mathuray, On
the Sacred in African Literature: Old Gods and New Worlds (London: Palgrave Mac-
millan, 2009).
38
Robert J.C. Young, Postcolonialism: An Historical Introduction (Oxford: Black-
well, 2001): 338.
39
Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths & Helen Tiffin, The Postcolonial Studies Reader,
ed. Ashcroft et al. (London & New York: Routledge, 2nd ed. 2006): 29.
xl CROSSING BORDERS, DISSOLVING BOUNDARIES a

The writer in whose work Dimitriu finds this spiritual turn or secular
spirituality is, somewhat surprisingly, Nadine Gordimer, the South African
Nobel Prize-winner widely regarded as the ‘conscience’ of the anti-apartheid
struggle. At issue here are bold re-imaginings of peoples’ lives, “a potential of
human and spiritual reconstitution,” and an attempt to move away from real-
ism and cultural materialism.
The novel that Dimitriu re-reads in a ‘spiritualizing’ mode is None to Ac-
company Me (1994),40 one of the novels in which she finds Gordimer looking
for spirituality in “the proximate and the experiential” – in ordinary places.
Dimitriu argues that Gordimer’s post-1990 novels are set in the interregnum,
a liminal phase of transgressing boundaries, of old identities symbolically
dying yet giving a glimpse of “life beyond liminality.” This is for Dimitriu
explicit in the titles of the three sections of the novel, “Baggage” (separation),
“Transit” (liminality), and “Arrivals” (reintegration).
The protagonist, Vera Stark, undergoes, in Dimitriu’s analysis, a rite of
passage that entails a “stripping-off of old selves, habits, and relationships” in
a quest for a new role in the new dispensation. Vera puts her individual choice
and her inner voice above her public duties and responsibilities, moving onto
the unfamiliar ground of a strong sense of privacy. She gives up her suburban
house and life-style, choosing instead to move as a tenant into a black man’s
garden annexe – a move that, for Dimitriu, indicates spiritual simplicity and
austerity. In her asexual relationship with the black man, Zeph, Vera trans-
gresses the boundaries of her profession, gender, race, and religion. Through
Vera’s liminal and platonic admiration for Zeph’s “impenetrable inner strength
and dignity” based on his religion, Dimitriu sees Gordimer as “visibly wrest-
ling with the pull of spirituality.” Vera’s spiritual journey is depicted in a
series of epiphanic scenes, thresholds along the way, as she loses the baggage
of her previous life and eventually emerges out of “the liminal zone of psy-
chological stocktaking” into a strong new sense of freedom of self. The many
examples of emptiness and nakedness in the novel are for Dimitriu images of
exposure and vulnerability that direct the reader’s gaze “towards the naked
truth of inner lives.” The novel ends in a “powerful epiphanic moment” when
Vera, one night in the dark, makes bodily contact with a young woman in
Zeph’s house. Dimitriu describes this as a “disturbingly tactile, sensuous en-
counter” with an incarnation of her younger self. After this moment, in the
language of the novel itself, outside in the garden, Vera “stood on the axis of

40
Nadine Gordimer, None to Accompany Me (London: Bloomsbury, 1994).
a Introduction xli

the night world.” She has found her axis mundi, the centre of coherence and
significance of her new life; in Dimitriu’s words, she has entered “the cosmos
of a new self.”
As in some of Gordimer’s other more recent works, the garden here func-
tions as a form of sacred space, part of what Dimitriu calls Gordimer’s
“sacred realism”: the attempt to capture “an undivided self, comprising the
secular-cum-spiritual as an indivisible whole.” Gordimer invites her readers,
she writes, “to stretch their imaginary boundaries” and to appreciate a world
“in which the secular touches the spiritual, and does so without ‘guilt’.”
Dimitriu’s main concern is with a symbolic border between literature and
spirituality within a larger set of symbolic borders concerning national and
cultural identities. These are connected to a major temporal border, the end of
apartheid. Gordimer employs topographical borders and the crossing over into
a garden as a main motif in her narrative.

Reconfiguring the boundary between humankind and nature

In her contribution, S U S A N M E Y E R also traces processes of reconfiguration
of the self closely linked to boundaries and to the sacred. She analyses a set of
divergent texts, showing how the topographical as well as symbolic boundary
between nature and humankind is newly articulated and redefined as the char-
acters create personal spaces of refuge for themselves in which, according to
Bachelard, the essence of their human existence can be negotiated. Meyer,
focusing on the characteristics of a home essential for providing safety,
indicates the need to create room for day-dreaming and a sense of centredness
in the world: of being part of a greater cosmic whole, as Bachelard defines
it.41 In the three texts she discusses, Met ’n eie siekspens, Sabbatsreis, and
Chinchilla,42 it becomes clear that humans need nature to draw safe boun-
daries around themselves in order to create homes as refuges. The distinction
between nature and home can, Meyer argues, hardly be maintained, as the
natural elements used to demarcate safe spaces themselves become integrated
in the structure of these refuges. In Met ’n eie siekspens, nature is so dominant

41
Bachelard, The Poetics of Space, 17.
42
Engela van Rooyen, Met ’n eie siekspens [with my own sixpence] (Cape Town:
Tafelberg, 1994); Annelie Botes, Sabbatsreis [Sabbath’s journey] (Cape Town: Tafel-
berg, 2007); Nanette van Rooyen, Chinchilla (Cape Town: Human & Rousseau,
2007).
xlii CROSSING BORDERS, DISSOLVING BOUNDARIES a

in human dwellings that it is hardly possible to distinguish the dwelling from

nature. In Sabbatsreis, Botes describes building a place of refuge with imagi-
nary walls demarcated by tree trunks and bark, but open to the skies – a kind
of pagan natural shrine in the midst of a highly materialistic England. In Chin-
chilla, Lea constructs a veritable fortress with strong walls for her wounded
self out of natural materials, but builds a pool with rock and natural forms,
open to the stars, in the middle of her house. This rock pool is an image of her
reborn self, an axis mundi for her new life.
Both topographical (architectural) and symbolic processes of bordering are
used to constitute the safe places (homes) that the characters need. But at the
same time the borders are drawn in a way that allows communication with
nature as an essential part of the healing process. There is a dialectical tension
between bordering by means of natural materials, maintaining borders by
natural means, and dissolving the conventional border between humans and
nature to achieve harmony with nature. Earth becomes home – also in the
strong sense of constituting a centre for the world, a sacred axis mundi.

Conclusions
In this collection of essays, the authors explore a diversity of borders across a
range of medial boundaries – from the novel, poetry, and drama, to film, the
popular thriller, and writing a life (and its novelistic exploration) as well as
writing literary history. They find new articulations and reconfigurations of
many different kinds of demarcations. The outer frame, as it were, of the
various analyses is formed by postcolonialism, whose central issues, such as
the questions of identity, intercultural exchange, the other and othering, deal-
ing with differences, and writing back to the centre, recur in a number of
essays. The main contribution of the individual essays is their fine-grained
analysis of fascinating texts that in different ways answer to their contexts.

Borders/boundaries and the creation of meaning

The authors analyse ways of bordering and of crossing borders, each with
their own key-word or under their own sign or conceptual point of attraction:
the spiritual turn, eventfulness, self-understanding, ethnic and linguistic
exclusion and mobilization, visual or performative chronotopes, life-writing,
the grotesque, the carceral, the rhetorical, and the interstitial. Sometimes the
demarcating of borders is more important than crossing them, as in the case of
a Introduction xliii

the border between human habitation and nature in Meyer’s essay on three
autobiographical texts.
The crossing of some borders is more significant than others – and this is
often tied to social and symbolic taboos, fears, unconscious processes, as well
as to the structure of the text itself. Du Plooy shows in her essay on Winter-
bach’s novel The Book of Happenstance that events of ‘type II’ can, though
seemingly insignificant, become the most important in a text. The crossing of
a number of significant symbolic borders is analysed – borders and self-
understanding, borders and abjection, playing with the borders of fact and
fiction, the spiritual turn, the normal and the carceral, and racial and gender
borders.

Relationality and reconfiguration of boundaries

The essays in general confirm Larsen’s view that every border creates a need
for interpretation. Borders and boundaries are ambivalent entities, both separ-
ating (acting as barriers) and allowing interaction (acting as bridges), but then
in specific ways.
The boundaries of the self in relation to the other are at issue in a number
of contributions. The texts enact new self-understandings in reaction to altered
circumstances: a new ascetic, spiritual self after apartheid in Gordimer’s novel
None to Accompany Me (Dimitriu’s essay), a traumatized self that finds new,
safe boundaries (Meyer’s essay), different understanding of loss and of the
value of seemingly valueless things in Winterbach’s novel (Du Plooy’s
essay), a different image of the writer and his function in the case of Ibsen
(Rees’s essay), a symbolic geography that counterbalances the grotesque re-
presentations of the racial boundary in Jenssen’s novel The Salt Bin (Schi-
manski’s essay ), a cathartic representation of the abject that enables a new
relation to the other in the film Triomf (Nel’s essay), or a creative self-
reflection of women and a new language in Krog’s poetry collection Lady
Anne (Viljoen’s essay). Ullyatt’s essay is a critical reflection on assumptions
about normality, abnormality, and incarceration as an automatic response to
the abnormal in Harris’ The Silence of the Lambs. Other important boundaries
that are reconfigured are those of history, of fact and fiction in Byatt’s rewrit-
ing of Ibsen’s biography (Rees’s essay), and also of the masculinity and the
taboos on A I D S in Venter’s Ek stamel ek sterwe (van Schalkwyk’s essay).
Bordering processes are, in other words, not only represented and reflected
but also remodelled and re-imagined.
xliv CROSSING BORDERS, DISSOLVING BOUNDARIES a

Articulations between symbolic and topographical boundaries

Every text represents the crossing of a complex set of borders and boundaries
and a unique articulation of topographical and symbolic boundaries. Gordi-
mer’s character moves out of the house that represents her past life and the
categories of apartheid to find a new spiritual centre in a garden. Meyer’s
essay shows how the characters use natural boundaries as devices to rebuild
their traumatized personal boundaries and to find new centres. The empty
signs of the shells in Winterbach’s book become articulations of loss and
coping with loss. Gouws shows how the crossing of topographical boundaries
in Deneys Reitz’s Commando can be understood as changing self-under-
standings, provided that the reader is willing to cross the boundaries of the
published text. Heith’s essay on Tornedalian alternative literary history again
highlights the close link between borders and processes of exclusion and in-
clusion and ethnicity, but also how these borders can be reconfigured. Krüger
shows how the disappearing of old social boundaries is configured in visual
and performative signs on the stage, showing up parallels between Russia and
South Africa across temporal boundaries in Suzman’s rewriting of Chekhov’s
The Cherry Orchard. In Nel’s analysis of Triomf, abjection is expressed in the
spatial configuration of the apartheid city and the Benades’ incestuous con-
strual of self in their claustrophobic house. The final explosion is an emblem
of the destruction of both these configurations. Rees’ essay on Byatt’s repre-
sentation of Ibsen is a fascinating study in the creation and re-creation of the
public image of the writer by using devices of textuality and writing. She con-
fronts the ethical boundary of the just representation of the life of an author.
Ullyatt questions incarceration as an accepted way of dealing with the ab-
normal and restoring society’s self-image as ‘normal’ and ‘sane’. Van Schalk-
wyk studies the expression of social taboos in terms of textuality and a rhe-
toric of concealment, showing how the author insinuates what society tends to
reject in the form of an aesthetic Trojan horse. Viljoen shows how Krog over-
comes the symbolic marginalization of women and creates a new language in
interstitial space.

Boundaries as interstitial spaces, border zones

In general, it can also be said that in the corpus borders denote zones rather
than lines or barriers and that significant events and shifts take place in these
zones. The garden plays an important liminal role in Gordimer’s novel as well
as in The Free State. This is similar to the role of nature in the novels that
Meyer analyses and to the role that the border zone plays as idyllic counter-
a Introduction xlv

balance in Schimanski’s analysis of The Salt Bin. Different configurations of

the border zone are at the heart of Heith’s argument about reconceptualizing
Tornedalian literary history. Spaces representing in-between zones of life and
death, sanity and abnormality are strongly marked in Ullyatt’s analysis of the
carceral. Different interstitial zones, especially the liminal zone between water
and air, are central to Krog’s Lady Anne. The abject as zone of disgust and
fascination is an illuminating border notion, as Nel’s and Schimanski’s ana-
lyses prove. Textual border zones are central to Rees’s and Gouws’ argu-
ments, while van Schalkwyk’s analysis focuses on the border zone between
text and reader.

International resonance of the essays

In sum, the essays in this collection contribute on various levels to the inter-
national debate on borders. On one level, they show characters engaging with
existential challenges, ranging from dealing with racially entrenched ways of
thinking in a Scandinavian context or the challenges of living in South Africa
in a time of radical transition. In general, they confirm the view that texts
redefine accepted cognitive frames and scripts. They also confirm the creative
power of liminal zones. Motifs featuring prominently in the texts are memory,
abjection, gardens, as well as movement from the country to the city, or vice
versa. Defining a new self and new relations to the other are central concerns.
Important perspectives that are opened up include the spiritual content of the
ordinary, the value of the seeming valueless, nature and the aesthetic as ways
of dealing with loss and trauma, the problematics of life-writing, and the rhe-
torical organization of texts. The essays, in short, are all fascinating studies,
rich in contextual meaning and in insights into bordering processes and the
representation and reconfiguration of such processes.43

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(London & New York: Routledge, 2nd ed. 2006).

43
I would like thank Heilna du Plooy, Phil van Schalkwyk, and especially Johan
Schimanski for their suggestions for improving this introduction.
xlvi CROSSING BORDERS, DISSOLVING BOUNDARIES a

Bachelard, Gaston. The Poetics of Space, tr. Maria Jolas (La Poétique de l’espace,
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graphy Biennial; [Paris]: Culturesfrance / Actes Sud, 2009): 268–71.
Brown, Duncan, ed. Religion and Spirituality in South Africa: New Perspectives
(Pietermaritzburg: U of KwaZulu–Natal P , 2009).
Byatt, A.S. The Biographer’s Tale (2000; London: Vintage, 2001).
Eliot, T.S. “Religion and Literature,” in Eliot, Selected Essays (1935; London: Faber &
Faber, 1951): 388–401.
Farah, Nuruddin. “Borders: A Curse of our Continent,” in Encounters of Bamako 9:
Borders, ed. Michket Krifa & Laura Serani (African Photography Biennial; [Paris]:
Culturesfrance / Actes Sud, 2009): 18–19.
Gordimer, Nadine. None to Accompany Me (London: Bloomsbury, 1994).
Harris, Thomas. The Silence of the Lambs, with Red Dragon (1989; London: Arrow,
2004).
Hook, Derek. “Racism as abjection: A psychoanalytic conceptualisation for a post-
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Hopkins, David. Dada’s Boys: Masculinity after Duchamp (New Haven C T & Lon-
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——. The Salt Bin: A Novel, tr. R. Thorstensson ([Svolvær: Nord], 1998).
Krifa, Michket, & Laura Serani. “Borders,” in Encounters of Bamako 9: Borders, ed.
Michket Krifa & Laura Serani (African Photography Biennial; [Paris]: Cultures
france / Actes Sud, 2009): 13–15.
Kristeva, Julia. Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection, tr. Leon S. Roudiez
(Pouvoirs de l’horreur, 1980; New York: Columbia U P , 1982).
Krog, Antjie. Lady Anne (Bramley, Johannesburg: Taurus, 1989).
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a Introduction xlvii

Lotman, Jurij M. The Structure of the Artistic Text, tr. Gail Lenhoff & Ronald Vroon
(Struktura khudozhetsvennogo teksta, 1971; Michigan Slavic Contributions 7; Ann
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on Literature, Space & Identity (New York: Peter Lang, 2004).
——, ed. Beyond the Threshold: Explorations of Liminality in Literature (New York:
Peter Lang, 2007).
Wenzel, Jennifer. Bulletproof: Afterlives of Anticolonial Prophecy in South Africa and
Beyond (Pietermaritzburg: U of KwaZulu–Natal P , 2009).
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2001).

a
Representing the Unpresentable
Between the Secular and the Spiritual
in Gordimer’s Post-Apartheid Fiction

I LEANA D IMITRIU

I N T H I S E S S A Y , I shall engage with the boundary between the secular and

the spiritual, as reflected in attempts to represent and give (fictional)
form to the intangible, the unpresentable. In endeavouring to investigate
the larger disciplinary context of this problematic – the boundary between
literature and spirituality – I shall make use of ‘spirituality’ as a blanket term
covering, in what follows, subjective expressions of faith-related identifica-
tion and belief. Such expressions of identity do not necessarily exclude reli-
gion, but are not primarily linked to organized forms of faith as encapsulated
in dogma and doctrine. In the second part of my essay, I shall illustrate a ‘turn
to the spiritual’ in a writer whose more recent work has, intriguingly, veered
away from an exclusivist political preoccupation to a subtle, and at times even
explicit, foregrounding of the unpresentable.
There has been a recent resurgence of interest in things religious and spiri-
tual in society, in the (human) sciences and literature, and especially so with
regard to postcolonial literatures and societies.1 It is intriguing that, decades
after the liberation from colonial oppression, the literatures of many postcolo-
nial places should show a renewed focus on issues religious – cf. Kwame
Anthony Appiah,2 who envisaged a secularized future for Africa when he

1
For an overview of the problematic, see Ileana Dimitriu, “ ‘ Why are we suddenly
talking about God?’ A Spiritual Turn in Recent Critical Writing,” Current Writing 22.1
(2010): 123–45.
2
Kwame Anthony Appiah, In My Father’s House: Africa in the Philosophy of Cul-
ture (Oxford: Oxford U P , 1992).
2 ILEANA DIMITRIU a

equated emancipation from colonialism with an imitation of the Western

model of secularization. Or, to put it differently, it is intriguing that literary
criticism has taken little notice of the continuing preoccupation with things
religious in the postcolonies and their literatures.
As an interdiscipline, ‘religion and literature’ has, over more than half a
century, explored ways of defining and broadening a common ground. In-
spired by T.S. Eliot’s essay “Religion and Literature,”3 the search for thematic
and methodological points of contact has been ongoing. As Giles Gunn has it,
their interrelatedness stems from the fact that they are both composed
of cultural material, namely symbols; their distinctiveness derives
from the somehow different use to which they put this symbolic
cultural material interpretively.4

Under the guidance of Karl Barth and Emil Brunner (in theology) and various
Aristotelian approaches in literary criticism, American universities, in the
1960s, started offering courses in ‘religion and literature’, with figures of the
stature of a Nathan A. Scott promoting “a theology of the imagination,”5 an
intriguing paradigmatic intersection. Both the literary and the theological
imagination, namely, are based on the art of ‘discerning’ a text, which, ac-
cording to Teresa Brennan, signifies a “living attention to the text”6 – in other
words, a process of affective understanding that enables readers to become
aware of how emotional undercurrents are formed and then circulate. Further-
more, both the reading and the writing of literature touch on the spiritual, in a
creative embrace of (re)presenting the unpresentable: “the penumbra of con-
sciousness, thick with half digested impressions and intuitions.”7
While the above comments refer to ‘religion and literature’ in a generic
(possibly canonical) sense, the 1970s saw a broadening of the interdiscipline.
With religion now understood as de-christianized, ‘religion and literature’
started to embrace various forms of faiths and beliefs, which would soon

3
T.S. Eliot, “Religion and Literature,” in Eliot, Selected Essays (1935; London:
Faber & Faber, 1951): 388–401.
4
Giles Gunn, The Interpretation of Otherness: Literature, Religion and the Amer-
ican Imagination (New York: Oxford U P , 1979): 6.
5
Nathan A. Scott, The Broken Center: Studies in the Theology of Modern Literature
(New Haven C T : Yale U P , 1966): 210.
6
Teresa Brennan, The Transmission of Affect (Ithaca N Y : Cornell U P , 2004): 68.
7
Graham Ward, “How Literature Resists Secularity,” Literature and Theology 24.1
(2010): 75.
a Representing the Unpresentable 3

become of great interest to comparative literary studies. Scholars of ‘religion

and literature’ – increasingly – became interested in the literatures of the ‘new
Englishes’ and, later, in postcolonial literatures. To date, this interdiscipline –
‘religion and postcolonial literatures’ – is still in an initial stage of develop-
ment, with only a handful of scholars who have taken up an interest in the link
between spirituality and postcolonialism.
Many of these interdisciplinary scholars may have been inspired by the
pioneering work of Jamie Scott, who – in the early 1990s – started to galvan-
ize research in this field. Starting with investigating how the various religious
symbols, myths, motifs, rituals, and heroes are being represented in postcolo-
nial literatures,8 Scott’s more recent interest lies in the constructedness of the
sacred. In a book tellingly titled Mapping the Sacred,9 he has identified a
strong emphasis on the spatial in its religious /transcendental, as distinct from
its temporal dimension.
Several critics have followed in the footsteps of Scott regarding how, in
postcolonial literatures, ‘the sacred’ has been given shape via literary devices
(narrative, poetic discourses); they started investigating the relationship of
‘sacred space’ and its narrativization in different cultural locations, by both
indigenous and non-indigenous /settler communities.10 In Intimate Horizons,11

8
“And the Birds Began to Sing”: Religion and Literature in Post-Colonial Cultures,
ed. Jamie Scott (Cross / Cultures 22; Amsterdam & Atlanta G A : Rodopi, 1996).
9
Mapping the Sacred: Religion, Geography and Postcolonial Literatures, ed. Jamie
Scott & Paul Simpson (Cross / Cultures 48; Amsterdam & Atlanta G A : Rodopi, 2001).
10
Critics who have engaged with postcolonialism from a spiritual perspective
include: Stephanos Stephanides, Translating Kali’s Feast: The Goddess in Indo-Carib-
bean Ritual and Fiction (Cross / Cultures 43; Amsterdam & Atlanta G A : Rodopi,
2000); Elaine Lindsay, Rewriting God: Spirituality in Contemporary Australian
Women’s Fiction (Cross / Cultures 45; Amsterdam & Atlanta G A : Rodopi, 2000);
Theatre of the Arts: Wilson Harris and the Caribbean, ed. Hena Maes–Jelinek &
Bénédicte Ledent (Cross / Cultures 60; Amsterdam & New York: Rodopi, 2002);
Peter Kerry Powers, Recalling Religions: Resistance, Memory and Cultural Revision
in Ethnic Women’s Literature (Knoxville: U of Tennessee P , 2001); The Bible and the
Third World: Precolonial, Colonial and Postcolonial Encounters, ed. R.S. Sugirtha-
rajah (Amsterdam & Atlanta G A : Rodopi, 2001); The Postcolonial Biblical Reader,
ed. R.S. Sugirtharajah (Oxford: Blackwell, 2006).
11
Intimate Horizons: The Post-Colonial Sacred in Australian Literature, ed. Bill
Ashcroft, Frances Devlin–Glass & Lyn McCredden (Hindmarsh, S A : Adelaide,
2009).
4 ILEANA DIMITRIU a

Bill Ashcroft et al., explore – to use their subtitle – literary representations of

the “Post-Colonial Sacred in Australian Literature.” For Ashcroft, the sacred
emerges from the proximate and intimate experience of the everyday – “the
sacred [being] imagined as earthed, embodied, humbled, local, demotic,
ordinary and sublime” (2) – while Kant’s vertical sublime is reconfigured into
a “horizonal sublime” (7): the place of ‘utopia’ and the (indigenous) repressed
made visible. Fiona Darroch treats various myths about sacred spaces as
forms of boundary (re)negotiations, with religion understood as a “constant
negotiation of boundaries, both physical and psychological.”12 Aware of the
profound scepticism on the part of postcolonial critics regarding religious
approaches to literature, she suggests that ‘religion’ be dealt with as a taxo-
nomy, a hermeneutic device, rather than as a concept suggesting some tran-
scendental, transhistorical reality: “ ‘religion’ is more productively understood
within, rather than above, the socio-political context of human experience”
(viii).
Darroch raises an important point regarding the question: How should we
talk about religion /spirituality? The question echoes the title of a recent
volume edited by James Boyd White, a project whose aim is to reflect on
“how we are talking about religion: about the assumptions we are making and
about the terms in which we cast our thought.”13 Boyd White suggests the
need for emancipation from the tyranny of discipline-specific discourses: “As
intellectuals, we belong on the margins of all religions, in the in-between, in
the liminal, a marginal space that is somehow, paradoxically, also at the very
centre of contemporary public culture” (298). The principal question is:
How adequate are our languages of description and analysis as ways of
representing religion? This question is present in every effort to talk
about the religions of others, including the word ‘religion’ itself. (3)

It is also present in questions such as: Is what we call ‘reason’ sufficient for a
full intellectual and practical life? If not sufficient, what else is needed, and
what do we call it? Can our terminologies do justice to the religious experi-

12
Fiona Darroch, Memory and Myth: Postcolonial Religion in Contemporary Guya-
nese Fiction and Poetry (Cross / Cultures 103; Amsterdam & New York: Rodopi,
2009): 181.
13
How Should We Talk About Religion? Perspectives, Contexts, Particularities, ed.
James Boyd White (Notre Dame I N : U of Notre Dame P , 2006): 7.
a Representing the Unpresentable 5

ences of others? How are we to face the diversity of serious belief that charac-
terizes the human world? (3–5).
Similarly to Boyd White’s intention, an edited volume by Duncan Brown
constitutes a project aimed at facilitating interdisciplinary boundary crossings
and conversations on matters spiritual; but, unlike Boyd White, Brown locates
his project in a specific context.14 It is the South African milieu (and, more
generally, the postcolonial condition) that informs the animated cross-disci-
plinary debates in his book. These debates range from matters of politics and
the public sphere – e.g., constitutional matters on the freedom of religion,
active citizenship in the form of faith-based organizations, the role of faith in
post-liberation South Africa – to issues of identity and agency in science, lite-
rature, and the media. Importantly, the volume offers a significant methodo-
logical reorientation:
How do we develop a critical language and framework that avoid the
dismissiveness of materialism in its approach to spirituality, while still
undertaking studies that are rigorously analytical and critical, but
receptive to other modes of identification, identity and belief? (9)

For my purpose here, Brown’s book – in its avoidance of crude materialist

simplifications, its nuanced receptivity to identity and /as belief – provides a
valuable reader for the literary critic, particularly with regard to the question:
How do (or should) we talk about spirituality in literary criticism?
In attempting to give an answer to this question, I shall examine two recent
critical studies on South / African literary texts that draw on indigenous reli-
gious beliefs: Jennifer Wenzel’s Bulletproof: Afterlives of Anticolonial
Prophecy in South Africa and Beyond15 and Mark Mathuray’s On the Sacred
in African Literature.16 The two studies are paradigmatic of two prevailing
attitudes towards spirituality in the literary domain. At the one end are those
critics (e.g., Wenzel) who secularize the spiritual. At the other end are those
(e.g., Mathuray) who, to quote Brown, “ ‘voice’ belief, rather than report doc-
trine, allowing the explanatory power of belief without necessarily endorsing

14
Religion and Spirituality in South Africa: New Perspectives, ed. Duncan Brown
(Pietermaritzburg: U of Kwazulu–Natal P , 2009).
15
Jennifer Wenzel, Bulletproof: Afterlives of Anticolonial Prophecy in South Africa
and Beyond (Pietermaritzburg: U of Kwazulu–Natal P , 2009).
16
Mark Mathuray, On the Sacred in African Literature: Old Gods and New Worlds
(London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009).
6 ILEANA DIMITRIU a

it [while] narrating the belief from within, but retaining the critical dis-
tance.”17
Wenzel’s study is an expression of what Svetlana Boym18 calls “restorative
nostalgia” for the unfulfilled potential of the Xhosa cattle-killing of 1857: i.e.
for the unfulfilled potential of what Wenzel sees as an expression of anticolo-
nial nationalism. Aware that “modernization coexists uneasily with millennial
visions and magical thinking,”19 she engages with religious phenomena as
forms of ‘magic’: “an expansive term for the supernatural, mysterious, or
wondrous that crosses temporal, colonial, and theological divides” (12). Wen-
zel refers to magic as an unproblematic, semi-fictional category, and is inter-
ested in prophecy as a social phenomenon – more precisely, in its ‘afterlives’
as forms of anticolonial resistance. In attempting to connect a spectacular past
failure to its present significance, her ‘restorative nostalgia’ offers secular-
izing explanations of the spiritual impulse: simply “metaphors for more mun-
dane processes” (12). In this respect, Wenzel shows affinities with Marxist
approaches to religion (7, 12–13) as in the tradition of ‘Africanist’ scholars of
the 1970s and 1980s, for whom “religion began to be seen in terms of a poli-
tics of resistance.”20 It is a politics of resistance infused with idealism, as in
Wenzel’s own brand of millenarianism: that is, in her efforts to “recover the
negated possibilities of the past [and thus obtain] freedom from deterministic
historical narratives.”21 Wenzel re-thinks failure and argues for “the (secular-)
utopian potential of dreams of liberation.”22 Issues of narrative authority
amidst competing ideologies are also discussed in a comparative analysis of
prophetic rhetoric and the “politics of intertextuality” (70–71). Through her
analyses of the works she selects, Wenzel suggests the need progressively to
go beyond nostalgic retrospection, and asks why and how the millennial ima-
gination – the image of bullets turned to water – can survive a spectacular
failure of prophecy. By focusing on utopia’s afterlives rather than on its

17
Brown, Religion and Spirituality, 18–19.
18
Svetlana Boym, The Future of Nostalgia (New York: Basic Books, 2001): xviii.
19
Wenzel, Bulletproof, 11.
20
Maria Frahm–Arp, “Studying Religion in Sub-Saharan Africa”, in Religion,
Spirituality and the Social Sciences: Challenging Marginalisation, ed. Basia Spalek &
Alia Imtoual (Bristol: Policy, 2008): 83.
21
John Su, Ethics and Nostalgia in the Contemporary Novel (Cambridge: Cam-
bridge U P , 2005): 17.
22
Bulletproof, 9.
a Representing the Unpresentable 7

apparent failures, Wenzel invites us “to recover modes of dreaming difference

that would transform remembered prophecies of a colonial restoration into
prophetic memories of post-colonial justice” (280). The project is a typical
example of a secularizing reading of a spiritual phenomenon. Thus, Wenzel
does not take us into the inner workings of prophecy-as-prophecy – expedi-
ently relegated here to the domain of unqualified “magic” or “wondrous mys-
tery” (12). A major shortcoming is the one-dimensional nature of the ap-
proach, with the author insisting on prophecy’s linear, teleological, Christian-
inspired, nationalistic, and anti-colonial consequences (typical of late modern-
ity). She does not integrate prophecy’s indigenous /African dimension: its
capacity for renewal as a collective rite of passage from a state of moral
turpitude to cyclically repeated disaggregations aimed at a regeneration from
within – ad infinitum, non-teleologically.23
As already indicated, another recent project that takes up spiritual issues as
represented in African literature is Mark Mathuray’s On the Sacred in African
Literature. Although similar to Wenzel’s concern in a thematic sense, the two
projects could not be have been more different in their respective approaches
to spirituality. While, for Wenzel, prophecy is an epiphenomenon, simply a
pretext for an analysis of anti-colonial resistance literature, Mathuray holds
the literary text to spiritual account. While Wenzel’s future scenario is shaped
by a politics of power, Mathuray focuses on the ancient blueprints of indige-
nous knowledge systems that valorize the sacred. While Wenzel (like Appiah,
as mentioned above) takes it as a given that African societies aspire to em-
brace the values of secularized late modernity, Mathuray is intrigued by the
obstinate persistence of the spiritual impulse on the African continent. While
Wenzel ‘secularizes’ the spiritual impulse (relegating it to a subordinate role),
Mathuray seeks to unearth the spiritual roots of African political life:
I resist an approach to the sacred that relates it exclusively to principles
and conflicts of the socio-political order, and also explore the meta-
physical implications of the idea of the sacred.24

To his credit, he does this by paying due attention to context, whether social,
cultural or political, and is fully aware of the pitfalls of essentialism.

23
Robin Horton, “African Traditional Thought and Western Science,” Africa 37
(1967): 176–80.
24
Mathuray, On the Sacred, 11.
8 ILEANA DIMITRIU a

At the outset, Mathuray signals his awareness of prevalent literary-critical

interpretations of religion, which tend to favour a secular over a mythical
aesthetic. The primacy granted to the political, secular pursuit – and the con-
comitant belief in the value of realism as the best vehicle for representing
social concern – reflects a postcolonial cultural politics which, as has been
suggested, has foregrounded processes of social confrontation, or decolo-
nization (e.g., Wenzel above); such interpretations have regarded with suspi-
cion /condescension forms of identification that fall outside the secularizing
impulse of national liberation movements. This kind of position has been
criticized by – inter alia25 – Robert Young, who takes issue with
the absolute division between the material and the spiritual [that
operates] in postcolonial studies, [its] unmediated secularism – [for],
postcolonial theory, despite its espousal of subaltern resistance,
scarcely values subaltern resistance that does not operate according to
its own secular terms.26

In the light of this, critics like Mathuray are intrigued by the persistence – in
spite of the above-mentioned neo-Marxist interpretations to the contrary – of
the spiritual in African thought, and by literary criticism’s equally persistent,
yet puzzlingly unreflective, indifference towards this phenomenon. What he
sets out to achieve is not to negate social pursuit, but its simplistic application
in the way in which African writers are categorized as either ‘realist’ or
‘mythopoetic’.27 Indeed, Mathuray holds that it is possible for the spiritual
and the secular to coexist, and for myth and history (the sacred and the pro-

25
It is a difficulty recognised by an increasing number of postcolonial critics:
Dipesh Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical
Difference (Princeton N J : Princeton U P , 2000); Mixed Messages: Materiality,
Textuality and Missions, ed. Gareth Griffiths & Jamie S. Scott (New York: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2004); The Postcolonial Studies Reader, ed. Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Grif-
fiths & Helen Tiffin (London & New York: Routledge, 2nd ed. 2006). While Chakra-
barty and Griffiths & Scott remind us that Western utilitarianism has relegated the
spiritual to concepts and practices of the pre-modern, Ashcroft baldly queries the Euro-
American tendency of assuming that the secular is “the ‘unchallengeable’ mode by
which the world is best interpreted” (517).
26
Robert J.C. Young, Postcolonialism: An Historical Introduction (Oxford: Black-
well, 2001): 338.
27
See also: Gerald Gaylard, After Colonialism: African Postmodernism and Magi-
cal Realism (Johannesburg: Wits U P , 2005).
a Representing the Unpresentable 9

fane) to be coincidental. In fact, this is an assumption that has gained currency

in the last decade or so: researchers have been intrigued to find that spiritual
beliefs have not been erased by the progressive penetration of modernization
on the African continent. As Ashcroft, Griffiths & Tiffin put it, we are now
witnessing a new ‘turn’ in postcolonial theory, a turn to the spiritual:
a new force has entered the arena of struggle, [a force drawing on] a
renewed sense of the sacral as offering an alternative to European
models of thought.28

It is precisely the link between the sacred and the profane that confounds
Western analysts who, in binary models of thinking, tend to dismiss the non-
secular (the sacred) as an irrelevant appendage. For most African writers,
however, a sense of the sacred is both real and rational.
One might illustrate the above with a spiritualizing re-reading of two major
African writers: Achebe and Ngugi, both of whom are generally considered to
be ‘realist’ novelists. A prevalent response to Achebe29 would subordinate the
mythopoetic dimension of traditional African life to the theme of colonial
intrusion. Such interpretations tend to reduce all tensions between the tradi-
tional gods and the imported, god-like, objects of material desire to ideologi-
cal clashes.30 However, in a new /spiritualizing re-reading, political power-
tensions would not be seen as simply divorced from the overarching presence
of the sacred in the African collective imaginary. Turning to Ngugi, one can
also notice that normative readings of his work31 tend to interpret the religious
allusions to Christianity as another form of colonization; trapped in the obses-
sion with the Christian influence, such readings ignore the fact that the
Gikuyu discourse of nationalist struggle also contains, and refers to, deities of
indigenous belief. As identified also by Mbembe,32 Ngugi finds that cyclic-
indigenous and linear-Christian forms of prophecy (e.g., in The River Be-
tween) interact, producing complex, sometimes ambivalent human imagin-

28
Ashcroft, Griffiths & Tiffin, ed. The Postcolonial Studies Reader, 8.
29
Simon Gikandi, Reading the African Novel (London: James Currey, 1987).
30
Emmanuel Obiechina, Culture, Tradition and Society in the West African Novel
(Cambridge: Cambridge U P , 1975).
31
For example, Simon Gikandi, Ngugi wa Thiong’o (Cambridge: Cambridge U P ,
2000), and James Ogude, Ngugi’s Novels and African History: Narrating the Nation
(London: Pluto, 1999).
32
Achille Mbembe, On the Postcolony (Berkeley: U of California P , 2001).
10 ILEANA DIMITRIU a

ings. Ngugi’s protagonists Waiyaki and Nyambura, for example, are presen-
ted as caught between the need to uphold tradition and the need to promote
the institutions of modernity; the political is interwoven with sacred intima-
tions of power, while the ambivalence of the sacred expresses itself in poli-
tical terms. Much as with Achebe, we can go beyond a sacred /profane
dualism, and identify both secularizing and sacralizing perspectives simulta-
neously at work in this novel. Such a reading is in marked contrast to Wen-
zel’s reading of the spiritual, as analysed above.

Expressions of the spiritual in South /African literature – an entanglement of

numerous languages and cultures, African and European, oral and written,
along a history of radical conflict and contestation – offer a complex platform
of investigation. As it happens, most studies of the spiritual tend to avoid the
contemporary scene and to seek examples in pantheons of African gods (e.g.,
Mathuray) or in nineteenth-century forms of indigenous reactions to colonial
rule (e.g., Wenzel). In South Africa, first-people Bushman /San expression
serves as a common spiritual resource.33 Given the diverse points of entry to
debates on the spiritual, the very concept of ‘spirituality’ therefore needs to be
approached in a nuanced way. To analytical tools such as ‘the sacred’,34
‘myth’,35 ‘utopia’36 – alluded to in the above – one needs to add a few others.
I shall contribute to this discussion by making use of another analytical work-
ing tool: the concept of ‘secular spirituality’.
It is a concept that requires some definition. As Prozesky37 elaborates,
‘secular spirituality’ is based on the clear understanding of ‘the secular’ as
experiential embeddedness in the proximate, and as distinct from ‘secular-
ism’; the latter (in its reductively positivist variety) being an obstacle to both

33
Duncan Brown, Voicing the Text: South African Oral Poetry and Performance
(Cape Town: Oxford U P , 1998).
34
As employed by Ashcroft et al., in Intimate Horizons, and by Mathuray, On the
Sacred in African Literature.
35
As employed by Darroch in Memory and Myth, 2009.
36
As employed by Wenzel in Bulletproof, 2009.
37
Martin Prozesky, “Ethics, Spirituality and the Secular,” in Secular Spirituality as
a Contextual Critique of Religion, ed. Cornel Du Toit & Cedric Mayson (Pretoria:
Research Institute for Theology and Religion, 2006): 127–38.
a Representing the Unpresentable 11

religion and secular spirituality. The concern is with phenomenology, rather

than metaphysics; and “a refusal of a ‘secular-life-as-not-spiritual’.”38 Thus,
‘secular spirituality’ is distinct not only from religion but also from ‘secular-
ism’ (as the latter term is usually employed in positivistic philosophies, or,
indeed, in materialist analyses). Here we touch upon a ‘postmodern holism’ as
sweeping through the global collective consciousness: a centripetal force
attempting to unify various forms of spiritual fulfilment, “whether traditional
or modern, theistic, pantheistic or atheistic.”39 Secular spirituality is based on
a convergence between the material and the spiritual, the spiritual and the
techno-scientific, and “serves as a bridge between faith and reason, nature and
grace, science and theology,”40 thus helping overcome pernicious binaries and
reductive dualisms.
Elements of secular spirituality are manifested in literature and literary
criticism, and not only in postcolonial literary studies. In a recent book,
tellingly entitled Spiritual Identities, the claim is made that we are witness to a
counter-cultural move: “a ‘coming out’ within literary studies”41 that attempts
to articulate a post-secular imagination. But let me pause. Is secular spiritual-
ity that new? Not really. Secular spirituality as the “modern diffusion of a
spiritual impulse that has survived [modernity’s] disenchantment”42 can be
found in representations of what Walter Benjamin (back in the 1930s) refer-
red to as profane illumination and the ‘auratic power’ of mundane existence.
Benjamin’s concept of a “weak messianic power”43 can be seen as a diffused

38
Celia Kourie, “Postmodern Spirituality in a Secular Society,” in Secular Spiritual-
ity as a Contextual Critique of Religion, ed. Cornel Du Toit & Cedric Mayson (Pre-
toria: Unisa, 2006): 80.
39
Varadaraja Raman, “Religions in a Secular World,” Theology and Science 3.1
(2005): 3.
40
Secular Spirituality as a Contextual Critique of Religion, ed. Cornel Du Toit &
Cedric Mayson (Pretoria: Research Institute for Theology and Religion, 2006): 68.
41
Gavin D’Costa, “Preface,” in Spiritual Identities: Literature and the Post-Secular
Imagination, ed. Jo Carruthers & Andrew Tate (Oxford & Bern: Peter Lang, 2010): ix,
xviii–xi.
42
Andy Mousley, “Spiritual Humanisms,” in Spiritual Identities, ed. Carruthers &
Tate, 98.
43
Walter Benjamin, “On the Concept of History” [aka “Theses on the Philosophy of
History”] (1940/50), tr. Harry Zohn, in Benjamin, Selected Writings, vol. 4: 1938–
1940, ed. Howard Eiland & Michael W. Jennings (Cambridge M A : Harvard U P ,
2003): 390 (emphasis in the original).
12 ILEANA DIMITRIU a

theology, a theology that – unlike Martin Luther King, Jr.’s unambiguously

scriptural, ‘strong’ messianism – has lost its doctrinal grounding, challenging
one to “look for redemption in unlikely or forgotten places.”44 Weak theology
(or weak messianism, or secular spirituality) gestures towards finding
glimpses of sacredness in the mundane and the fragmented; the image of the
writer / poet as ‘ragpicker’ being Benjamin’s metaphoric way of suggesting
the capacity of the imagination to re-assemble shards of experience,45 and to
imbue the experience with a revelatory, ‘auratic’ power in its effort of “sal-
vaging the concealed significance of phenomena from the ‘throw-away’ men-
tality of consumer capitalism.”46
As it happened, the concept of ‘weak theology’ has been retrieved in cur-
rent critical thinking. The emphasis is on the ‘experiential’, its investment in
‘presence’ privileging the aesthetic moment: that is, the sacred is glimpsed in
the text as an affective (rather than an intellectual, meaning-making) experi-
ence.

This possibility of ‘presence’ – or ‘secular spirituality’ – may be found in the

more recent writings of Nadine Gordimer, who through her latest writings has
provoked J.M. Coetzee to refer to “a spiritual turn in her thought.”47 This is a
puzzling, an unexpected comment to make about the well-known anti-apart-
heid spokesperson and public intellectual. Is Coetzee suggesting that the
‘spiritual’ is new in Gordimer? Or the need to bring to the work a new inter-
pretative grid? I argue that the two lines of approach are interlinked. On the
one hand, the element of the sacral is increasingly present in Gordimer’s texts.
On the other, such elements call for a new way of interpreting her work, a
spiritualizing re-reading of it.

44
Andy Mousley, “Spiritual Humanisms,” 108.
45
“A ragpicker, at daybreak, picking up rags of speech and verbal scraps with his
stick”; Walter Benjamin, “An Outsider Makes His Mark” (1930), tr. Rodney Living-
stone, in Benjamin, Selected Writings, vol. 2, part 1: 1927–1930, ed. Michael W. Jen-
nings, Howard Eiland & Gary Smith (Cambridge M A : Harvard U P , 1999): 310.
46
Mousley, “Spiritual Humanisms,” 107.
47
J.M. Coetzee, “Nadine Gordimer,” in Inner Workings: Essays 2000–2005 (Lon-
don: Harvill Secker, 2007): 244.
a Representing the Unpresentable 13

My aim, then, is to foreground a spiritual dimension in her more recent

writing, a dimension which – despite Coetzee’s above comment – escaped
critical recognition when Gordimer was regarded as the ‘conscience of the
anti-apartheid struggle’. Critics such as Stephen Clingman48 or Katrin
Wagner49 in the late 1980s and mid-1990s, respectively, tended to perceive
her writerly freedom as constrained by large social narratives, an approach
that was apposite for times of political struggle. Instead, I argue that, while
retaining the value of deconstructive reading, it is important also to identify a
potential of human and spiritual reconstitution. It is necessary, in short, to
redeem the term ‘spirituality’ – as I am attempting to do – a term which, in
revolutionary times, was associated with self-indulgence and apolitical forms
of behaviour; spiritual pursuits were conflated with liberal capitalism’s focus
on the individual at the expense of the social. It is important, now, to question
a continuing anti-humanist ideology critique at a time when South Africa re-
quires bold re-imaginings of people’s lives. A new reading may help lend
greater significance to the individual in terms of secular spirituality, resisting
the typical and counteracting positivist forms of cultural materialism.
Within the given parameters, I can focus on only one of Gordimer’s post-
apartheid novels, None to Accompany Me,50 a novel which I shall use as a
possible ‘template’ for a spiritualizing re-reading of her other more recent
works. In choosing this particular novel, I wish to make a key point: that,
although a spiritual dimension is evident in the novel, such a dimension has
hardly featured in its critical reception. Most commentators have continued to
fit the novel into a political interpretative grid, having focused on the book’s
social context – particularly its reflection of the transition to democracy. This
is not surprising, given that None to Accompany Me is Gordimer’s first post-
apartheid novel, its year of publication (1994) coinciding with the year of the
first democratic elections.
Already in None to Accompany Me, and shortly afterwards in The House
Gun51 – her second post-apartheid work – Gordimer was boldly foreground-

48
Stephen Clingman, The Novels of Nadine Gordimer: History from the Inside
(Johannesburg: Ravan, 1986).
49
Katrin Wagner, Reading Nadine Gordimer: Text and Subtext in the Novels
(Johannesburg: Wits U P , 1994).
50
None to Accompany Me (London: Bloomsbury, 1994). Further page references
are in the main text.
51
The House Gun (Cape Town & Johannesburg: David Philip, 1998).
14 ILEANA DIMITRIU a

ing her own brand of ‘spiritual humanism’, the search for spirituality in the
proximate and the experiential: in ordinary, unlikely, forgotten or neglected
places. The writer as ‘ragpicker’ (in Benjamin’s by-now classic formulation)
is re-assembling the shards, the experiential fragments of transitional (post-
apartheid) times – otherwise referred to as ‘the Interregnum’. The latter, a
Gramscian concept, used by Gordimer in her essay “Living in the Inter-
regnum,”52 is a formulation that encapsulates the essence of a period in which
“ ‘ the old is dying, and the new cannot be born’” (263). The ‘Interregnum’ is
close in significance to the concept of ‘boundary’, which, starting with the
mid-1990s, has become an essential analytical tool in the social sciences and
humanities, there to be used in investigations of the relationship between
power, action, and identity.53
In Gordimer’s post-1990 novels, the transition to the new dispensation in
South Africa forms the social backdrop for the unfolding of private trans-
formation, which is now pushed into the foreground. Gordimer’s post-apart-
heid novels are bold fictional representations of intimate, spiritual rites of
passage, with her protagonists either transgressing or subverting social and
psychological boundaries, and thus entering liminal zones, border-crossings.54
When applied to social rites of passage, the individuals concerned – as van
Gennep saw it – typically go through three stages of initiation: separation;
transition; and re-incorporation. After being separated from their social con-
text, the initiands have to cross the boundary (‘limen’) into unfamiliar ground
– a state of flux and transition, an ‘interregnum’ – where they experience dis-
concerting indeterminacy/‘liminality’, and where they “slip through the net-
work of classifications that normally locates states and positions in cultural

52
“Living in the Interregnum” (1983), in The Essential Gesture: Writing, Politics
and Places, ed. Stephen Clingman (1988; Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1989): 261–84.
53
For example, A Place That Is Not a Place: Essays in Liminality and Text, ed.
Isabel Soto (Madrid: Gateway, 2000); Mapping the Threshold: Essays in Liminal
Analysis, ed. Nancy Bredendick (Madrid: Gateway, 2004); Manuel Aguirre, The
Thresholds of the Tale: Liminality and the Structure of Fairytale (Madrid: Gateway,
2007); Beyond the Threshold: Explorations of Liminality in Literature, ed. Hein
Viljoen & Chris N. van der Merwe (New York: Peter Lang, 2007).
54
See van Gennep and Turner for useful taxonomies: Arnold Van Gennep, The
Rites of Passage, tr. Monika Vizedom & Gabrielle Caffee (1960; London: Routledge,
2004); Victor W. Turner, Dramas, Fields, and Metaphors: Symbolic Action in Human
Society (Ithaca N Y : Cornell U P , 1974), and The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-
Structure. (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1969).
a Representing the Unpresentable 15

space.”55 In this process, the old identity gets discarded, so that a new one can
take shape. Having thus undergone a symbolic death, in the last stage of ritual
transformation, the individual is (also) symbolically reintegrated into society
as a person transformed. In her four post-apartheid novels Gordimer offers her
protagonists a glimpse of life beyond liminality, beyond the ‘threshold’ of
initiation. Not surprisingly, the three sections of None to Accompany Me – for
example – are, most explicitly, titled: “Baggage” (separation), “Transit”
(liminality), and “Arrivals” (reintegration).
None to Accompany Me is the story of Vera Stark, a lawyer with a legal
foundation, who undergoes a veritable personal rite of passage prompted by
the social conditions of the South African transition to democracy in the early
1990s. The novel is the story of the gradual stripping-off of old selves, habits,
and relationships, all having become a burden – the leitmotif of “what shall I
do with this love?” – in Vera’s quest for redefining a new role for herself not
only in the new dispensation but also in the new stage of her private life.
Although Vera reveals efficiency and integrity in her public role, her inner
world becomes increasingly important to her being. What is new about this
type of ‘Gordimer woman’ is her courage in confronting her existential self
with an emphasis on individual choice and responsibility. After a lifetime of
duties and commitments, Vera chooses to end her story by dancing alone
through life; dancing to the rhythms of her inner voice (the dancing motif is
insistent).
Given my argument that, even in revolutionary times, Gordimer the poli-
tical novelist cohabited, as it were, with Gordimer the novelist of more per-
sonal concerns, it is tempting to suggest that the end of the revolutionary
climate may signal for Gordimer a strange kind of liberation. None to Accom-
pany Me points towards a reversal of the previous relationship between the
public and the private aspects of life. The decision to foreground the private
has an unmistakable thematic coherence; it emphasizes the aspiration to emo-
tional and spiritual independence (liberation from both public and personal
constraints). Vera Stark is shown, accordingly, as abandoning past compro-
mises for an integrity that reflects her newly won sense of self. Hers is an
emotional independence without guilt or apology; her new self, a launch-pad
for inner discoveries. In having Vera cast aside many of the social burdens
that weighed so heavily on, for example, Rosa Burger,56 Gordimer, through

55
Turner, The Ritual Process, 95.
56
Gordimer, Burger’s Daughter (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1979).
16 ILEANA DIMITRIU a

this protagonist, might be said after apartheid to be declaring her own emo-
tional independence from her responsibilities of novelist as the national voice.
As she is gradually shedding old habits and involvements,57 Vera is on the
threshold of unfamiliar ground:
Half-defiant, half-ashamed, she had never realized how much (what
was it?) her sense of privacy had grown. How could someone like
herself, whose preoccupations of work were so public, so intertwined
with other lives, have at the same time this sense [. . . ] the impulse she
had had to ask: ‘What am I to do with this love?’ (247–48)

Vera wants to know who she is in the present moment – by, first, knowing
who she is not (any more). Hillela’s flouting of these conventions in the inter-
racial sex of A Sport of Nature58 is extravagant in comparison with Vera’s
principled rejection of emotional attachments (to husband, children, grand-
children, co-workers). Her newly found state of mind, a mind now liberated
from the ‘necessary’ gestures of social bonding, is concretely highlighted by
the fact that she gives up her suburban life-style /habitation and – significantly
– moves into a black man’s (Zeph Rapulana’s) garden annexe as a tenant. The
annexe is not only emblematic of social humility (a white person’s role in a
newly-liberated black country); it is also a marker of a yearning for spiritual
simplicity and austerity of endeavour.
Vera’s ‘post-political’ search attains its symbolic climax in her relationship
with Zeph Rapulana, a character reminiscent of both Luke Fokase in The Late

57
It is Vera’s relationships with men, and family members that best signifies her
gradual process of separation from the past. Vera’s dancing through life to her inner
rhythms is encapsulated in variations of the leitmotif, “what shall I do with this love”,
which occurs throughout the novel (32, 140, 200, 248) in connection with her
relationship not only to Ben, but also to her children and grandchildren, as well as to
colleagues. The obsessive question points to actions that step decisively beyond
middle-class social habits. Her son, Ivan, is accordingly “her invader [who] had
germinated in her body, interloper from an episode into her definitive life” (248). Her
grandson, Adam, seems to be a continuation of this emotional invasion. Her anxieties
about ‘what shall [she] do with this love’ are expressed in her relationship to Annick,
her daughter, as a fear of another round of emotional attachments, in which children
make demands on their parents. This attitude – of ‘none to accompany me’, the novel’s
title – is a rejection of the most hallowed codes by which the middle classes are sup-
posed to conduct their lives and construct their moral schemas.
58
A Sport of Nature (London: Jonathan Cape, 1987).
a Representing the Unpresentable 17

Bourgeois World59 and of Hillela’s first husband, Whaila, in A Sport of

Nature. These characters act as agents of inner growth for the female prota-
gonist. Like his ‘predecessors’, Zeph becomes a catalyst of Vera’s inner
journey: her “working through – what shall I say – dependencies” (313). In
her relationship with Zeph (a black activist for land rights), Vera transgresses
against several boundaries: of profession,, gender, race, and religion. Initially
entering a professional liaison, Vera – a woman with a long history of sexual
exploits and identification – finds herself gravitating towards Zeph, but moti-
vated by an asexual, liminal, and undefinable attraction (120–23). At the
beginning of this relationship, which defies easy classification, Vera quickly
begins to be aware of
a new capability in her, something in the chemistry of human contact
that she was only now ready for. [. . . ] That was why he was able to
claim her with what was neither a sexual caress nor an impersonal
handshake. [. . . ] they belonged together as a single sex, a reconcilia-
tion of all each had experienced, he as a man, she as a woman. (122–
23)

Vera is attracted to Zeph by what she perceives to be an impenetrable inner

strength and dignity in the face of adversity. Her curiosity awakened, she now
tries to intimate the secret of his strength:
he was probably religious [which explains what she referred to as] an
overlay on the African spirit that regular church-going seems to bring
about in rural people. (118)

Vera starts having internal dialogues with Zeph on things religious. An atheist
– and overdetermined by the commands of her own, secular upbringing – she
is wrestling with what, to Zeph, seems to come so naturally: his mysterious
source of inner strength. Perplexed by his presence, “neither sarcastic, nor
facetious,” Vera notices that Zeph, a black man from the countryside, gets to
be “taken seriously” (258) by sophisticated city people. “ ‘ You’re the least
conditioned person I’ve met’,” Vera tells him. “ ‘I was quite wrong about you
when I first saw you, hat in hand. I mistook dignity for servility’ ” (261). At
the end of a conversation on the challenges of the new South Africa, Vera
says: “ ‘ A piece here, a piece there. It’s all broken up. You do what you can. I
do what I can. That’s it’ ” (261); a pragmatic atheist talking. While not dis-
agreeing with Vera’s comment, Zeph is careful to reformulate it: “ ‘ You still

59
The Late Bourgeois World (London: Jonathan Cape, 1966).
18 ILEANA DIMITRIU a

believe history will do it through us. [.. . ] we have to believe we’re going to
get it right [. .. ] I believe we act through God’s will’ ” (261; my emphasis). In
spite of the fundamental difference between them (as atheist vs. believer),
they are “closer in their difference than they might have been in agreement,
with others” (261).
Through Vera’s liminal, platonic fascination with Zeph, Gordimer is visib-
ly wrestling with the pull of spirituality. Vera’s interactions with Zeph are
punctuated by Biblical allusions: the authorial voice reflects on the Resur-
rection (118) and, later, on the parable of Cain and Abel (316) – a Biblical
allusion that reappears in the novel Get a Life.60 The passage below juxta-
poses ‘Garden’ and ‘garden’ – standing for ‘the sacred’ and ‘the profane’ – in
a reflection on whether political/ superficial solidarity can be transformed
into its more meaningful/spiritual equivalent. Clearly referring to the histori-
cal inequalities between blacks and whites, Gordimer says:
Politics began outside the Garden; the violent brotherhood of Cain and
Abel can be transformed into the other proclaimed brotherhood only if
it is possible to devise laws to bring this about. [. . . ] Zeph found [Vera]
in the garden. (316; my emphasis)

He found her in the garden, outside her annexe, where she now lived on his
property. Vera’s new, asexual identity, coupled with the awakening of a spiri-
tual pull, is a liminal state that mirrors the communion of Julie – in The
Pickup – with the desert, a new state of mind, “a new country to be dis-
covered.”61 But, unlike Julie, Vera has found a new home, as also suggested
by the title of Section 3, “Arrivals.” This section signals the third stage of her
personal rite of passage, her reinsertion, after the profound stripping-away of
old identities, into the social flow. Vera moves out of her marriage, out of her
wealthy suburban house – leaving behind an entire life-style of comfort and
social habits – and into Zeph’s garden cottage: becoming a tenant, a role that
suits her new sense of self. Hers is a self that now extends itself (beyond
liminality) into a new space, a social space “in which there were loyalties, but
no dependencies, in which there was feeling caught in no recognised category
[.. . ]. Vera felt it open, to be traversed by herself; herself a final form of com-
pany discovered” (321).

60
Get A Life (Cape Town & Johannesburg: David Philip, 2005).
61
The Pickup (Cape Town & Johannesburg: David Philip, 2001): 198.
a Representing the Unpresentable 19

Vera’s spiritual journey is encapsulated in a series of epiphanic scenes,

suggestive of crucial turning points (‘thresholds’) along the way. On one of
her drives into the township, where she goes on a professional task, she is
being robbed – among other things – of her wedding ring:
The place where the ring was is a wasted circle round the base of her
finger, feel it, frail, flesh worn thinner than that of the rest: of the digit.
Documents, address book – ring; on the contrary, to live: without all
these. . . . her finger is naked; free. (202–203)

This scene is both a symbolic concentration and an anticipation of Vera’s

process of liberation from old ‘baggage’ (the title of the novel’s first section).
Towards the end of the novel, after having gone through the liminal zone of
psychological stock-taking, Vera comes out of the tunnel, out of the stage of
‘indeterminate’ transition of self:
Vera returned to the empty house [her new home, Zeph’s garden
cottage] in complete self-forgetfulness; and met herself. The curtains
she went about drawing across the windows, the angles of walls she
followed, the doors she closed as she passed from room to room
sheltered and contained only her. [. . . ] she and her house were alone
together. [. . . ] Vera danced alone, no one to witness, in the living-room
of her house [. . . ] the dancing was a rite of passage. An exaltation of
solitude would come over her. It was connected with something else: a
freedom [. . . ]. Everyone ends up moving alone towards the self. (305–
306; my emphasis)

The novel abounds in images of emptiness and nakedness: empty streets and
empty buses (180); a fatal assault leaving her co-worker, Oupa, comatose, his
naked body attached to life-support machines (208–209); memories of
several ex-lovers’ naked bodies (67) become sites of reflection on the fragility
of human life. In the insistence on emptiness /nakedness as an image of ex-
posure and vulnerability, the reader’s gaze is directed towards the naked truth
of inner lives.
While this hardly brings to mind the earlier protagonists of Gordimer as
national spokesperson, the very directness of the writing carries conviction.
The novel ends in a powerful epiphanic moment. Vera continues to be in-
volved in her legal practice. Her decision to conduct her private life outside
the old comfort zones cannot be branded as escapism: “wherever she was
now, it was not a form of escape” (322). Rather, it is freedom in solitude. One
winter night, a pipe in Vera’s annexe bursts. Looking for a pair of pliers to
20 ILEANA DIMITRIU a

close the main water control, Vera enters Zeph’s house without switching on
the lights. In the dark she
came into contact with a warm, soft body.
Breathing, heartbeats.
Once, she picked up an injured bird and felt a living substance like
that.
Through her open jacket this one was against her, breasts against
breasts, belly against belly. [. . . ] For a few seconds, maybe, she and
the girl were tenderly fused in the sap-scent of semen that came from
[the girl]. Then Vera backed away, and the girl turned and ran on bare
feet to [Zeph’s] bedroom where the unlatched door let her return
without a sound. (323)

Gordimer here creates an auratically powerful moment, in which two women

– one young and sexually active, an incarnation of Vera’s younger self; the
other having withdrawn into asexual solitude – literally step into each other’s
presence. After this disturbingly tactile, sensuous encounter – a visual, mate-
rial concentration of her own inner journey – Vera walks back towards her
cottage:
Instead of at once entering her annexe, she went into the garden, the
jacket zipped closed over live warmth. [. . . ] A thick trail of smashed
ice crackling light, stars blinded her as she let her head dip back; under
the swing of the sky she stood, feet planted, on the axis of the night
world. Vera walked there, for a while. And then took up her way,
breath scrolling out, a signature before her. (323–24; my emphasis)

Vera has ‘arrived’. She has found ‘the axis of the world’ – her axis mundi: the
symbolically ‘fixed centre’ of coherence and significance of her new life. Ac-
cording to Mircea Eliade, the famous historian of religions from a spiritual
point of view, “the discovery of a fixed point, the centre, is equivalent to the
creation of the world.”62 Gordimer’s ‘axis of the night world’ is an allusion to
the desire to reach one’s spiritual centre (inhabiting a sacred space) – as
embodied in Vera’s entering the cosmos of a new self, away from the chaos
of a tumultuous past.

62
Mircea Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion (San Diego
C A : Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1957): 22.
a Representing the Unpresentable 21

As I have suggested, None to Accompany Me both reflects the author’s new

leaning to things spiritual and lends itself to a spiritualizing re-reading. So,
back to my earlier question as to whether the spiritual is a new preoccupation
for Gordimer or symptomatic of our reading through a new interpretative
frame. The question is not reducible to either /or, and may be profitably traced
in Gordimer’s other recent works. There are certainly ‘gleams of transcen-
dence’ in The House Gun, a novel that deals with one man’s (Duncan Lind-
gardt’s) crime of passion and imprisonment, as well as with the consequences
of his actions in the form of ‘metaphysical incarceration’.63 This involves a
ritualization of psychological trauma through bare ‘presencing’, whereby the
horror of the ‘unpresentable’ is made flesh and expiated. Having suddenly be-
come the parents of a criminal, Harald and Claudia undergo painful soul-
searching, a process which becomes a spiritual haunting taking the protago-
nists through the various stages of liminal inner disaggregation and re-aggre-
gation. In The Pick Up, too, Gordimer takes us on a journey of inner dis-
covery: it is a story of emigration from South Africa, with the protagonist,
Julie Summers, overcoming the confinements of old boundaries as she at-
tempts to start a new life in a faraway North African country, with the name-
less desert presented as a place of spiritual communion and life-changing
epiphanies. In her latest novel, Get a Life, Gordimer is also trying to find
moments of epiphanic insight into “the concealed significance of phenomena”
salvaged from the “unexpected or neglected spaces” of everyday living.64
This novel tells the unexceptional life-story of a man, Paul, who, in contem-
porary South Africa, is forced by a life-threatening disease to undergo a
private review of feelings of insignificance, both private and public, feelings
that take him through acts of anamnesis reminiscent of Julie’s own inner
journey. Both Paul and Julie have epiphanic glimpses of meaning and purpose
amid the everyday scramble for survival; while Julie communes with the
desert, Paul retreats to the family garden as a place that facilitates his pro-
found introspection. The garden annexe (None to Accompany Me), the desert
(The Pick Up), and the garden (Get a Life) are new topoi in Gordimer’s work,
all of which function as forms of sacred space in the Kristevan sense: as con-
tainers of “the mystery of emergence of meaning.”65

63
Ioan Davies, Writers in Prison (Oxford: Blackwell, 1990).
64
Andy Mousley, “Spiritual Humanisms,” 101, 107.
65
Julia Kristeva & Catherine Clément, The Feminine and the Sacred, tr. Jane Marie
Todd (Le féminin et le sacré, 1998; Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2001): 13.
22 ILEANA DIMITRIU a

Gordimer, in her latest works, has attempted to capture an undivided self

comprising the secular-cum-spiritual as an indivisible whole. Through her
own version of sacred realism, she is inviting readers to stretch their imagi-
nary boundaries and comfort zones, and – in the aftermath of the ideological
wars of the recent past – to appreciate multiple dimensions in fiction and life.
Surprisingly, and as I have wished to show, Nadine Gordimer – once a con-
science against apartheid – may be relocated in a world in which the secular
touches the spiritual, and does so without ‘guilt’ or ‘apology’.

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a
Narrative Dynamics and Boundaries
The Undermining of Event and Eventfulness
in The Book of Happenstance by Ingrid Winterbach

H EILNA DU P LOOY

Introduction

I N NARRATOLOGICAL THEORY, change effected by event has always

featured prominently, on the story level as well as on the levels of plot
and discourse (narration). Structuralist models for narrative analysis
proposed by theorists such as Mieke Bal1 and Gerald Prince2 describe event-
fulness (or change of state), temporality, and a causal logic as the main char-
acteristics of narrative texts. For these theorists, the term ‘narrativity’ refers to
the narrative intensity of texts;3 to the ability of a ‘perceiver’ or reader to
construct a narrative from fictional data,4 or to the evaluation of a narrative

1
See Mieke Bal, Narratology: Introduction to the theory of narrative (Toronto: U
of Toronto P , 1997). The earlier Dutch version of Bal’s views on narratology gives a
better indication of the historical time of one of the early publications providing an
extended exposition of structuralist narratological theory. I refer to Mieke Bal, De
Theorie van Vertellen en Verhalen (Muiderberg: Coutinho, 1978).
2
See Gerald Prince, A Grammar of Stories (The Hague: Mouton, 1973): 31. Prince
defines a minimal story in terms of a change of state as follows:
A minimal story consists of three conjoined events. The first and the third
events are stative, the second is active. Furthermore, the third event is the
inverse of the first. Finally, the three events are conjoined by three conjunctive
features in such a way that (a) the first event precedes the second in time and
the second precedes the third, and (b) the second event causes the third. (31)
3
Prince, A Grammar of stories, 45.
4
Robert Scholes, Semiotics and Interpretation (New Haven C T : Yale U P , 1982): 60.
28 HEILNA DU PLOOY a

text in terms of its being a narrative.5 However, Peter Hühn points out that,
although narrativity can be viewed either as a binary category (which has to
do with a text’s being either narrative or not narrative) or as a gradational or
scalar category (which indicates the narrative intensity), eventfulness is the
differential criterion in both definitions.6 In a binary model, a text is described
as narrative if events feature in the text, while in a scalar model, a text which
is more intensively narrative will rank higher on the scale of eventfulness.
It is clear that in postclassical narratology, narrativity is regarded as an
attribute referring to a property or properties of narrative texts rather than to
narrative as a thing or narrative texts as a class. These properties include se-
quentiality, eventfulness, tellability, narrative competence, and fictionality
without disregarding the older views in which immanence, emplotment, and
narrative logic were more prominent.7 In all these definitions and descriptions
it is assumed that the represented sequence of events in a narrative implies
change(s), and that the dynamic qualities of narratives are dependent on
change in the storyline or as represented in the emplotment and through nar-
ration.
In this essay, an attempt is made to unravel some of the complexities of
narrative eventfulness in order to identify key aspects of the dynamics in a
specific narrative text. The theoretical exposition serves as background for the
analysis of aspects of the narrative structure of The Book of Happenstance by
Ingrid Winterbach, a novel in which eventfulness is undermined to establish
an alternative system of meanings. In the novel, events which would normally
be regarded as dominant or at least important are downgraded in the plot by
means of the narrating techniques. This is done in order to direct the reader
subtly to discover the alternative meanings which are essential to the central
thematic points the novel wants to communicate. The direct and popular
meanings of external events are replaced by a subtle discourse which is con-
cerned with psychological and epistemological issues.
Winterbach has said the following about plot in her novels:

5
Gerald Prince, Narratology: The Form and Functioning of Narrative (New York:
Mouton, 1982): 4.
6
Peter Hühn, “Functions and Forms of Eventfulness in Narrative fiction,” in
Theorizing Narrativity, ed. John Pier & J.A.G. Landa (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2008): 143.
7
H. Porter Abbott, The Cambridge Introduction to Narrative (Cambridge & New
York: Cambridge U P , 2010): 309, 314–21.
a Narrative Dynamics and Boundaries 29

Yes, I said just now that I have been recently converted to plots. I
think that I am a late developer. I have now ended actually where other
people begin. Where other people are discovering the joy of every-
thing else, I am discovering the joys of a plot. Plots, I see now – and it
is true that the first novels are rather plotless – gives one enormous
freedom. It gives you freedom to meander, to swing from the chan-
deliers, to do fancy footwork. Previously I did not know that. But,
seriously, plot gives you a great deal of freedom to do more. I have
written a novel which I have put on ice, and I am going back, I am
really looking forward to doing this, to “plotify” that novel!8

This does not mean that Winterbach’s novels have conventional plots. She
uses and abuses plot as a device, appropriating and disrupting it as she has
been doing with other aspects of the novel, such as genre, since the beginning
of her career as a novelist.
Consequently, this essay is not concerned with borders in a referential
sense, nor with the representation in narrative and other symbolic forms of
experiences concerned with the crossing of territorial, national, and ideologi-
cal borders as is often the case in the study of border poetics.9 I am concerned
with the specific and subtle uses of boundaries as psychological and episte-
mological categories in Winterbach’s novel, The Book of Happenstance,
where every meaningful event can be regarded as the crossing of a boundary
because of the specific system of meanings generated by the novel itself.

Eventfulness as an aspect of narrative

Eventfulness has always been part of the theoretical discourse on narrative. In
his Poetics, Aristotle describes action – the fable (the series of incidents) and
plot (the combination of incidents, the mythos) – as an integral part of the
development in a drama.10 The success of the drama depends on the emplot-

8
Andries Visagie, “Identity and discovery – Andries Visagie interviews Marita van
der Vyver and Ingrid Winterbach,” Tydskrif vir Letterkunde 45.1 (2008): 169.
9
Johan Schimanski, “Border aesthetics and postmodernist negotiations in the
Norwegian–Russian borderscape” (lecture presented at the Boundaries Seminar,
North-West University, Potchefstroom, 21–22 October 2011). See also http://uit.no
/borderpoetics (accessed 2 December 2011).
10
Aristotle describes story (fable) and plot (mythos) as follows:
Now the action (that which was done) is represented in the play by the Fable
or Plot. The Fable, in our present sense of the term, is simply this, the com-
30 HEILNA DU PLOOY a

ment and representation of events to bring about a climax which is followed

by the peripeteia, anagnorisis, and pathos.11 In classic collections, such as
Boccaccio’s Il Decamerone or Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, the stories are
characterized by action and change, surprise, and climax, often in the form of
“a violation of a prohibition or the crossing of a boundary imposed by moral
norms.”12 Hühn also refers to Goethe’s view of a Novelle as a Begebenheit, an
“unheard-of occurrence” in the sense of a “disquieting, decisive turn.”13
Another example of the variety of views on the nature of relevant eventful-
ness, specifically in novels, is the debate between Walter Besant and Henry
James in Anglo-American literary criticism. In 1884, Besant presented a
paper titled “The Art of Fiction” before the Royal Institution and made the
point that “fiction without adventure” was impossible.14 James’s reply to
Besant was the famous essay with the same title, one of the first attempts to
write theoretically about the novel as a respected literary genre which pre-
viously “had no air of having a theory, a conviction, a consciousness of itself
behind it – of it being the expression of an artistic faith, the result of choice
and comparison.”15
In “The Art of the Novel,” James argues that action in the psychological
realm was as important as physical action, if not more so. Physical action as
such is to him merely “an artificial, ingenious thing” lacking the “large, free

bination of the incidents, or things done in the story [. . . ] but one will have
much better success with a tragedy which, however inferior in these respects,
has a Plot, a combination of incidents, in it. And again: the most powerful
elements of attraction in Tragedy, the Peripeties and Discoveries, are parts of
the Plot.
—“The Poetics,” tr. Ingram Bywater, http://www.authorama.com/the-poetics-7.html
(accessed 31 August 2011).
11
See Peter Hühn, “Event and Eventfulness,” in Handbook of Narratology, ed. Peter
Hühn, John Pier, Wolf Schmid & Jorg Schönert (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2010): 80–97;
Heilna du Plooy, “Die verhaal in Laat Vrugte en 18-44” [the narrative in Late Harvest
and 18–44] (M A thesis, University of Pretoria, 1982): 45.
12
Hühn, “Event and Eventfulness,” 82.
13
“Event and Eventfulness,” 83.
14
Heilna du Plooy, Verhaalteorie in die twintigste eeu [narrative theory in the
twentieth century] (Durban: Butterworth, 1986): 19.
15
Henry James, “The Art of Fiction” (1884), in James, Theory of Fiction, ed. J.E.
Miller (Lincoln: U of Nebraska P , 1972): 29.
a Narrative Dynamics and Boundaries 31

character of an immense and exquisite correspondence with life.”16 By

making a finer distinction as to what should be regarded as valid forms of
action in novels, he stresses that action, in the form of physical as well as
psychological events, is an integral part of the narrative, and that action can be
represented in a variety of ways, specifically in varying degrees of subtlety.
In the theoretical work of the early formalist narratologists, attempts to
describe the basic structure of specific types of narratives were centred on
events and characters as the main ‘component parts’. In Vladimir Propp’s
analysis of Russian folktales, the basic unit of his model is a function defined
as “an act of a character, defined from their point of view of its significance
for the course of action.”17 In the Russian Formalists’ theory of narrative, as
formulated by Boris Tomaševsky, the distinction between fabula and sjužet
forms the cornerstone of the description of the structure of narrative texts.
Tomaševsky regards the sequence of chronological events as the main com-
ponent of the definition of the fabula and he describes the sjužet as the same
collection of events but arranged differently, as they are presented in the aes-
thetic version of the text.18
Jurij Lotman made a most significant theoretical contribution concerning
eventfulness in narrative texts. He describes the narrative text as “an area of
space demarcated in some way and reflecting in its finitude an infinite object:
the world which lies outside the work of art.”19 This space is constructed on
the model of the real world, and is divided by a boundary between poles
which are semantically relevant to the plot of the text. Lotman regards an
event in a text as the movement in which a figure crosses the boundary divid-
ing the semantic space structured around the two poles. The boundary is thus
determined by the plot of a specific text: “A plot is organically related to a
world picture which provides the scale for determining what constitutes an

16
James, “The Art of Fiction,” 41.
17
Vladimir Propp, Morphology of the Folktale, tr. Laurence Scott, intro. Svatava
Pirkova Jakobson (1968), 2nd edition, rev. & ed. with a preface by Louis A. Wagner
and a new intro. by Alan Dundes (Morfologija skazki, 1969; Austin: U of Texas P ,
1971): 31. See also Du Plooy, Verhaalteorie, 114–16.
18
Boris Tomaševsky, “Thematics,” in Russian Formalist Criticism, Four Essays,
sel. & intro. Lee T. Lemon & M.J. Reis, tr. Gail Lenhoff & Ronald Vroon (Lincoln: U
of Nebraska P , 1965): 67. See also Du Plooy, Verhaalteorie, 103–13.
19
Jurij Lotman, The Structure of the Artistic Text, tr. Gail Lenhoff & Ronald Vroon
(Struktura khudozhetsvennogo teksta, 1971; Michigan: U of Michigan P , 1977): 217.
32 HEILNA DU PLOOY a

event.” The plot is thus regarded as “the revolutionary” element and the dyna-
mic aspect of a narrative text.20
In an early essay, Roland Barthes distinguishes between two main cate-
gories, equally essential, of meaningful units in a narrative text: namely, func-
tions and indices: “functions involve metonymic relata, indices metaphoric
relata, the former corresponds to a functionality of doing, the latter to a func-
tionality of being.”21 The functions are subdivided into cardinals and cata-
lysts, where the cardinals are those functions that effect change by connecting
series of cardinals chronologically and logically. Cardinal functions determine
the main movements in the story by referring to the salient moments of choice
and change. They cannot be left out or changed without changing the narra-
tive fundamentally. A catalyst, by contrast, is a less dominant action, one that
merely “accelerates, delays, gives fresh impetus to the discourse.”22 Catalysts
are also essential because altering them alters the discourse: i.e. the aesthetic
texture of the text. It is important for my argument in this essay that, although
it seems as if cardinals and catalysts are not equally important, they actually
fulfil different but equally crucial functions. Cardinals have to do with the
dynamic story development while catalysts are essential because they influ-
ence the fabric of the text and the discourse: i.e. they determine the other
levels of the text: “The essence of a function is, so to speak, the seed that it
sows in the narrative, planting an element that will come to fruition later –
either on the same level or elsewhere, on another level.”23
The indices are the metaphoric motives that provide the text with depth and
complexity. The subcategory of indices, the informatives, provides realistic
detail that makes the story understandable in terms of referentiality. The in-
dices serve to intensify and complicate the metaphoric ability of the text to
generate layered and multidimensional meanings: therefore they are the units
par excellence which endow the narrative text with aesthetic qualities.
I want to highlight two aspects of eventfulness, as explained by Lotman
and Barthes. Lotman emphasizes that the study of event and eventfulness is
directed at the manifestation of an event in a specific text, by the unique
representation of a plot in a unique instance of narration. He implies that an

20
Lotman, The Structure of the Artistic Text, 234.
21
Roland Barthes, “Introduction to the Structural Analysis of Narratives,” Image—
Music–Text, sel. & tr. Stephen Heath (Glasgow: Collins / Fontana, 1977): 93.
22
Barthes, “Introduction to the Structural Analysis of Narratives,” 95.
23
“Introduction to the Structural Analysis of Narratives,” 89.
a Narrative Dynamics and Boundaries 33

event becomes meaningful in narrative through the way in which the event is
represented in a specific textual context and by a specific act of language. The
text creates its own unique semantic universe in which actions are endowed
with specific values and meaning by the structure and division of the semantic
space. In this space, an action becomes meaningful when and as it crosses a
boundary, or if the action moves a character into another domain of meanings
in the text.24 The interpretation of the event is determined by the aesthetic ren-
dering of the event, structurally and metaphorically, and by whatever narra-
tive techniques the author may use.
In his categorization of units, Barthes describes the cardinals and catalysts
as elements of distribution (part of the proairetic code as Barthes formulated it
later in S/Z25), and the indices and informatives as elements of integration.
The elements of distribution carry or push the story forward, forming the
dynamic aspect of the text, whereas the indices, as elements of integration,
slow the reading process down and integrate the text on a higher level by con-
stituting secondary metaphoric structures and levels of meaning. What is im-
portant for my argument is that, in his exposition of the two types of narrative
units, Barthes illustrates and emphasizes the interdependence of story content
and the rendering of the story as a plot on the level of the narration (dis-
course).
In the extensive explications of structuralist narratology by theorists such
as Gérard Genette and Mieke Bal,26 events and eventfulness are regarded as
essential components of the analytic models that they devise. Many other
theorists, such as Rimmon–Kenan, Chatman, and Prince,27 have contributed
studies on specific aspects of eventfulness as one of the key concepts in narra-

24
Du Plooy, Verhaalteorie, 139.
25
Roland Barthes, S/Z, tr. Richard Miller, preface by Richard Howard (New York:
Hill & Wang, 1974): 19.
26
Gerard Genette, Narrative Discourse, tr. Jane E. Lewin (Figures I I I , 1972; tr.
Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1982); Mieke Bal, Narratology: Introduction to the Theory
of Narrative (Toronto: U of Toronto P , 1997).
27
Shlomith Rimmon–Kenan, Narrative Fiction: Contemporary Poetics (London:
Methuen, 1983); Seymour Chatman, Story and Discourse (Ithaca N Y : Cornell U P ,
1978); Gerald Prince, Narratology: The Form and Functioning of Narrative (New
York: Mouton, 1982).
34 HEILNA DU PLOOY a

tology. In more recent studies, the contributions of Sternberg, Abbott, and,

more especially, the work of Peter Hühn are important.28

Event and eventfulness in postclassical narratology

The importance of eventfulness and events (and their representation in narra-
tive texts) is emphasized in order to address the need to come to a clearer
understanding of the role and function of events and eventfulness in narra-
tive.29 What I find highly significant is the fact that contemporary theoretical
explorations of event and eventfulness in postclassical narratology focus on
and explore in more detail aspects which were merely implied or assumed in
the structuralist theories, specifically those of Barthes and Lotman, as indica-
ted above. The focus is directed mainly at the importance of the rendering of
an event on the level of plot and narration, on the discourse level of the text.
The meaning(s) of an event can be comprehended only when the representa-
tion of the event is interpreted as an aspect of the discourse. In iconic narra-
tive texts, emplotment and narration as such can also become important
events, and the meaning of such events is not determined by what happens in
a referential sense, but by the meanings generated by the discourse.
Peter Hühn distinguishes between two types of events in narratives which
he refers to as ‘event I ’ and ‘event I I ’. Event I “involves all kinds of change
of state”, while event I I is “a special kind of change that meets certain addi-
tional conditions of being a decisive, unpredictable turn in the narrated hap-
penings, a deviation from the normal expected course of things.”30 Events of
the second category mark and distinguish the story and plot of a specific
novel by attributing special significance and meaning to the event in the nar-
rative. This distinction is reminiscent of Barthes’ distinction between cardi-

28
Meir Sternberg, “How Narrativity Makes a Difference,” Narrative 9.2 (2001):
115–22; H. Porter Abbott, The Cambridge Introduction to Narrative (Cambridge:
Cambridge U P , 2002), and “Narrativity,” in Handbook of Narratology, ed. Peter
Hühn, John Pier, Wolf Schmid & Jorg Schönert (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2010): 309–28;
Peter Hühn, “Functions and Forms of Eventfulness in Narrative Fiction” and “Event
and Eventfulness.”
29
Detailed research on narratology is done at the University of Hamburg, initially
by the Narratology Research Group at Hamburg University (2001–2007) and then by
the Interdisciplinary Center for Narratology (founded in 2007). See also H.Porter
Abbott, “Narrativity,” 317.
30
Hühn, “Event and Eventfulness,” 80.
a Narrative Dynamics and Boundaries 35

nals and catalysts, but it emphasizes explicitly the meaningful representation

on the discourse level of the narrative text in the case of events I I . Hühn adds
that the type I I event is integral to a particular type of narrative and provides
the raison d’être for a specific narrative.31 Readers expect a meaningful turn
or a point of decisive change which constitutes the “tellability” or “narra-
tivity” of a narrative where narrativity is used as a scalar category indicating a
higher or lower ranking on the scale of being narrative and eventful.32 When
there are deviations from the expected development of events according to
logical rules or according to the models of real life, and when these deviations
are also represented in a defamiliarizing manner in a specific text, these
events can, on account of their determining function in the specific text and
on account of their foregrounded aesthetic rendering, be regarded as events of
type I I .
In postclassical narratology, the cognitive study of narrative, described “as
a subdomain within ‘postclassical narratology’,” incorporates a variety of
methods as well as diverse narrative corpora. In cognitive narratology, narra-
tives are studied to determine how stories and narrative texts are produced and
understood.33 The point of departure is that narratives are meaningful by
virtue of their similarity or relation to knowledge structures which exist in the
minds of people in the real world and which are determined, created, and sus-
tained by cultural, historical, and personal contexts. Knowledge is organized
and programmed in schemas, which are subdivided into frames and scripts. A
‘script’ can be described as “a type of knowledge representation that allows
an expected sequence of events to be stored in the memory,”34 and this knowl-
edge enables a person to understand and expand narrative events in texts,
even when incomplete or scant information is provided in the discourse. The
term ‘frame’ refers to structured “domains of experience”35 which guide a
person’s expectations about places, objects, and people.
Merlin Donald has argued that art and aesthetic texts are constructive in the
sense that they refine and expand cognitive models and world-views stored in

31
Hühn, “Event and Eventfulness,” 81.
32
Hühn, “Functions and Forms of Eventfulness in Narrative fiction,” 143.
33
David Herman, “Cognitive Narratology,” Handbook of Narratology, 30.
34
Herman, “Cognitive Narratology,” 33.
35
“Cognitive Narratology,” 33.
36 HEILNA DU PLOOY a

fixed scripts and frames.36 Literary texts contain commentary and critique on
the fictional worlds (and indirectly on real worlds) to which they refer and at
which they are directed. Consequently, strong texts not only present alterna-
tive scripts for actions and alternative frames of meaning but can actually
change structures of knowledge about fictional and real worlds. Literary texts
are, therefore, metacognitive because they typify, represent, and alter cultural
patterns of thought.
The ability of narrative texts to criticize, undermine, and disrupt referential
material, as described in cognitive narratology, is relevant for my argument in
this essay. Although authors create and readers understand narratives on ac-
count of scripts and frames with which they are familiar and which authors
and readers share, contemporary novels interrogate rather than underwrite,
disrupting rather than identifying with accepted, fixed cultural and historical
ideas. These novels are dynamic, not only intratextually but also extratext-
ually, as they aim at surprise and shock to change people’s views on reality by
offering a new, defamiliarized view of people and affairs. However, one still
needs to know what the standard thinking consists in if one is to be able to
interpret the divergences and deviations, and to be able to interpret possible
meanings and the new views put forward by the text.

The Book of Happenstance by Ingrid Winterbach

I want to illustrate the importance of events in novels, but also the defamil-
iarizing of simple events and the discursive transformation of events of type I
into events of type I I , by referring to The Book of Happenstance by Ingrid
Winterbach. Winterbach puts into practice what Henry James expected of a
good novel, because she is more concerned with what happens psychologi-
cally to her characters than with the external action they are involved in. This
provides the perfect opportunity to transform events which seem to be type I
events – normal and ordinary incidents, some trivial and some more serious –
into type I I events, into meaningful events that are essential to the main argu-
ment(s) or the central theme(s) of the novel. Consequently, a novel such as
this should be approached hermeneutically, because the keys to understanding

36
Merlin Donald, “Art and Cognitive Evolution,” in The Artful Mind: Cognitive
Science and the Riddle of Human Creativity, ed. Mark Turner (Oxford: Oxford U P ,
2006): 2–5.
a Narrative Dynamics and Boundaries 37

the point of the narrative become manifest in the discourse, in the narration as
such.
The key events in Winterbach’s novel are mainly about crossing boun-
daries, boundaries partly defined as such in real life, but especially boundaries
constituted by the semantic structure defined by the plot of the novel. This is
effected by representing trivial events in such a way that they become cardinal
events in the novel. Eventually, the reader will also be able to cross boun-
daries and look at events differently because of the alternative ways of repre-
sentation. There is something very true to life in this approach, as the life and
times of most people are played out in terms of trivialities. Precisely by ac-
centuating the eventfulness of the uneventful, Winterbach succeeds in re-
creating that “large free character of an immense and exquisite correspon-
dence with life” of which Henry James writes.37
In The Book of Happenstance, the main character and narrator, Helena
Verbloem, is assistant to Theo Verwey on a project listing words that have
fallen into disuse or that are seldom used. Helena has been a collector of
precious sea shells for a long time and has a beautiful collection for which she
cares very much. Her garden flat is broken into and many of her shells, many
of those that are exceptionally valuable to her, are stolen. In an inexplicable
act, experienced by Helena as an ultimate insult, her flat is befouled by the
thief. While still mourning the loss of her shells, she finds Theo Verwey dead
in his office. Trying to come to terms with his death, she considers all the
traumas in her past, including the recent loss of her shells. She grieves for the
latter in an excessive way which her friends and even her lover cannot under-
stand. To her, the shells are symbols of all those seemingly useless things
which people nevertheless value and which make their lives bearable and
worthwhile. The same is true of the archaic words with which she spends her
days. For Helena, the irreplaceable shells become symbols of loss in general;
in the final instance, all the events and actions in the novel are concerned with
a variety of forms of loss, so that the novel becomes an extended exploration
of this theme of radical subtraction, of which death is the ultimate manifesta-
tion.
In the novel, there is a close correspondence between eventfulness and
space, on the story level as well as on that of plot and narration. The narrative
opens with Helena entering the office of her boss and finding him dead on the
floor. In general terms, this is an important event: cognitively, the reader will

37
James, “The Art of Fiction,” 41.
38 HEILNA DU PLOOY a

regard this as a strong opening scene in which a death or a possible murder is

presented. Such a beginning is also an effective strategy for creating tension
and even for activating the generic expectation that the novel might become a
crime story or a detective novel. These general expectations are, however,
undermined by the representation of the incident. In the first place, this im-
portant event is presented in a factual and almost cryptic way in two brief
sentences:
In October, in spring, he is found dead in his office. I am the one who
discovers him at six-thirty in the evening.38

Helena’s reaction, which is an inability to act, is described in spatial terms;

there is no immediate reference to emotional or psychological factors in-
volved:
I close the door behind me and move forward cautiously, but there is a
threshold I cannot cross. (7)

This threshold which Helena cannot cross sets the tone for the novel about all
the other thresholds with which she is confronted and which, as she realizes
with time, she has to cross. The dilemma of being faced with a boundary – in
this case, that surrounding a dead person – is highlighted by presenting the
incident right at the beginning of the novel. There is a boundary between the
living and the dead, which Helena, or any other living person for that matter,
cannot cross and from which people normally shy away. Eventually, this
boundary is linked to Helena’s personal limitation regarding the ability to
accept loss and its irreversibility. The threshold that prevents Helena psycho-
logically from physically approaching Theo Verwey’s corpse is also a spatial
metaphor. In this way, both spatiality and the theme of human limitation are
emphasized.
Another salient feature of the representation of Theo Verwey’s death is the
fact that more attention and text space are granted to the reactions of other
characters than to actions taken to solve the mystery of his death. After the
initial five-line paragraph on the discovery of the body, one and a half pages
are devoted to describing the reactions of Verwey’s other colleagues. These
reactions consist of unrelated remarks, useless and wild speculations, irrele-

38
Ingrid Winterbach, The Book of Happenstance, tr. Dirk and Ingrid Winterbach
(Die boek van toeval en toeverlaat; Cape Town: Human & Rousseau, 2006; tr. Cape
Town: Human & Rousseau, 2008): 7. Further page references are in the main text.
a Narrative Dynamics and Boundaries 39

vant arguments, and misunderstandings – on the whole, an illogical mixture

of sorrow and irreverence. Every word in the passage refutes normal expecta-
tions as far as content and genre are concerned, so that the normal scripts re-
garding reactions to a death (possibly a murder) are disrupted and undermined
by the novelistic representation of the event. What is suggested here is that
people do not handle crises well, that they become completely disorientated in
the face of disaster, and this is accentuated much more strongly than the fact
of Verwey’s death. It is thus clear right from the start that this novel is not
concerned with normalized reactions of either characters or readers – rather, it
should be read in terms of itself, as suggested by the presentation of the narra-
tive material. The keys to understanding the novel are actualized in the narra-
tion and on the level of novelistic discourse. Events and situations, which can
be isolated on the level of the story and which can be linked to expected
frames and scripts, become progressively less important as the multi-layered
meanings of the novel as a whole develop.
The next important event narrated in the novel is the theft of the sea shells.
Helena does not merely feel robbed; she is devastated by the loss, lamenting
it:
All my things I view as earthly goods, all of them replaceable – but not
the shells. The shells are heavenly messengers! The shells I have been
collecting for a lifetime. They are my most prized possessions. (11)

And yet, in terms of valuable items that can be stolen, shells would not rank
very highly. The policeman, Constable Modisane, who investigates the theft,
cannot understand her intense dismay: “Do you like these things?” Helena,
who is by no means a religious person, explains:
“Yes,” I say.
Mr Modisane, Constable, how can I begin to say how I regard these
shells? I have not led an admirable life, and there is not much I can
change about that. I have been irresponsible and inconsiderate in most
of my relationships. But concerning the shells, sir, I am and have been
all reverent and devout attention. It is my way of acknowledging the
wonders of creation. My meditation on the shells has been one of the
few things I do to tend to my spiritual well-being.
“Why do you like them?” he asks.
“Because they are beautiful,” I say, “And because God made
them.” (14)
40 HEILNA DU PLOOY a

The shells fall into the same category of seemingly less important items as the
obsolete words which Helena and Theo Verwey are listing. Not only does the
narrator tell about this lexical listing, but the novel actually contains nume-
rous lists of these archaic words. The iconic nature of this technique of repre-
sentation enables the words to ‘speak for themselves’. It is a natural process
that languages develop and change while some words become obsolete, yet
Helena and Theo regard every old word with respect and treat them all with
care. Within the argument and thematic development in the novel, therefore,
there is more at stake than the ordinary processes of linguistic change. In a
country where political change also affects cultural positions, and language
especially, the obsolete words represent a specific form of loss. They are
meaningful in more than one sense, as meanings as well as objects. Language
can be regarded as a cultural and personal archive where old words bear wit-
ness to cultural practices that have also become extinct, but the loss of words
can also symbolize the loss of cultural values.
Helena and Theo Verwey are working on the letter d, on words about death
specifically, when her shells are stolen (35–37). The number of words about
death that are no longer used and have become archaic makes her realize the
extent to which death has become depersonalized in modern times. The words
referring to death rituals, the clothes, the music, the procedures surrounding
death, have fallen into disuse because the actions are no longer performed and
the objects no longer used. The obsolete words are the symbols of this de-
humanizing process.
In the value-system worked out in the novel, the theft of Helena’s shells is
a gross and brutal invasion of her private life. To her, it is the transgression of
an almost sacred boundary, not only in general terms but especially in the
semantic world represented in the novel. The shells are her most prized pri-
vate possessions. Their loss becomes a metaphor for an individual’s right to
have a personal value-system with which others do not necessarily agree. The
loss of words, in a similar way, represents the loss of valuable cultural data
and has to do with a group of people in a cultural sense. The suggestion that
this loss is effected by external forces cannot be overlooked. The issue is thus
not only the fact that words can become obsolete but that cultural content and
the signs carrying the content are threatened. In this way, the boundaries of a
cultural value system are crossed. Seemingly minor events thus acquire mean-
ings which are central to the thematic core of the novel.
For her part, Helena goes on a journey to find her shells and, on her way,
crosses many boundaries. She makes contact with the family of the suspect
a Narrative Dynamics and Boundaries 41

and is eventually even introduced to a gang of criminals. She does things

which are actually dangerous. Yet these literal boundaries are not really what
the novel is about; they do not really carry the ultimate meaning of the novel:
they remain events of the first type, ordinary changes in the sequence of ac-
tions in the novel, even though, in logical terms, they represent danger and
adventure.
The Book of Happenstance is characterized by a narrative technique that
presents narrative material in such a way that certain events, which are so
normal that they appear to be events of the first type, are transformed into
events of the second category, events which effect “a special kind of change
that meets certain additional conditions of being a decisive, unpredictable turn
in the narrated happenings, a deviation from the normal expected course of
things.”39 The importance of Theo Verwey’s death is understated while the
importance of the stolen shells is highlighted. The incidents have to be inter-
preted within the whole tapestry of narrative strands and the contrapuntal
juxtaposition of events in the narration of the novel.
The loss of the shells, the loss of words, and death are linked in many
ways. The developing argument about loss in general must be read alongside
Helena’s search for meaning in the universe, her quest to understand the
origin and the destination (or the loss of a sense of destination and meaning)
of the world and humankind, and her struggle to accept change and loss. The
apparently small events like the natural process of words becoming extinct,
snails having to die so as to leave behind empty shells, and the theft of shells
form part (and are iconic thereof as well) of the contingent nature of life. The
novel not only contains discussions about this but actually performs the idea
by being structured around such small events. I will try to indicate how Win-
terbach develops themes and how normal frames and scripts are disrupted by
the way in which events are represented in the novel.
Helena grieves for the shells in such an excessive way that even her friends
and her lover cannot understand it. To Helena, however, the shells are signs or
symbols of what has gone before. From this point of view they represent the
most valuable attributes of an individual. The snail, which used to live in the
sea shell, has died, had to die for the shell to become available to be kept as an
object of beauty. The shell is therefore a sign of the snail and of the life lived
within it (301–302). The snail has died but the shell survives. Shells become
beautiful empty signifiers, devoid of the original reason for their existence,

39
Hühn, “Event and Eventfulness,” 80.
42 HEILNA DU PLOOY a

but able to assume many different new meanings.40 Thus, the shells become
valuable in themselves. To Helena, they symbolize everything that is beautiful
and valuable, although not in a pragmatic sense, because probably few people
or even nobody else (other characters in the novel or readers outside the
novel) would consider the loss of shells as such a great loss. In a personal
way, however, valuing the shells symbolizes the right of an individual to a
personal value-system. Helena feels that her right to cherish and care for
things which are valuable according to personal choice, a personal sense of
beauty, is threatened.
To Helena, the archaic words are also examples of the many apparently
useless things in life that people nevertheless value, and which make their
lives bearable and worthwhile. By linking the story matter – the notation of
old words by Helena and Theo, and the theft of Helena’s shells – and by de-
familiarizing the events through exaggeration and attention to minute detail,
larger issues are addressed. In an indirect way, the novel is concerned with the
relation between signifiers and signifieds, between signs and their meanings.
It can happen that, when things cease to exist, the words denoting them can
still survive for some time, but, as with the rituals of death, the words will
eventually disappear, too. Because the words are no longer used, they will be
forgotten. But this process can work both ways – in some cases, the things,
objects, or actions are lost first and then the words which denote them dis-
appear, while, in other cases, the words are not used anymore and so, even-
tually, the meanings will also disappear from the cultural memory. In a simi-
lar way, if the shells are gone (and the replacements do not have the same
value), what they mean to Helena is also lost.
What I find fascinating is that, by presenting the lists of words, Winterbach
uses the representational function and ability of words to mourn their loss of
referential capacity. It is as though there were an underlying awareness that
the basis of the generation of meaning in any sign system is dependent on the

40
Umberto Eco writes about the relation between signifiers and signifieds and
meaning when he explains the title of his novel The Name of the Rose. The word ‘rose’
has been used so often and in so many different ways and it has been associated with
so many meanings that the word as a sign has become empty. But the word still exists
as a sign and can be filled with new meaning. Eco refers to the medieval nominalistic
view of language when he explains that in time all things disappear or cease to exist,
but that words are signs and the signs survive. Umberto Eco, Postscript to The Name of
the Rose, tr. William Weaver (Postille a Il nome della rosa, 1984; San Diego C A :
Harcourt, 1995).
a Narrative Dynamics and Boundaries 43

referential function of language. But the loss of referential meaning implies a

loss of content and is represented as a potential loss of cultural memory.
Cultural memory is represented in words because words are ‘archaeological’
signs and carry cultural memories. Consequently, words can be seen as the
link to the cultural past of a community. The lists of words, no longer used
frequently and becoming extinct, are a representation as such of the loss of
cultural memory.
The loss of cultural memory is a sad thing, but it is also an inevitable pro-
cess. Some theorists describe this as “original plenitude and subsequent
loss.”41 The loss of words (or of concepts, ideas, or shells) on a personal or
collective level becomes a symbol of the loss of underlying systems of
thought: not only do words reflect the epistemic systems of thinking, as
Foucault described them, but the whole cultural fabric of a society reflects an
underlying episteme or Zeitgeist. If language is lost – first the words or even
the language itself – the vehicles carrying the archaeology of the culture from
past to present will also be lost eventually. Words can be regarded as the con-
tainers of an essential part of history.
In the context of the argument in this essay, it is important to understand
that, in this novel, the representation of small events, like the task of making
lists of old words, of talking about archaic meanings, and of mourning the
loss of sea shells, links these events to larger philosophical issues such as the
cultural rights of individuals and groups of people, individuality and identity,
and the individual’s place in the world. The way in which a unique system of
meanings is constructed becomes clear when the reader sees the connections
between these little events and realizes that how these, apparently of the first
type, become events of type I I in the novel because they constitute what the
novel is really about. Without these ‘transformed’ events, the novel would
make a completely different statement, tell another story, and develop a diffe-
rent set of themes.
Another example can be found in the long conversations between Helena
and Hugo Hattingh, the palaeontologist. Asking questions about the origin of
the universe and the earth does not seem to constitute a major event in the
novel, or in any novel, for that matter. Helena envies Hugo his knowledge,
which would enable him to “see the drama of evolution played out before
your eyes like a film – to see it unfold like a flower before your eyes” (50).

41
Anne Rigney, “Plenitude, Scarcity and the Circulation of Cultural Memory,”
Journal of European Studies 35.1 (2005): 12.
44 HEILNA DU PLOOY a

She has “an urgent desire to learn about the circumstances that were needed
for life to originate on earth” in order to “gain a better understanding of the
nature of man” (51). In Helena’s conversations with her friend, Sof, she is also
constantly philosophizing about understanding life, people, events, and espe-
cially her family. She has to come to terms with her sister’s death, a sister
whom she admired very much and who “through an unfortunate conjuncture
of circumstances” never fulfilled the promise of her youth and was “over-
come” by death (309). She also remembers her mother’s last days. Without
giving information about the mother’s illness, apart from mentioning that she
was short of breath because she was dying, the novel focuses on Helena re-
membering her mother’s words. She asks her mother whether she would have
lived her life differently, had she realized earlier that life was so short. The
mother replies that she would have done so, adding, in an allusion to Gerard
Manley Hopkins: “The world is charged with the grandeur of God.” She con-
tinues: “If only I had focused more on that and less [.. . ] on the small disap-
pointments” (317).
Eventually, Helena ponders the information provided by Hugo Hattingh,
concluding that her own life is actually quite insignificant:
I know as little as does the shell what tomorrow holds in store for me. I
am a more complex and sensitive being, but I have as little control
over my fate – although I [. . . ] can contemplate and fantasise about
this fate. I do not see my destiny as determined by providence, but
rather as the convergence of a hundred, of a thousand and one minor
coincidences. (322)

If the loss of the shells, Theo’s death, the conversations with Hugo Hattingh
and Sof, and all the various forms of loss in Helena’s life are regarded as
aspects of a pattern and interpreted as such, a line of thinking can be discerned
in the novel. It becomes clear that the novel is depicting a specific human
being’s battle to come to terms with the human condition, of which life and
death, happiness and grief, and more especially various forms of loss are part
and parcel.
An important event along the scale of eventfulness in the novel is Helena’s
eventual realization and acceptance of the fact that loss is an inevitable part of
life. She acknowledges that her mourning of the shells is, in a sense, a pretext,
a compensatory process. She is mourning all her losses through her mourning
of the shells. This acknowledgement enables her to cross a psychological
boundary which can even be seen as a psychological barrier, because it affects
a Narrative Dynamics and Boundaries 45

her life so profoundly. But cultural and personal loss can be compensated for
by constructing new meanings, in this case by new language.42 Helena ima-
gines hearing her daughter telling her that loss must be accepted, that it can
never be averted. “There will always be losses. Life continues” (316). Life
takes unexpected turns, and contingency must be accepted as inescapable.
The novel has an open ending in the sense that Helena realizes that there
will always be new possibilities and new words with which to build a future.
In this way, she crosses another boundary set within the limits of the text. She
must transcend her own boundaries, the limitation of her own psyche. This re-
calls the anagnorisis of Aristotle’s Poetics. The recognition of her own limita-
tions enables her to embrace suffering and loss, and to look for new mean-
ings. And, in an iconic sense, the novel is the embodiment of finding and /or
constructing new meanings, of transcending boundaries in individual and col-
lective psyches.

Conclusion
Modernist and postmodernist novels are more often than not intent on under-
mining and disrupting fixed scripts and frames of reference. Taken to absurd
lengths, this can frustrate the reader, but, in Winterbach’s case, undermining
and disruption are used constructively to restructure meaning and to endow
even the most ordinary events with (new) meaning.
The Book of Happenstance cannot be described as a novel of action, be-
cause the narrative eventfulness is primarily of a psychological nature. Phy-
sical action does occur, but the reaction to such action is described much more
extensively than the action themselves. Although the physical actions do in-
deed transgress and cross boundaries, it is the psychological movements that
are accorded most of the textual space. The thief does cross a boundary when
he enters Helena’s personal space and steals her shells, but it is her reaction to
the theft that becomes vitally important. The incident is indeed a cardinal
function which changes the course of the character’s life, but, more important-
ly, the incident’s influence on Helena is analysed in such a sustained manner
that it subtly becomes an event of the second type. What happens in Helena’s
mind, her psychological reaction and growth as well as the reflections on her
inner conflict, is described extensively, dominating the discourse in the novel.
This is an example not only of the importance of psychological action but also

42
Rigney, “Plenitude, Scarcity and the Circulation of Cultural Memory,” 12–14.
46 HEILNA DU PLOOY a

of the way in which small things can influence life – in Henry James’s terms,
of their “immense and exquisite correspondence with life” which is the life-
blood of the novel. More importantly, it is through the discursive treatment of
the narrative material that the reader realizes what the author finds really im-
portant. In the text, small events of the first type are transformed and become
important moments of choice and change. However, what is important for the
argument here is that this technique demonstrates the way in which the novel
assigns importance to events according to and within the semantic structure
constructed by the novel.
The crossing of boundaries is an important motif in all of Winterbach’s
novels.43 Apart from the thief crossing a boundary in a physical way, Helena
also crosses boundaries when she is looking for her shells. But the psycho-
logical boundaries are the ones of crucial importance. She cannot cross the
boundary to reach Theo Verwey’s body because she is not able or ready to
confront herself with death at such close range. The two incidents cause her to
ponder all her losses, and initially she cannot transcend her own limitations.
She clings to the shells, and their loss becomes the measure of all her mise-
ries.
This can be understood only in terms of Lotman’s view that the plot of a
novel is related organically to a world picture which is represented in the
novel and which provides the scale for determining what constitutes an event
of consequence in that novel.44 The novel provides indications of what is im-
portant for the development of the character’s insight into herself. The novel
tells the story of her progress from being devastated by the loss of her shells
and her focus on the lostness of words to understanding her place in the world
in a broader and more universal sense.
Helena’s conversations with Hugo Hattingh are thus not merely informa-
tive sessions on evolution and the history of the world, but her way of under-
standing processes beyond the normal human horizon. In fact, she is obsessed
with loss and with death. It seems to her as if loss and death are forced upon
her; thus, she is in need of a more cosmic image of human existence. The
little events are the seeds sown in the narrative, in Roland Barthes’ terms, and
they bear fruit on other levels and inform the holistic interpretation of the
novel. These little events of the first type grow into major generators of

43
See, for example, Heilna du Plooy, “Oopte en afbakening: ruimtes en rame in die
oeuvre van Lettie Viljoen,” Tydskrif vir literatuurwetenskap 16.2 (2000): 86–106.
44
Lotman, The Structure of the Artistic Text, 234.
a Narrative Dynamics and Boundaries 47

meaning and become events of the second type because they activate pro-
cesses of thinking in Helena, enabling her to transcend her own limitations
and fears. What really happens in the novel is hidden subtly beneath the sur-
face of the characters’ actions and events. Interpreting these aspects of the
text, and understanding how this type of novel works, is possible only if the
interdependence of events and narration is realized in the reading process.
Consequently, one has to concede that a novel does need events and event-
fulness in the traditional sense, but that there are many ways in which events
and actions can be meaningful. Also, actions and events do transcend boun-
daries. Events that do not challenge and transcend the boundaries set and
honoured within the narrative cannot generate significance on a higher level
than the merely informative. The theft of the shells and Theo Verwey’s death
force Helena to examine her own value-system. Can an individual protest
about the loss of something which is not important in a general sense, but
which is absolutely irreplaceable to that individual? Who decides on the
merits of personal values and preferences? When should one complain and
when does one have to cede one’s rights? What determines value: individual
needs or public and pragmatic issues? How does one cope with the contin-
gencies of life?
The relevance of a novel depends on its ability to capture readers’ attention
as well as to take them along, to enable or empower them to cross their own
boundaries. For the attentive reader who vicariously shares the experiences of
the main character, this novel has rich thematic content. Helena does gain
some insight into her own situation, but she also relativizes and qualifies this
insight. And yet, even if her views are not shared by the reader, they will be
understood and seen as relevant and important in the framework of the novel.
The novel as such does fulfil a constructivist function in restructuring the
reader’s schemata by disrupting accepted frames and scripts and providing
new possibilities. The reader is led to understand, to grasp a dilemma, to fol-
low the processes needed to reach a resolution or a provisional solution of the
crisis. Indeed, the novel illustrates how, in order for individuals to survive, the
fixed format and expectations of scripts and frames have to be adapted.
Helena cannot remain stuck in loss, she has to move on, and so does the
reader, to find new meanings, new contents, and new resolutions for whatever
new crises might arise.
Eventually, Helena has to confront the ultimate manifestation of loss –
death. What can be gained from the knowledge that death is inevitable and
contingent? In the face of death, her mother regrets the emotional energy she
48 HEILNA DU PLOOY a

spent on little disappointments because all these fade before the grandeur of
God in the world. Helena realizes that her generation does not have this type
of master-narrative that provides principles for understanding and acceptance.
They no longer believe in transcendental forces which determine their lives
and its meaning. Yet she does realize that life goes on, and that the novel she
is writing does offer some measure of resolution:
This is how I see it. Theo Verwey is dead. At the end of the book that I
told Theo about, the rich man is also dead. [. . . ] Mrs. C dies at the end
of that book. Vercueil folds his arms around her like the angel of
death, but it brings her no comfort, no consolation. The writer does not
see it as his writerly task or duty to console either Mrs C or the reader.
Resolution yes, there is resolution at the end of that novel, but not
consolation. Joets is dead, too soon, and she had to divest herself of
much in this life. My mother is dead. My father is dead. My child is
alive. My brother is alive. . . I am alive, but my shells I shall never find
again. (304)

The Book of Happenstance does not offer solutions and does not console, but
is indeed resourceful in providing (temporary) resolution for Helena and the
reader. One of the main strategies employed to achieve this is the undermin-
ing and disrupting of what appear to be main events and the shifting of atten-
tion to the small events that fill people’s lives. By undermining all events
eventually, fixed frames and scripts are disrupted, and the emphasis is shifted
away from eventfulness to the generation of alternative meanings and systems
of meaning which are concerned with boundaries essential to human under-
standing. These boundaries are those that are undoubtedly meaningful in the
semantic structure of the novel, but they are also of the type of boundaries that
characters and readers alike will eventually have to cross.

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a
Deneys Reitz and the Bounds of Self-Understanding

J OHN G OUWS

D E N E Y S R E I T Z ’ S C O M M A N D O , an account of his youthful experi-

ences during the Anglo-Boer War of 1899–1901, first appeared in
1929, but the preface is dated 1903. This period of thirty years
straddles a great many divides: those between the nineteenth and twentieth
centuries; between the Victorian, Edwardian, Georgian, and Modernist ages;
between colonial imperialism and subaltern independence; between youthful
insouciance, the bitterness of defeat and exile, and retrospective maturity – all
of them perceived by us from the other side of an even greater divide, the per-
spective of a postmodern, twenty-first-century, post-apartheid, independent
South Africa. Given this welter of historical and personal categories and
watersheds, how does one do justice to a work such as Commando? This is
particularly a problem if one acknowledges that the work did not remain fos-
silized in the year of the Wall Street crash. It was soon reprinted. Many edi-
tions and translations followed, and for at least seven decades it appears to
have been kept in print to meet the demands of succeeding generations. There
were three impressions in 1929, and one in the next; revised reprints followed
in 1931, 1932, 1933, 1935, 1938, 1940, 1942, 1944, 1950, 1958, 1961, 1968,
1973, 1975, and 1983 (all by Faber), and in association with Penguin in 1948
and 1957. Further publication followed by Struik (1992), Jonathan Ball and
Kessinger (2005), Cruguru and Lulu.com (2008). There was also a Folio
Society edition in 1982. A retitled edition by Fireship Press, God Does Not
Forget: The Story of a Boer War Commando, also appeared as a Kindle edi-
tion in 2010. In 2001, for the centenary of the War, Commando was pub-
lished by Stormberg as part of trilogy of Reitz’s autobiographical works under
the title Adrift in the Open Veld. The only American edition, by C. Boni, ap-
peared in 1930. There have also been translations into French (Paris: Pais,
52 JOHN GOUWS a

1930), German (Leipzig: List, 1932), and Gaelic (Baile Atha Cliath: Oifig &
tSoláthair, 1938).
What is remarkable about this is that a work published with the avowed
purpose of reconciling English- and Afrikaans-speaking South Africans in the
wake of the union in 1910 of the two former British colonies of the Cape and
Natal with the two defeated Boer republics, the Transvaal and the Orange
Free State, was written in English, the language of the victors, rather than in
the first language of its author, and that before the centenary of the Boer War
it was only once published in South Africa, in a translation into Afrikaans,
which was then one of the two official languages of the Union of South
Africa.
It might be, given the attitudes of English-speaking South Africans, that a
work published in London would have had greater kudos than any produced
locally, and that Afrikaners would be more likely to read English than their
compatriots would be willing to overcome their prejudices against the lan-
guage of a defeated enemy. This, and the economic benefits of large-scale
production, might account for the initial decision to publish in London, but in
terms of the strategic aim of overcoming the divide between large sections of
the then enfranchised population, publication in English and at a distance of
over six thousand miles, seems, on the surface at least, ill-considered. (Until
the original publishers, Faber & Faber, allow access to their archives, the
reasons for publication in London can only be matters of speculation. The ex-
tant empirical evidence of correspondence, readers’ reports, and editors’ com-
ments will undoubtedly be very revealing.) To the extent, however, that the
work repeatedly undermines and disarms entrenched English-speakers’ pre-
judices against Afrikaans-speakers as backward, illiterate, ignorant, and un-
refined (boorish, in other words), it would appear that the project of recon-
ciliation was conceived largely as one of re-educating English speakers.
Whatever the initial avowed reasons for undertaking the project, they do
not account for the sustained readership and publication over a long period.
The history of politics in South Africa does not incline one to believe that the
work accomplished the good intentions of Deneys Reitz and his mentors, Jan
Smuts and Louis Botha, largely because the politics of reconciliation is a deli-
cate plant, and the first half of the twentieth century was not conducive to its
cultivation. The readership has, in any case, not been domestically South Afri-
can, but international, and this, too, needs to be taken account of.
The sustained international readership over several generations might be
explained by interest in the seemingly unmediated account of guerrilla war-
a Deneys Reitz and the Bounds of Self-Understanding 53

fare presented in Commando. Leo Cooper, the publisher of military history

books, in the introduction to the Folio Society edition describes it as “a seri-
ous and valuable historical document about guerrilla warfare. It is a book of
great political significance and should be required reading for all soldiers and
politicians.”1 But such an account of historical military activities would be
unlikely to fix the attention of readers if it were not for the most engaged fea-
ture of the work: the author’s unspoiled youthful exuberance and insouciant
relish of his encounters with the experience of war. As Cooper also suggests,
the work is also “a splendid adventure story; a grown up Boy Scout’s game; a
romance” (ix).
In the discussion which follows, I suggest that the phenomenon of Com-
mando and its representations and manifestations of liminality are best under-
stood if limits, boundaries, and horizons are not treated simply as objectively
external to, and independent of, human agency, but as functions of self-under-
stood human conduct, in this case the self-understandings of Deneys Reitz
both in representing his youthful experiences and in manifesting, or enacting,
his self-understandings through writing and publishing the work we now
know as Commando. The notion of self-understanding derives from Michael
Oakeshott, whose thinking proceeds from the premise that an agent is “what
he understands himself, his contingent situations are what he understands
them to be […]. [H]e is what in conduct he becomes.”2 Although, as will be-
come apparent in the course of my essay, this initial assumption has its limi-
tations, Oakeshott’s characterization of the self-understanding agency consti-
tutive of any understanding of human conduct proves most productive and
enabling in coming to terms with the complexities of a work such as Com-
mando.3

Commando is as much about borders and the transition and abrogation of

borders as it is a manifestation and enactment of those transitions and abroga-
tions. The title, Commando, for example, refers to the principal element of the
1
Deneys Reitz, Commando: A Boer Journal of the Boer War, ed. Leo Cooper (Lon-
don: Folio Society, 1982), ix.
2
Oakeshott, Michael. On Human Conduct (Oxford: Clarendon, 1975): 41.
3
Oakeshott’s notion of self-understanding agents has much in common with ideas
expressed in “Self-interpreting Animals” by Charles Taylor, in Philosophical Papers
1: Human Agency and Language (Cambridge: Cambridge U P , 1985): 43–76.
54 JOHN GOUWS a

narrative, an account of the unconventional military strategy of invading the

Cape Colony with a highly mobile guerrilla force to attack and disrupt the
actions of the overwhelmingly superior British forces. This was such an in-
novative military strategy that there was until then not a native English word
for it, and a loan word had to be brought across the language divide from the
language of the insurgent forces.4 More importantly, as I have pointed out
elsewhere, the word is also a rough equivalent of the Greek ‘anabasis’ (mean-
ing military advance), which Reitz would have known from Xenophon’s ac-
count of the return of Greek soldiers to their homeland in Anabasis I V .vii.21–
25.5 We see here Reitz’s characteristic rhetorical procedure of repeatedly
breaking out of the thresholds of expectation which a simple reading of the
text might bring to the work.6 This feature of Commando is not a stylistic tic,
but evidence of a habit of mind, a singular self-understanding, one that
emerges in the titles of Reitz’s other autobiographical narratives, Trekking
On7 and No Outspan,8 where indigenous diction locates but refuses a confin-
ing or restricting specificity. Significantly, Reitz or his publishers abandoned
the title of the first American edition of Trekking On, which had been re-titled
as Afrikander.9
Commando as a narrative is dominated by Reitz’s account of the group of
irregular soldiers led by Jan Smuts across the Orange River deep into the
Cape Colony for the purpose of disrupting British military activities. Given
the overwhelming numerical superiority of the British, conventional warfare
was no longer feasible, and guerrilla tactics were a measure of last resort.
Central to the narrative, therefore, is a commitment by the participants to

4
More precisely, from Portuguese, while ‘guerrilla’ (often incorrectly rendered as
‘guerilla’) derives from the Spanish.
5
See John Gouws, “The Textual Trek of Deneys Reitz’s Commando,” in Texts
beyond Borders: Multilingualism and Textual Scholarship, ed. Wout Dillen, Caroline
Macé & Dirk Van Hulle (Variants: The Journal of the European Society for Textual
Scholarship 9; Amsterdam & New York: Rodopi, 2012): 192–93.
6
In this he is not unlike his cannily deceptive, slightly older American contempo-
rary, Robert Frost. Frost’s complex irony is present in “Mending Wall” referred to
below, and also in well-known poems such as “The Road Not Taken,” “The Death of
the Hired Man,” “The Oven Bird,” “The Witch of Coös,” “The Death of the Hired
Man,” and “Birches.”
7
Deneys Reitz, Trekking On, preface by J.C. Smuts (London: Faber & Faber, 1933).
8
London: Faber & Faber, 1943.
9
New York: Minton, Balch, 1933.
a Deneys Reitz and the Bounds of Self-Understanding 55

deliberate and adroit evasion and disregard of boundaries and thresholds as a

form of military and political action. Nowhere is this clearer than in the ac-
counts of the repeated crossings of the railway lines running from the Cape
Colony northwards to the Boer republics and the then Rhodesia (see, for ex-
ample, 146, 183, 185, 191, 199, 237, and 273; and Figure 1, which graphically
represents the many boundary crossings recounted in the text).

F I G U R E 1: Map of Reitz’s travels (Kommando, 316)

The railway lines were essential for maintaining the supply to British military
forces and were guarded not only by barbed wire and blockhouses but also by
regular armed trains patrolling the lines. Once the conventional phase of the
war was over, the heavily guarded lines in the Orange Free State and Trans-
vaal also functioned as a cordon sanitaire for controlling the insurgent forces
of the Boer commandos. They were thus a direct challenge to the freedom of
movement of the marauding fighting groups of which Reitz was a member,
and Reitz’s accounts of the frequent breaching of these barriers thus register
the thematic disregard of containment underlying the work.
The accounts of a sequence of crossings midway through Commando are
of particular significance. Reitz and two companions (Cluver and Pollatchek)
had joined a group of eight others under the command of one Field-Cornet
Botha, whose frustrated endeavours to derail a train near the Sand River rail-
way bridge (182) prompted them to return to the mountainous area to the east.
Their first attempt to cross the line in the middle of a bitterly cold night was
56 JOHN GOUWS a

foiled by the British, and so they retreated, only to discover that Cluver, who
was subject to epileptic fits, had gone missing. Because of the need to cross
the line under the guidance of people who knew the lie of the land, Reitz and
Pollatcheck decided to stay with Botha and his men, and they crossed the line
in a depression between to fortified posts at 4 a.m. They never saw Cluver
again. Not only were the crossings of the railway lines fraught with danger,
they compelled Reitz and his companions to make expedient but ethically dis-
turbing decisions in order to sustain their self-disclosing enterprise.
The group then moved on to an isolated farm in the vicinity of Wonderkop
in the eastern Free State. While they were enjoying the relative luxury of the
abandoned farm, Reitz
succeeded in converting Field-Cornet Botha and his followers to [his]
scheme of raiding into the Cape Colony. They were at first disinclined
to move so far from their beloved mountains, but eventually [he]
swung them round, and about the end of June [1901] (we were vague
as to dates and time) [they] started down the mountains and headed
due west, intending to re-cross the railway-line to the plains beyond
[…].10

Because the blockhouses were still under construction just north of the village
of Brandfort, the group easily crossed the line, though they had to endure
heavy rifle-fire (185). Before turning south in the direction of Cape Colony,
the party had to head north-west to avoid British columns. Eventually they
found themselves in the Fauresmith district, and about fifty miles north of the
Orange River, where they encountered a commando of between fifty and six-
ty men under a Field-Cornet Blignaut, who advised them against crossing the
border into the open and arid Karoo. He suggested they attempt a crossing
into the Cape further east, nearer the headwaters of the Orange River in the
then Basutoland.
Field-Cornet Botha and the rest of [Reitz’s] companions were so im-
pressed [by the reports of the difficulties of crossing the Orange River
at that point] that they began to waver, but Jacobus Bosman and
[Reitz] talked them into a better frame of mind, and finally persuaded
them that, by accepting the advice [they] had received and going east,

10
Deneys Reitz, Commando: A Boer Journal of the Boer War, preface by J.C.
Smuts (London: Faber & Faber, 1929): 184. Further page refererences are in the main
text.
a Deneys Reitz and the Bounds of Self-Understanding 57

[they] could get into the Cape Colony and hold [their] own once [they]
were there. (191)

Reitz and his party parted with Blignaut and his men, and returned to the
Edenburg district with the intention of crossing the railway line there. Just
before they set off in the dark, Reitz took in tow a Shetland pony which had
wandered from the British encampment. Reitz recalls:
After an hour’s ride we reached the railway-line at what we took to be
the point which we had selected, but the night was so dark that we had
gone astray, and we ran into a block-house instead. We were met with
the usual ‘Halt! Who comes there?’ followed by rifle-shots, so we bore
away to look for a more suitable crossing, and some five hundred
yards further down we made another attempt.
As is the case with most railways in South Africa, a fence ran on
either side of the line, composed of thick strands of wire which had to
be cut before the horses could be led through. The only implement we
possessed was a large file, and with this a young fellow named Verster
and I tried to saw the wires, while the others waited a hundred yards
back. The file grating across the taut wires made a tremendous noise,
and before we had cut even one strand, we were again challenged and
fired at by a sentry, who sounded not twenty yards away. We hurriedly
mounted to rejoin our companions, but our horses began to plunge and
flounder over obstructions staked along the ground. In approaching the
railway we had somehow or other missed these entanglements, but
now we were in the thick of them, and the tins always attached to them
were clanging and jangling, and increasing the terror of the animals.
To this din was added a blaze of musketry from a block-house stand-
ing only a few yards away, which in the darkness we had mistaken for
a mound of rocks.
[…] Verster managed to wrench his horse free, but mine was hit
and I was nearly pinned under him. I undid the buckles of the girth,
and dragged my saddle from under the prostrate animal and, stumbling
over the rest of the obstructions, we got clear away to where the others
stood whistling and shouting to us and anxiously watching, not daring
to shoot for fear of killing us. (191–93)

(Reitz now found a use the Shetland pony he had acquired earlier.) After a
further abortive attempt at crossing the line, the group withdrew, only to be
surprised soon after dawn by a body of over a hundred British troops. The
pursuit did not last long, but when they had time to catch their breath, Field-
Cornet Botha informed Reitz that he and his men had had their qualms con-
58 JOHN GOUWS a

firmed by the previous night’s misadventure and subsequent pursuit. They no

longer wished to cross into the Cape Colony, proposing instead to return to
the Winburg mountains. He asked Bosman and Reitz to reconsider their plans.
But, as Reitz recounts, “we two said that we had not ridden thus far to turn
back now, and we told them that we were going to the Cape, even if we had to
go alone” (194).
In the end Reitz and Bosman did not go alone. They soon made contact
with a force of three hundred men under the command of General Herzog,
who also confirmed the need to enter the Cape Colony near the Basutoland
border. They stayed with Herzog for ten days in the hope of attracting recruits
to their cause, and their optimism was rewarded by the arrival of a group of
ten under the leadership of Jack Borrius intending to ‘freelance’ in the Cape.
A number of these men were known to Reitz (197). The extended group, who
called themselves ‘the Rijk Section’, joined up with another force under Com-
mandant George Brand (the son of Sir John Brand, a former President of the
Orange Free State), who had come to consult with General Herzog. With
Brand’s commando, the Rijk Section returned to the railway line near Eden-
burg which Reitz and Bosman had failed to cross.
Now things went better, for [they] were with men who knew the exact
position of every block-house and every sentry along the track, and by
midnight [they] were over without a single casualty, although there
was a good deal of firing from block-houses on either side of [them] as
[they] went through. (199)

And fortune favoured them once again, when, in late August 1901 near the
village of Zastron, fifteen miles from the Orange River, they met up with a
commando of three hundred men on its way to the Cape Colony under the
command of General Jan Smuts. Smuts welcomed the Rijk Section as his
scouts.
Reitz and Bosman’s earlier resolve to continue as insurgents stands in stark
contrast to those who chose to retreat to the safety of the Winburg mountains
when confronted by the menace of the British cordon. Their determination to
disrupt effective deployment of conventional British forces by a sustained,
undaunted, and unpredictable incursion into enemy territory constitutes a
singular inflection of their uncompromising understanding of themselves as
guerrilla combatants. As Oakeshott suggests, the agent “is what in conduct he
becomes” (41). Reitz’s self-enactment in the series of encounters (especially
a Deneys Reitz and the Bounds of Self-Understanding 59

those concerned with railway lines) thus provides the narrative material with a
sustaining structure.
It is, however, not this structural armature of the narrative edifice that is
my principal interest, but the nature and posture of the anecdotal elements
themselves, and the manifestation and enactment of transitions between and
abrogations of the liminal conditions presented. Three instances should suf-
fice. In the second chapter, Reitz informs his readers how, at the outbreak of
hostilities, he was allowed to enrol as a member of the Transvaal (South Afri-
can Republic) military:
I was seventeen years old and thus too young to be enrolled as a
burgher. President Kruger himself solved this difficulty for me. One
morning when I was at the Government buildings, I met him and my
father in the corridor and I told the President that the Field-Cornet’s
Office had refused to enrol me for active service. The old man looked
me up and down for a moment and growled, ‘Piet Joubert says the
English are three to one – Sal jij mij drie rooi-nekke lever?’ (Will you
stand me good for three of them?) I answered boldly, ‘President, if I
get close enough I’m good for three with one shot.’ He gave a hoarse
chuckle at my youthful conceit and, turning to my father, asked how
old I was. When he heard my age he said, ‘Well then, Mr. State Secre-
tary, the boy must go – I started fighting earlier than that’, and he took
me straight to the Commandant-General’s room close by, where Piet
Joubert in person handed me a new Mauser carbine, and a bandolier of
ammunition, with which I returned home pleased and proud. (15–16)

He reveals how he overcame not only his father’s reservations but also the
conventional notions of the appropriate age for involvement in armed conflict
by an impish bravado encouraged by an indulgent, avuncular figure who was
also his father’s political master. The young Reitz presents himself as fully
aware of the barriers to his involvement in military service, but finds ways not
so much of vaulting over them as of side-stepping or evading them.
Reitz also makes it clear that he did not enter the conflict with any feelings
of animosity.
I myself had no hatred of the British people; from my father’s side I
come of Dutch and French Huguenot blood, whilst my mother (dead
60 JOHN GOUWS a

for many years) was a pure-bred Norwegian from the North Cape,11 so
one race was like another to me. Yet, as a South African, one had to
fight for one’s country, and for the rest I did not concern myself over-
much with the merits or demerits of the quarrel. I looked on the
prospect of war and adventure with the eyes of youth, seeing only the
glamour, but knowing nothing of the horror and the misery. (15)

Such maturity would be surprising, though not impossible, in a young man in

his early twenties in 1903, but natural to someone in his late thirties (when the
work was published), especially if he had experienced the real horrors of the
trenches in France in the latter part of the First World War, as Reitz had, and
in so doing had gained a perspective on the transition of the thresholds of his
life. This elision of the intervening years also alerts one to an even more signi-
ficant occlusion: Reitz uses the term ‘South African’ as if to encourage his
readers to believe that it was current at the time of the Anglo-Boer war. He
does this because his intent is to foster a sense of shared nationhood in the late
1920s once the dust of the immediate conflict between the Boer republics and
the British Empire had settled. The term is therefore appropriate to the rhetori-
cal strategy of the 1929 publication designed to reconcile English- and Afri-
kaans-speakers, but in doing so it brings to the attention of readers of later
generations Reitz’s blindness to another, and more fundamental, racial divide
which preoccupied, and still preoccupies, them: the one which eventually be-
came institutionalized under the name of ‘apartheid’ (separateness). Reitz’s
incapacity to register what strikes us as his own obtrusive racial prejudice, of
course, creates a barrier of understanding between him and us.12
Much later in the narrative, Reitz relates an encounter with two British
officers whom he hears discussing him as a typical Boer. In December 1900
Reitz was part of a force led by General de la Rey which attacked a British
encampment in the foothills of the Magaliesberg with the purpose of captur-
ing supplies. Having driven off the defenders, the Boers descended into the
gorge where the encampment lay. Reitz then recounts:
On my way down the gorge I found two wounded officers beside the
track, one with his thumb shot away and the other with a broken arm.
As I came up I heard one of them remark, ‘Here comes a typical young

11
The Thesen family came from Stavenger in southern Norway. Reitz’s reference to
the North Cape must therefore be understood as a reference to parts of the Cape
Colony north of Cape Town: the Thesen boatbuilding family had settled in Knysna.
12
I shall be raising the thorny question of racism later in the essay.
a Deneys Reitz and the Bounds of Self-Understanding 61

Boer for you,’ and they asked me whether I understood English. I told
them ‘Yes,’ and the man with the thumb said, ‘Then will you tell me
why you fellows are continuing the war, because you are bound to
lose?’ I replied, ‘Oh well, you see, we are like Mr. Micawber, we are
waiting for something to turn up.’ They burst out laughing and the one
said, ‘Didn’t I tell you this is a funny country, and now here’s your
typical young Boer quoting Dickens.’ (136–37)

Reitz revels in his capacity to overcome barriers of misunderstanding by en-

listing the resources of his own self-understanding, thereby disconcerting and
disarming those who bring prejudice to their encounters with him.
Commando ends with the signing of the Treaty of Vereeniging (a place
name which itself means ‘unification’), and Reitz’s decision to follow into
voluntary exile his father, the former President of the Orange Free State and
Secretary of State of the South African Republic under Paul Kruger. Although
F.W. Reitz was one of the principal negotiators of the peace treaty, he could
not bring himself to swear allegiance to the Crown, and chose instead to go
into exile in California. Deneys and his brothers followed suit out of loyalty to
their father. As he himself says,
I had no very strong convictions on the subject, but I had to stand by
[my father], so I had also refused to sign, and was told that I would be
put across the border, which troubled me little, as I was eager to see
more of the world. (324)

Once again readers encounter the youthful figure unperturbedly pursuing his
life, marching, as it were, to the beat of his own drum, despite the external
limitations placed on him. He is, of course, not unaware of the issues at stake:
As we were waiting on the border at Komati Poort, before passing into
Portuguese territory, my father wrote on a piece of paper a verse which
he gave me.
It ran:
SOUTH AFRICA,
Whatever foreign shores my feet must tread,
My hopes for thee are not yet dead.
Thy freedom’s sun may for awhile be set,
But not for ever, God does not forget,
and he said that until liberty came to his country he would not return.
(324)
62 JOHN GOUWS a

Not all barriers can be transcended or circumvented in the mundane triumphs

of the human spirit, since not all limitations are those of self-understanding.
Reitz’s narrative of the expedition reaches a climax when the commando ar-
rives in the area of O’Kiep near the west coast of the Cape Colony, and Smuts
is summoned to the peace negotiations at Vereeniging (315). There is, how-
ever, a proleptic moment of closure slightly earlier, at the mouth of the Oli-
fants River. Smuts summons all the members of the commando who have not
seen the sea to join him. Reitz records the event:
It was amusing to watch the expression on the men’s faces as the great
expanse of the ocean burst on their view, for few of them had seen
anything bigger than the dam on their parents’ farms, and, as we top-
ped the last sand-hills, they looked in amazement on water that
stretched beyond the horizon. (296)
He then recounts the exhilaration with which horse and riders plunged into the
surf. After a while, Smuts ordered Reitz and two others to reconnoitre some
huts in the distance:
In doing so we had an amusing encounter with a Hottentot fisherman.
He stared open-mouthed at sight of armed Boers patrolling the water-
line, and, seeing his surprise, I halted by horse, and ordered him in a
peremptory tone to show me were the road went through. He said,
‘What road, Baas?’ Pretending to be angry, I replied, ‘The road to
England, you fool, and show me the way at once, for we are crossing
to-night to capture London.’ He looked at me for a moment, and then
exclaimed, ‘My God, Baas, don’t do it; the water is over your head
here, and you will all be drowned.’ (296–97)
Implicit in the humour is the recognition that the ocean, as a physical entity, is
not only an impassable barrier to men on horseback but also one that chal-
lenges human ingenuity to discover ways of overcoming it.

Readers of Commando who were either not well-informed or had deliberately

chosen the disabling faux-naive stance of the New-Critical exclusion of au-
thorial agency, would in all likelihood not have known that Reitz did in fact
return to the land, though not the country, of his birth. Once the colonial status
of the Orange Free State and the South African Republic had been resolved
by the establishment of the Union of South Africa in 1910, with General
Louis Botha as the first Prime Minister, accommodation became even easier.
a Deneys Reitz and the Bounds of Self-Understanding 63

This would be apparent from General Jan Smuts’s remarks in the Preface to
the work: Reitz “learnt to see Botha’s great vision of a united South African
people to whom the memories of the Boer War would mean no longer bitter-
ness but only the richness and the inspiration of a spiritual experience” (xi).
The closure of the narrative is thus more complex and nuanced than a bare
reading of the text would suggest.
But the complexity does not end here. There are yet further boundaries and
transitions, this time undeclared ones. The final lines of Commando read as
follows:
At present we are eking out a living convoying goods by ox-transport
between Mahatsara on the East Coast and Antananarive, hard work in
dank fever-stricken forests, and across mountains sodden with eternal
rain; and in my spare time I have written this book.
Antananarive,
Madagascar.
1903. (325)

Readers are left to assume that the text they are reading was completed in
1903 while the author was a self-exiled irreconcilable. Such an assumption
certainly sharpens the poignancy of the narrative and, as it stands, does much
to encourage understanding and reconciliation between population groups
which had been divided by the conflict and the prejudices it sustained. But the
fact is that there is a vast chasm between what Reitz wrote as a young man in
Madagascar in 1903 and what he published as a mature politician in 1929.
Reitz wrote the first version of the work in Cape Dutch, working in a series
of hardbound school exercise books. When he reached page 240 of his text
(two thirds of the way through the second fascicle), he found that he wanted
to include illustrative material, a secret Z A R [South African Republic] tele-
gram dated 13 May 1900.13 He did not write in the rest of the book, but con-
tinued in seven similarly hardbound exercise books of roughly the same
dimensions, but with interleaved blank pages for such things as drawings,
photographs, and newspaper clippings.
At one point he includes a postage stamp with the image of George V,
dated 1910.14 Above it, Reitz has written (in English): “Stood back when they
were on the move and lent them half the continent.” This comment refers to

13
D. Reitz, telegram, Herinneringen van 1899–1902, M S 272/2 (Brenthurst Lib-
rary, Johannesburg): after p. 239.
14
Herinneringen van 1899–1902, M S 272/2, facing p. 224.
64 JOHN GOUWS a

an account of Boer despondency on the facing page.15 Long after the end of
the conflict, therefore, Reitz was still mulling over the pain of defeat.16
There is thus a great divide between the version of the work actually writ-
ten on Madagascar (and augmented with illustrations and comments for at
least ten years afterwards) and the one that was read internationally for the
first time in the year which saw the start of the Great Depression. These be-
lated readers had their understandings blinkered and bounded by the informa-
tion made available, or not disclosed, to them. Not only would the Cape
Dutch text have been inaccessible, but knowledge of its very existence would
have lessened the impact of a work which, in the absence of information to
the contrary, would have been presumed to be written in English, the lan-
guage of the victors who relished their self-image of magnanimity. These
readers would also not be aware that, although Reitz was himself responsible
for the translation, the text had systematically been pruned of potentially in-
flammatory material on the advice of Reitz’s wife, an historian trained at
Girton College, Cambridge.
The translated version exists in autograph in a series of hardbound lined
exercise books. It has no illustrations, but contains Mrs Reitz’s suggested re-
visions as well as more general notes and suggestions that her husband con-
sult with Jan Smuts (“Oom Jannie”) on certain issues. The early version of the
work has much of the adventure and derring-do that readers of the published
version prize, but the bitterness of defeat and resentment at times intrudes. For
example, there are repeated acerbic asides about the British and their officers.
By far the most glaring is the description of Lord Kitchener:

Het leek mij dat Kitchener een knaap[je deleted] was [is deleted] die
veel [drinkt deleted] [in de bottel kijkt interlined] want zijn gezicht
was rood en verschoten met zware zakken onder de oogen.17

At the head of the page is a marginal comment on Kitchener’s promise of fair

treatment to the defeated Boers: “Timeo Danaos Dona Ferentes” [Virgil,

15
Herinneringen van 1899–1902, M S 272/2, 224.
16
For a more detailed discussion of the material text, see my “Textual Trek of
Deneys Reitz’s Commando.”
17
“It seemed to me that Kitchener was a chap who looked much into the bottle,
because his face was red and blotchy with heavy bags under the eyes,” Herinneringen
van 1899–1902, M S 196/1/2/3, 951.
a Deneys Reitz and the Bounds of Self-Understanding 65

Aeneid I I , 49: timeo Danaos et dona ferentes (the source of the proverbial
expression ‘beware of Greeks bearing gifts’)]. This last comment is clearly an
after-thought, and reveals a long period of brooding over old injuries. When
he wrote this, Reitz had yet to overcome the inhibitions of defeat.
It is, however, the emphasis on the depredations of the scorched-earth
policy and the concentration camps that is the most disturbing aspect of the
early version. As he himself admits, Reitz had spent the last period of the
guerrilla war in the Cape Colony, and so had not witnessed the effects of
Kitchener’s scorched-earth policy, the beginnings of which he experienced
and recorded (148–50). When the end of the war was in sight, Smuts and
Reitz, as his batman, were transported by sea to Cape Town and then (along
the very railway lines which had so often obstructed their progress) by ar-
moured train to Kroonstad, in the Orange Free State, where they met Lord
Kitchener. From Kroonstad they went, once again by armoured train, via
Johannesburg to Standerton in the eastern Transvaal. From here they travelled
for a day and a half by cart along “a block-house line that ran straight over the
high veld” (320). (Again, the end of the great adventure is signalled by a late-
ral journey along the barricading line rather than transition across it.) They
were then met by horsemen (sent by General Botha) who escorted them for
two days “over bare and deserted plains” (320) to where the elections for re-
presentatives to the Peace Conference were to be held. The published version
presents as follows Reitz’s response to the sight of the three hundred as-
sembled men:
Nothing could have proved more clearly how nearly the Boer cause
was spent than these starving, ragged men, clad in skins or sacking,
their bodies covered with sores, from lack of salt and food, and their
appearance was a great shock to us, who came from the better-
conditioned forces in the Cape. Their spirit was undaunted, but they
had reached the limit of physical endurance, and we realized that, if
these haggard, emaciated men were the pick of the Transvaal Com-
mandos, then the war must be irretrievably lost. (320)

The original version tells a very different story. The anodyne phrasing of a
journey “over bare and deserted plains” masks Reitz’s more immediate re-
sponse to what he witnessed as he travelled on horseback to the assembly of
delegates.
It was awful riding through the devastated districts for days on end
without seeing a single sign of life, neither human nor animal. Every-
66 JOHN GOUWS a

thing lay black and ruined and even the little birds appeared to have
abandoned the region. Not a single house was left standing. They were
all burnt down or blown up with dynamite. Here and there, next to the
burnt down houses, the women were living in a sort of shelter which
they had constructed from sheets of corrugated iron or grass. It was
terrible to see the poor creatures – gaunt and under-nourished, with
wan faces drawn-in from cold and hardship. Their clothes were made
from mealie [maize] sacks picked up from Khaki [British] encamp-
ments and sewn together, and their food consisted of mealies which
they still found here and there in the old fields. It was enough to make
one weep to see how these poor women had suffered from the mon-
strous tactic of destruction by the enemy.18

Reitz’s retrospective resentment is recorded in an English comment at the

head of the page: “They made a wilderness and called it peace” (a translation
of Tacitus, Agricola 30: ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appelant).
A similar sanitization was accomplished by the omission of illustrations.
For example, in the original version Reitz includes a picture given him by
Emily Hobhouse, the social activist, and furnishes it with a sardonic caption
(see Figure 2). Asides and pictures such as these which register the state of
mind of the twenty-year-old as he recorded the experiences of his adolescence
would only exacerbate the divisions between English- and Afrikaans-speakers
in the Union of South Africa that emerged eight years after the end of the war.
In fact, the memory of the scorched-earth policy and the concentration camps
poisoned the minds of many Afrikaners for generations. This is something
English-speakers in turn found difficult to accommodate, patronizingly cop-
ing with it by means of the colonial bourgeois derision reserved for what is

18
Het was akelig[e del.] om de verwoeste landstreek door te rijd[?en] voor dages
lang zonder een enkele levende wezen te zien, mensch noch dier, alles lag zwa[a del.]rt
en verwoest en zelfs de vogeltjes schenen de [plaas del.] /streek/verlaten te hebben.
Geen enkele huis stond nog, alles afgebrand of met dienamiet opgeblazen. Hier en daar
langs [een del.] /de/ verbrande huizen hadden de vrouwen een soort van schuiling uit
zink-platen of gras gemaakt waar zij in leefden en het was akelig om de arme wezens
to zien – mager en uitgehongerd en met bleeke gezichten, ingetrokken van de koude en
ellende. Hunne kleeren bestond uit mielie zakken, op de Khaki kamp-plaatsen op-
geraapt en aanelkaar genaaid en hunne voedsel uit mielies die zij nog hier en daar in de
oude landerijen vonden en [? del.] het was om to weenen bij ??? zien hoe of deze arme
vrouwen geleden hudden door de [? del.] monsterachtige verwoestings tactiek door de
vijand gevolgd. D.Reitz. Herinneringen van 1899–1902, M S 196/1/2/3, pp. 951–52.
a Deneys Reitz and the Bounds of Self-Understanding 67

seen as Neanderthal bigotry. Such reciprocal imposition of bounds on self-

understanding recalls Robert Frost’s ironic presentation of the neighbour in
“Mending Wall”:
like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me,
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.

He will not go behind his father’s saying [. . . ].19

F I G U R E 2: “Under British ‘Protection’ in the Springfontein Concentration Camp

1901,” Herinneringen van 1899–1902, M S 272/6, facing p. 604

It is not obvious from when Reitz produced the original Dutch version that he
had publication in mind. Given that he treated the manuscript as an album for
gathering newspaper cuttings, postage stamps, telegrams and drawings,
among other things, it seems that he saw it primarily not only as a private
exercise of coming to terms with his experiences of defeat but also as an
assertion of his own irrepressible and unquestioned worth, and a means of

19
Frost, “Mending Wall” (1914), in The Poetry of Robert Frost, ed. Edward Con-
nery Latham (London: Jonathan Cape, 1971): 34. I discuss these matters in greater
detail in “The Textual Trek of Deneys Reitz’s Commando.” Since that article was writ-
ten, I have taken the opportunity to improve my translations and correct some factual
errors.
68 JOHN GOUWS a

locating and preserving the fugitive vitalities of experience. When he engaged

himself in the project of national reconciliation, however, the work was trans-
formed into the public version of 1929. In retrospect, therefore, but only in
retrospect, the original version can be seen as a cul-de-sac. The medium of
manuscript is a restriction. Cape Dutch as a language has a limited readership.
Most importantly, Reitz’s resignation in the face of defeat, manifested both in
the substance of the narrative closure and in the confinement of the early
version within the sphere of private brooding, led nowhere. Only when Reitz
had repositioned himself in the then new South Africa could he release him-
self from self-imposed shackles and find liberation in a new narrative of
himself.

The textual conduct of publication excluded the reader from access to the
private genesis of the work, and to that extent it is subject to the procedural
and constitutive boundaries to any form of human conduct, but there is also
the limitation of Reitz’s own self-understandings. We have already noticed
instances of a characteristic patronizing attitude towards fellow Africans not
of European descent. Nowhere is this as manifest as in his account of the
commando’s incursive transition through what was then known as Basutoland
from the Orange Free State to the Cape Colony (203–207). The main body of
the commando had already passed apprehensively within shot of a party of
Basutos.
My fellow-stragglers and I were worse off, for although the Basutos
had hesitated to attack the larger force, their intentions were clearly
hostile, and we wondered how they would deal with our little band left
isolated in the rear.
After hurried consultation we decided to follow on, and attempt to
catch up with the commando, so we began to descend the slope. We
reached the bottom unmolested, but as we passed the church beside the
road we caught sight of many dark faces pressed against the window-
panes, and white eyeballs peering at us from within. Then came a
deafening crash, as a volley was fired at us point-blank from the build-
ing, sending showers of splintered glass about our heads. Fortunately
the native is a notoriously bad marksman, for he generally closes his
eyes when he pulls the trigger, so not one of us was hit, although the
range was under ten yards. (205)
a Deneys Reitz and the Bounds of Self-Understanding 69

Although Reitz’s use of the then current, and implicitly derogatory, term
‘native’ for people not of manifestly European descent is alienating and of-
fensive to readers like me who are aware of the long catalogue of such di-
visively racist terms in the history of South Africa, there is perhaps an irony in
the implication (for those who are aware of the term’s etymology) that those
who use ‘native’ in referring to others are acknowledging that they them-
selves are not native to the land of their birth. More significant and disturbing,
though, is Reitz’s opinion that Basutos, and thus by implication people not of
European descent, should not be expected to use firearms effectively.
What is particularly remarkable to later generations is his inability to
register or even articulate issues which preoccupy us, and which would, by
hindsight, seem to us so integral to Reitz’s concern with reconciliation. It is as
if he were incapable of pursuing his project to its logical conclusion. He failed
to see that the land he lived in was inhabited not only by those who fought in
the Boer War. (As we now know, those involved in the conflict and those af-
fected by it were not only of European descent.) In this respect, he is a man of
his own time, and he saw no need for a process almost a century in gestation
leading to a new constitution and, more significantly, the Truth and Recon-
ciliation Commission chaired by Archbishop Desmond Tutu. To expect Reitz
to conduct his life in terms of self-understandings not his own but those of
others, especially our belated own self-understandings, is, however, an in-
stance of limited and, therefore, denatured ethical insight; one that fails to
recognize the constitutive limitations and fallibilities of a particular human
agent, Deneys Reitz, and, reciprocally, those whom he either acknowledged
or occluded. By the same token, it fails to accept that we, in our own project
of understanding, are just as subject to the liberations and necessary limita-
tions of our own self-understandings.
It would be easy to relegate Reitz to the inferno of the unregenerate racists,
but just how fallible dismissive, knee-jerk categorizations can be is revealed
by a passage omitted from the published version of the work. As mentioned
above, Reitz had accompanied Smuts as his batman to the negotiations of the
terms of surrender at Vereeniging, but he was not party to the deliberations
and, with many others, awaited the outcome.
When the final moment dawned, when it was announced that our land
and freedom were lost, it was a bitter cup to drain. In the tents, grown
men were sobbing like children. Weather-beaten faces which had
looked undaunted on the greatest dangers, streamed with hot tears of
sorrow. These men who had stood with dry eyes at the graves of
70 JOHN GOUWS a

friends and sons and fathers now wept bitterly at the grave of their
freedom. In truth it was a bitter hour.
I myself was lying behind a tent, grieving in the long grass when I
felt a soothing hand on my shoulders. An Indian, who was a cook in
the camp, was sitting next to me, also with tears in his eyes. He said
over and over, “Baas, me very sorry – me very sorry.” The poor fellow
felt all the more compassionate towards us because his own nation was
in the same plight and also lay bowed beneath the English yoke.
Well, the matter had run its course, and all our striving had been for
nothing. Our country lay devastated, half our nation was exterminated
and our flag struck; perhaps for eternity. With sore hearts, the confe-
rence broke up and the envoys were transported back to their com-
mandos.20

Reitz might have removed this passage for two reasons. First, it revealed not
only his own youthful vulnerability, which he had left behind when he crossed
the boundary of self-understood maturity, but also that of his fellow com-
batants, whose manliness he would not have wished to impugn. He replaced it
with a laconic expression of shared stoic fortitude in the face of adversity
(322–23). Second, and perhaps more importantly, such a passage at the
climactic moment of the narrative would undermine the purpose of the pub-
lished account. A quarter of a century after the events, Smuts and Botha had
shown Reitz that once again there were ways of transcending what at the time
might have seemed an insurmountable barrier of humiliation and defeat, that
the ingenuity of self-understandings is not confined to an intractable limita-
tion. (In fact, what Botha, Smuts, and Reitz were enacting was the self-under-
standing so dear to many Afrikaners: ‘’n Boer maak ’n plan’.) Although the
number of women and children who died in the concentration camps, seen as
a proportion of the Boer population as a whole, would today be regarded as
genocidal, Botha and Smuts had found a way forward for their own people, if
not for the population as a whole. A publication intended to heal the wounds,
and to affirm the fragile accommodation arrived at, should therefore de-
emphasize the pain of defeat. It should also not cast the British as imperialist
and despotic tyrants.
What the omitted passage reveals, however, is a moment of shared self-
understanding through mutual compassion, despite the language of deference
attributed to the Indian cook. An awareness of a shared predicament over-

20
Herinneringen van 1899–1902, M S 272, 954–56. I have used the translation
made by Michael Reitz, the author’s grandson, Brenthurst M S 419.
a Deneys Reitz and the Bounds of Self-Understanding 71

comes what is not so much racial animosity as the protocols of social-hierar-

chical and racial indifference. Indians in southern Africa had long been
relegated to the realm of the near-invisible servant-class, so it comes as a
surprise that the cook should be referred to not only as someone who shares
an emotional bond but also as someone who is, without demur, allowed to
initiate physical contact. In a truly racially divided society, even one that has
not institutionalized inter-personal divisions by legal segregation (as hap-
pened with the radical extremism of the apartheid regime), physical contact is
for the most part anathema. A comprehensive readerly understanding of
Reitz’s textual conduct therefore requires the reader to bridge the divide be-
tween the suppressed private manuscript and the rhetorically focused, publicly
self-disclosing printed book. Each of these physical material objects has a
unique kairic moment, but a comprehensively nuanced and complex under-
standing requires not only the enabling presumptive presence of constitutive
conduct of agents responsible for each of the kairic moments but also the
presence of the agents who undertake that understanding – ourselves as
readers.

Commando tells its own story. More correctly, it tells a version of a story
Deneys Reitz wanted to tell in 1929, and we as readers engage with it a cen-
tury following the establishment of the unified state of South Africa, the
demise of the colonial, and the prolonged inchoateness of liberation, and
nearly two decades following the end of apartheid’s arbitrary, compulsive,
and coercive fragmentation and divisiveness. The complex fissuring of the
work’s reception is matched by the numerous boundaries and thresholds of
the prolonged gestation of a quarter-century, from a manuscript compiled in
self-imposed exile in one language, through another manuscript prepared not
for private self-vindication but with the intention of publication for very dif-
ferent political considerations in another language. It is a work straddling the
divide between the misery of defeat in adolescence and the recuperation of
equanimity in maturity, and so traces the permutations of Reitz’s developing
self-understanding. But it is also a work straddling the turn of two momentous
centuries (the end of the Victorian and incipience of the modern and modern-
ist eras) in an account of a war which saw the end of parade-ground, regimen-
tal war by troops in splendid uniforms and the introduction of the irregular
guerrilla and trench warfare in camouflage that became the norm in the cen-
72 JOHN GOUWS a

tury to follow. Reitz mingled with the great and famous, some of whom fea-
ture in Commando, but it would seem as if he was as little in awe of them, and
as complaisantly engaging as any intelligent and resourceful young man ex-
ploring the world he finds himself in. As a man who marched to the beat of
his own drum, he remained as unintimidated by people and situations as he
was by the intellectual and cultural categories which impinged upon his life.
The self-understandings revealed, either as self-enactments or as self-dis-
closures, in and through the production, distribution, and reception of Com-
mando engage with and either evade or disarm historically conditioned con-
ventional strategies of conceptual containment. Although the work was pub-
lished in the imperial metropolis, it cannily reserves its integrity beyond the
bounds of the imperial or the subaltern; it is not easily pigeon-holed as
Victorian, or modern, or modernist or Georgian, though it is possible to see all
of these featured as elements of its context. In that respect, it is a serious re-
minder of the imperative of respect necessary for understanding the conduct
of agents, especially their textual conduct. Although we might wish to cir-
cumscribe any single kairic moment of agential conduct, we are also obliged
to accept that horizons exist only in relation to the location in place and time
of the observing agent, and these are potentially infinite. As Wallace Stevens
reminds us,
When the blackbird flew out of sight,
It marked the edge
Of one of many circles.21

In this essay, as I noted at the beginning, my approach has been informed by

the work of Michael Oakeshott, especially his late work, On Human Conduct,
and that of Charles Taylor. I have suggested that Reitz’s Commando engages
with a whole range of actual or conceptual chasms, boundaries or limitations,
or invites readers to consider such distinctions and categories, even when they
are only implicit or form part of the work’s sustained context. My purpose has
been to suggest that categories, distinctions, and boundaries relating to mat-
ters of human conduct (whether reported or recounted, manifested in the
reported or recounted, or engaged in within the process of reception of such
reporting or recounting) can only be understood as the conduct of self-enact-
ing and self-disclosing agents. We understand the bounds and horizons to the

21
“Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird, I X ,” in Stevens, Collected Poetry and
Prose (New York: Library of America, 1997): 76.
a Deneys Reitz and the Bounds of Self-Understanding 73

extent that we can make sense of how those agents disclosed, enacted or
failed to disclose or enact the self-understandings available to them. I depart
from Oakeshott’s views when I suggest that human conduct cannot be under-
stood solely in terms of the self-understandings of the agent (though those
self-understandings are necessary and fundamental to our understanding of
how agents engage with the world). The vain man is the last person to know
that he is vain. Racial and religious bigotry are for the most part invisible to
those people who act in terms of them. The perpetrators of genocide do not
conceive of their conduct in terms of a category which seems beyond the pale
of understanding, but simply as a strategy of survival. If they were to under-
stand themselves as agents of genocide they would be more than likely to
discover themselves confronting an aporia that disenables all conduct. There
is thus a dimension of second- and third-person understanding which traces
the limits or bounds of self-understanding, especially when that understanding
spans or transcends the temporal, spatial, and categorical contexts of the origi-
nal conduct. What always has to be borne in mind, however, is that any sec-
ond- and third-person understandings are in their turn functions of the self-
understandings of the second- and third-person understanders. Omniscience is
not the prerogative of limited beings.
While all self-understanding is necessarily limited, what is remarkable
about Reitz’s narrative is his adroit manoeuvres to overcome barriers and
limitations by strategically absorbing and integrating them into his self-under-
standing. Unlike so many of his contemporaries, he did not succumb to de-
feat, and although he initially followed his father into voluntary exile, he
managed, with the prompting of General Smuts’s wife, to reconstitute his
self-understanding as one which enabled a transformative and productive
return to the land of his birth. To that extent, Commando is a lively celebra-
tion of the human capacity for re-invention.

WORKS CITED
Frost, Robert. The Poetry of Robert Frost, ed. Edward Connery Latham (London:
Jonathan Cape, 1971).
Gouws, John. “The Textual Trek of Deneys Reitz’s Commando,” in Texts beyond
Borders: Multilingualism and Textual Scholarship, ed. Wout Dillen, Caroline Macé
& Dirk Van Hulle (Variants: The Journal of the European Society for Textual
Scholarship 9; Amsterdam & New York: Rodopi, 2012): 181–95.
Oakeshott, Michael. On Human Conduct (Oxford: Clarendon, 1975).
74 JOHN GOUWS a

Reitz, Deneys. Adrift in the Open Veld, ed. Trevor Emslie (Cape Town: Stormberg,
1999).
——. Afrikander (New York: Minton, Balch, 1933).
——. Commando: A Boer Journal of the Boer War, preface by J.C. Smuts (London:
Faber & Faber, 1929).
——. Commando: A Boer Journal of the Boer War, ed. Leo Cooper (London: Folio
Society, 1982).
——. Herinneringen van 1899–1902, MS 196/1/2/3 and MS 272/2 (Brenthurst Lib-
rary, Johannesburg).
——. Kommando: ’n Boere-dagboek uit die Engelse oorlog (Bloemfontein: A.C
White, 1929).
——. No Outspan (London: Faber & Faber, 1943).
——. Trekking on, preface by J.C. Smuts (London: Faber & Faber, 1933).
Stevens, Wallace. Collected Poetry and Prose (New York: Library of America, 1997).
Taylor, Charles. Philosophical Papers 1: Human Agency and Language (Cambridge:
Cambridge U P , 1985): 45–76.

a
Challenging and Negotiating National Borders
Sámi and Tornedalian AlterNative Literary History

A NNE H EITH

T H E N O R D I C C O U N T R I E S are frequently thought of as democratic and

equal states with welfare systems whose benefits are evenly spread
among the citizens. In part, this is related to national self-images
cherished and actively promoted in brandings of the Nordic states. These
images portray the nations as modern, progressive, and expert on democracy
and human rights.1 This essay will examine how these narratives are being
fractured through performative challenges of national homogeneity narratives
which have excluded the voices of ethnic minorities. Historically, ethnic
Swedes have been constructed as the racial ideal in state-supported race bio-
logy which operated with racial hierarchies that place the indigenous Sámi
people and the Tornedalian Finns in the border area between Sweden and Fin-
land on a lower level than the Nordic racial character.
The Sámi in Norway, Sweden, Finland, and north-western Russia and the
Tornedalians (previously called ‘Tornedalian Finns’) in Sweden constitute
ethnic and linguistic minorities within the nation-states. Both groups illustrate
the fact that the Nordic nation-states were multi-ethnic spaces long before the
present-day borders were established. The Sámi constitute an indigenous peo-
ple, marginalized through the arrival of settlers who took over lands which
had been used since ancient times for reindeer-herding, fishing, and hunting.
The present-day status of the Tornedalians in Sweden is directly related to the

1
Suvi Keskinen, Salla Tuori, Sari Irni & Diana Mulinari, “Introduction: Post-
colonialism and the Nordic Models of Welfare and Gender,” in Complying with Colo-
nialism: Gender, Race and Ethnicity in the Nordic Region, ed. Keskinen, Tuori, Irni &
Mulinari (Farnham & Burlington V T : Ashgate, 2009): 1–16.
76 ANNE HEITH a

establishment of the 1809 border which divided the Tornedalian population

on both sides of the Könkämä, Muonio, and Torne Rivers when Sweden lost
Finland at the conclusion of the 1808–1809 war with Russia. During the age
of imperialism, there was a fear among the Swedish security elite of Russian
expansionism. In this historical context, the northern border became strate-
gically important for defending Sweden against a perceived ‘Russian threat’.2

F I G U R E 3: “Lapp Prototype, relatively pure,” illustration in The Racial

Characters of the Swedish Nation, ed. Herman B. Lundborg & F.J. Linders
(1926). The photographs were taken by Gunhild Sandgren in 1925

Lundborg, one of the leading race biologists of the 1920s and 1930s, used
several series of photographs to illustrate racial differentiation within the
Swedish nation. His work exemplifies how ideal whiteness was socially con-
structed in Sweden through the use of didactic images which taught viewers
the existence of racial differences. From the perspective of Nordic critical
whiteness studies, Lundborg’s arrangement of photographs exemplify the
creation of a racial hierarchy with the Nordic racial character as the ideal.
While ethnic Swedes, ‘the Nordic racial character’, were constructed as the
superior racial character, other categories of people were constructed as in-

2
Gunnar Åselius, The ”Russian Menace” to Sweden: The Belief System of a Small
Power Security Élite in the Age of Imperialism (Stockholm: Akademitryck A B , 1994);
Magnus Rodell, “Fortifications in the Wilderness: The Making of Swedish–Russian
Borderlands around 1900,” Journal of Northern Studies 1 (2009): 69–89.
a Challenging and Negotiating National Borders 77

ferior. Among these other groups, the Sámi were seen as a remnant from the
past which was doomed in the modern world, while the Finns were seen as a
deviance from the norm which placed the Nordic racial character at the pin-
nacle of progress.3

F I G U R E 4: Photograph of male models aiming at illustrating racial

differentiation; in The Racial Characters of the Swedish Nation,
ed. Herman B. Lundborg and F.J. Linders (1926)4

This historical backdrop of borderings which have excluded and othered

groups, such as the Sámi and the Tornedalian Finns, is one incentive for
present-day challenges and negotiations of national histories. One example of
this is when the voices of previously silenced groups are heard in new alterna-
tive histories. Both Swedish Tornedalian and Sámi cultural mobilization are
interconnected with the social fragmentation of contemporary societies and an

3
Aira Kemiläinen, Finns in the Shadow of the “Aryans”: Race Theories and
Racism (Studia Historica 59; Helsinki: Finnish Historical Society, 1998).
4
The photos of the nude men: Photo 1: Working-man from Västergötland, photo
taken in 1926 by K. Engström and W. Krauss; Photo 2: Working-man from Norr-
botten, photo taken in 1925 by J. Harnes; Photo 3: Squatter from Lappland (Jokk-
mokk), photo taken in 1925 by Herman Lundborg.
78 ANNE HEITH a

ensuing concern with cultural differences and diversity. One aspect of frag-
mentation is that it provides backgrounds for making visible “the multiplicity,
difference, and particularity that corresponds to our sense of reality.”5 One
prerequisite for the acknowledgement of alternative histories is precisely this
shift in “our sense of reality” which opens up discursive spaces for challenges
to narratives of national homogeneity. In the ‘sense of reality’ which shapes
the Tornedalian and Sámi specimens of literary history discussed here, eth-
nicity is a major category which functions as a catalyst for difference.
When discussing the connection between representation and culture, Stuart
Hall points out that “culture is about ‘shared meanings’.”6 He goes on to de-
scribe ‘culture’ in the following terms:
a process, a set of practices. Primarily, culture is concerned with the
production and the exchange of meanings [. . . ] between the members
of a society or group. To say that two people belong to the same cul-
ture is to say that they interpret the world in roughly the same ways
and can express themselves, their thoughts and feelings about the
world, in ways which will be understood by each other.7

One argument of this essay is that Hall’s pragmatic description of culture may
provide a tool for analysing relationships between minority status, ethnicity,
and cultural transformations in a poststructuralist, postcolonial space where
‘shared meanings’ within ethnic minority groups, as well as within the poli-
tical space of the nation-state, are being negotiated. When exploring the theme
of cultural difference as the production of minority identities, Homi K. Bha-
bha emphasizes the notion that community is seen as a project:
Social differences are not simply given to experience through already
authenticated cultural tradition; they are signs of the emergence of
community envisaged as a project – at once a vision and a construction
– that takes you ‘beyond’ yourself in order to return, in a spirit of re-
vision and reconstruction, to the political conditions of the present.8

5
David Perkins, “Introduction: The State of the Discussion,” in Theoretical Issues
in Literary History, ed. Perkins (Cambridge M A & London: Harvard U P , 1991): 6.
6
Stuart Hall, “Introduction” to Representation: Cultural Representations and Signi-
fying Practices, ed. Hall (London, Thousand Oaks C A & New Delhi: Sage, 2003): 1.
7
Hall, “Introduction,” 2.
8
Homi K. Bhabha, “Introduction: Locations of Culture,” in Bhabha, The Location
of Culture (London & New York: Routledge, 2008): 4.
a Challenging and Negotiating National Borders 79

The present-day identity-politics of the Sámi and the Tornedalians does not
evolve in an ahistorical space, but in a critical exchange with histories which
have traumatized members of the Sámi and Tornedalian ethnie. Transforma-
tions of culture, in the sense of ‘shared meanings’, are related both to themes
of disempowerment, shame, and loss within the ethnic minorities, and to a
wider change of perceptions in nation-state and international contexts.

Ethnic groups and boundaries

In the book Ethnic Groups and Boundaries, the Norwegian anthropologist
Fredrik Barth emphasizes the role of boundaries for maintaining notions of
distinct ethnic groups:
When defined as an ascriptive and exclusive group, the nature of con-
tinuity of ethnic units is clear: it depends on the maintenance of a
boundary. The cultural features that signal the boundary may change,
and the cultural characteristics of the members may likewise be trans-
formed, indeed, even the organizational form of the group may change
– yet the fact of continuing dichotomization between members and
outsiders allows us to specify the nature of continuity, and investigate
the changing cultural form and content.9

Barth points out that the “cultural features that are taken into account are not
the sum of ‘objective’ differences, but only those which the actors themselves
regard as significant.10 Furthermore, he sees the construction and maintenance
of ethnic boundaries as communal projects of groups of people who are en-
gaged in performances of cultural diversity. In addition, these performances,
in the form of boundary maintenance, are seen as a form of social organiza-
tion:
the ethnic boundary canalizes social life – it entails a frequently com-
plex organization of behaviour and social relations. The identification
of another person as a fellow member of an ethnic group implies a
sharing of criteria for evaluation and judgment. It thus entails the as-
sumption that the two are fundamentally ‘playing the same game.’11

9
Fredrik Barth, “Preface” to Ethnic Groups and Boundaries: The Social Organiza-
tion of Culture Difference, ed. Barth (Long Grove I L : Waveland, 1998): 14.
10
Barth, “Introduction,” 14.
11
“Introduction,” 15.
80 ANNE HEITH a

Barth does not elaborate on the embeddedness of constructions of ethnic iden-

tities in power-structures which regulate what can be done in specific con-
texts. However, his notion of the contextual, contingent character of ethnified
identity-politics may be useful for examinations of Tornedalian and Sámi
challenges to oppressive structures. Barth’s description of ethnic groups as
people who assume that they are ‘playing the same game’ points to the com-
munal character of identification along ethnic lines. It is also worth noting that
the social sphere where ethnic identification occurs is a space where evalua-
tions and judgments are shared. This comes very close to Stuart Hall’s pro-
posal that culture may be defined as a sharing of meanings.12 Barth highlights
the fact that this kind of sharing of meanings is central to the construction and
maintenance of distinct ethnicity, as this presupposes that there are criteria
which may include, and exclude, individuals.

Negotiating national culture I: Tornedalian literary history

In 2007, the first volume of a Tornedalian literary history, Den tornedals-
finska litteraturen, was published in Swedish by the publishing house Barents,
which specializes in material related to Tornedalian culture and the language
Meänkieli (‘our language’), previously called Tornedalian Finnish.13 Neither
of its authors, Bengt Pohjanen and Kirsti Johansson, is affiliated to an aca-
demic institution. Both are Swedish Tornedalians engaged in Tornedalian
cultural mobilization.14 In 2009, a second volume was published.15 From the
vantage point of academic research, both volumes may be seen as rather

12
Hall, “Introduction,” 2.
13
Bengt Pohjanen & Kirsi Johansson, Den tornedalsfinska litteraturen: Från Kexi
till Liksom [Tornedalian Finnish literature: From Kexi to Liksom] (Överkalix: Barents,
2007).
14
Anne Heith, “Voicing Otherness in Postcolonial Sweden: Bengt Pohjanen’s
Deconstruction of Hegemonic Ideas of Cultural Identity,” in The Angel of History:
Literature, History and Culture, ed. Vesa Haapala, Hannamari Helander, Anna Holl-
sten, Pirjo Lyytikäinen & Rita Paqvalén (Helsinki: University of Helsinki, 2009):
140–47; Anne Heith, “Nils Holgersson Never Saw Us: A Tornedallian Literary His-
tory,” in Cold Matters: Cultural Perspectives of Snow, Ice and Cold, ed. Heidi Hans-
son & Cathrine Norberg (Umeå: Umeå University, 2009): 209–21.
15
Bengt Pohjanen & Kirsi Johansson, Den tornedalsfinska litteraturen: Från Kal-
kkimaa till Hilja Byström [Tornedalian Finnish literature: From Hilja Byström to
Kalkkimaa] (Överkalix: Barents, 2009)
a Challenging and Negotiating National Borders 81

amateurish, grass-root projects. However, this does not imply that they are
without interest as objects of academic research, as they also exemplify a
trend in the writing of literary history during the past few decades. This trend
involves a problematization of the role of history for narrating the nation. As a
result, national histories are being examined critically and alternative histories
have been proposed. The development may be related to the increased con-
cern for minorities in advanced industrial societies.16 Furthermore, it may be
related to anticolonial and postcolonial currents which challenge the notion of
history as the narration of ‘the many as one.’17 Against this backdrop, the
writing of an alternative Tornedalian literary history can be understood as
affiliated to political and theoretical projects which question the cultural
homogenization brought about by modernity. It may also be seen as a re-
sponse to transformations of contemporary Swedish political visions, ex-
pressed in a 2008 Government Policy Paper which highlights the importance
of producing knowledge about the intangible culture of national minorities.18
The 2007 and the 2009 volumes proposing a Tornedalian literary tradition
are unconventional in a number of respects when compared to traditional
Swedish literary history. One difference is that they are explicitly ethnified
constructions. With Barth’s discussion of the role of bordering for the con-
struction of ethnic categories in mind, the ethnification in question may be
characterized as the proposal of borders which distinguish the Tornedalians
from both a Swedish and a Finnish ethnicity. The use of the term “tornedals-
finsk” (Tornedalian Finnish) in the titles is interesting, as it reflects controver-
sies in the Swedish Tornedalian community. The ethnonym, adopted in 1981
when an association for the preservation of the Tornedalian language and cul-
ture in Sweden was established, is ‘Tornedalian’. The name of the association,
“Svenska tornedalingars riksförbund,” literally means ‘the association of
Swedish Tornedalians’. This implies that Swedish citizenship is being evoked

16
Patricia Hill Collins & John Solomos, “Introduction: Situating Race and Ethnic
Studies,” in The S A G E Handbook of Race and Ethnic Studies, ed. Patricia Hill Collins
& John Solomos (Thousand Oaks C A & London: Sage, 2010): 5.
17
Homi K. Bhabha, The Location of Culture (London & New York: Routledge,
2008)
18
“Från erkännande till egenmakt: Regeringens strategi för de nationella minorite-
terna” [From acknowledgment to empowerment. The Government’s strategy for the
national minorities], Policy Document 2008/09: 158, http://www.regeringen.se/sb
/d/11298/a/122769 (accessed 28 June 2012).
82 ANNE HEITH a

together with Tornedalian geographical space. Today, the previously used de-
nomination, ‘Tornedalian Finn’, is perceived by many Swedish Tornedalians
as problematic because, in a Swedish national context, it could suggest that
they are not ‘real’ Swedes. Against this backdrop, the adoption of the new
ethnonym ‘Tornedalian’ represents an attempt to find a self-definition that
would not be excluding in this context. This means that Pohjanen and Johans-
son’s conspicuous deployment of the term ‘Tornedalian Finnish’ may be con-
troversial among Swedish Tornedalians. However, one major point of the two
volumes is that Tornedalian literary history is not a history of Swedish or
Finnish literature, but of the literature of Meänmaa (literally ‘our land’), a
geographical space on both sides of the Swedish–Finnish border. This is high-
lighted by the back-cover illustration of both volumes: a map with a shaded
area on both sides of the border rivers. This shaded area with diffuse contours
shows Meänmaa, where the Tornedalians have traditionally lived. The map,
the name of the land, and a Meänmaa flag in the centre of the illustration all
function as the marking of borders which distinguish the Tornedalian from
both an exclusively Swedish and an exclusively Finnish national context.

F I G U R E 5: Map of Meänmaa, ‘our land’: back-cover illustration

of Pohjanen and Johansson’s Tornedalian Finnish literary history

The use of the term ‘Tornedalian Finnish’ invokes belonging to a Finno-Ugric

culture. Considering that Meänkieli is a Finno-Ugric language, this is hardly
surprising. The demarcations which signal Tornedalian differences, when
a Challenging and Negotiating National Borders 83

compared to Swedish and Finnish cultural traditions in a nation-state context,

function as a kind of border-maintenance, distinguishing Tornedalian culture.
Furthermore, the fact that the borders of Meänmaa are not distinct functions
as a visual representation of overlapping and diversity which challenges re-
presentations of homogeneity and purity.

Negotiating national culture II:

A Sámi women’s literary tradition
In 1998, the first doctoral thesis entirely in Sámi was published by the Sámi
publishing house D A T .19 Vuokko Hirvonen’s pioneering study is also the
first academic dissertation to analyse the emergence, genealogy, and historical
and ideological setting of a Sámi women’s literary tradition.20 In 2008, the
study became accessible to a wider readership when it was published in Eng-
lish under the title Voices from Sápmi: Sámi Women’s Path to Authorship.21
When depicting the backdrop of the emergence of Sámi women’s literature in
the 1970s, Hirvonen emphasizes impulses from contemporary feminist and
ethno-political movements. Her point of departure is that Sámi women have a
marginal position not only in literature but also in the dominant majority cul-
ture, as well as in traditional Sámi culture itself. This involves the claim that
Sámi women have been subjected to triple discrimination, as intersections of
ethnicity, linguistic minority status (Northern Sámi is an officially acknowl-
edged minority language in Sweden and in Norway), and gender have contri-
buted to their disempowerment. Hirvonen’s description of the emergence of a
tradition of Sámi women authors may be characterized ideologically as anti-
colonial, or decolonizing, feminism. This, of course, adds complexity to the
issue of ‘the marginal’.
Hirvonen’s focus on intersections of linguistic mobilization, ethnicity, and
gender reveals that there is an ongoing negotiation in the Sámi community
concerning central concepts such as emancipation and the complexities of
constructing a Sámi cultural tradition. Although it is not explicitly stated, her

19
Vuokko Hirvonen, Sámeeatnama jienat  sápmelaš nissona bálggis girjeþállin
(Guovdageaidnu: D A T , 1998).
20
Anne Heith, “Vuokko Hirvonen, Voices from Sapmi,” Journal of Northern
Studies 1 (2010): 127–32.
21
Vuokko Hirvonen, Voices from Sápmi: Sámi Women’s Path to Authorship
(Kautokeino: D A T , 2008).
84 ANNE HEITH a

discussion indicates that the shaping of a Sámi cultural tradition is a complex,

dynamic, diversified and, at times, agonistic process, whose actors do not
necessarily share the same values when it comes to evaluating various aspects
of traditional culture. For example, when discussing the Sámi woman poet
Rauni Magga Lukkari, Hirvonen emphasizes her critique of traditional Sámi
culture as oppressive for women. With Lyotard’s notion of conflicting lan-
guage games in mind, this may be described as a situation in which games
with different rules conflict.22 The game-playing presented in Hirvonen’s
thesis has the character of a delegitimization of the male-centred games of
anti-colonialism and postcolonialism, when the values and practices of these
conflict with anti- and postcolonial feminist games, whose overarching rule is
that gender-equality is the goal to strive for. What both ‘games’ have in com-
mon is that they are incompatible with the moral values of the game of homo-
genizing modernity which has shaped the building of the modern Nordic wel-
fare states. Further, they are incompatible with the nostalgic games played by
today’s political groupings mourning the loss of an imagined state of national
homogeneity and purity.
The fact that Hirvonen’s thesis was published first in Sámi and later in
English points to the complex issue of address. When the thesis was published
in Sámi, this made it accessible to a comparatively small readership. Hirvonen
herself addresses this issue when discussing the existence of several Sámi
languages and the fact that, as a result of assimilation politics and stigmatizing
marginalization, a great number of Sámi today do not know a Sámi lan-
guage.23 Nevertheless, when Hirvonen writes her thesis in Sámi, this is in ac-
cordance with the project of linguistic revitalization. In addition, it testifies to
the symbolic function of language, as language may function as a marker of
group identity, even if all members of the group do not know the language in
question.24 The English translation, published in 2008, made the book acces-
sible to a larger readership, both Sámi and non-Sámi. The translation points to
the fact that there are multiple addresses and that the readership is segmented.
Both Pohjanen and Johansson’s survey of Tornedalian Finnish literature and

22
Jean–François Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, tr.
Geoff Bennington & Brian Massumi (La Condition Postmoderne: rapport sur le
savoir, 1979; Manchester: Manchester U P , 1984).
23
Vuokko Hirvonen, Voices from Sápmi, 49–55.
24
John Edwards, Language and Identity: Key Topics in Sociolinguistics (Cam-
bridge: Cambridge U P , 2009): 2.
a Challenging and Negotiating National Borders 85

Hirvonen’s thesis on a Sámi women’s literary tradition are connected to

changing structures which have transformed the rules of the games for writing
and publishing explicitly ethnified literary histories. On a political level, these
changes are manifested in legislation which protects and strengthens minority
languages in the nation-state and in statements by the political elite, such as
the Swedish Government Policy Paper “Från erkännande till egenmakt.” On a
more local level, the establishment of publishing houses which publish in
Sámi and Meänkieli have been essential for the development of a written lan-
guage. However, this development is not separate from the sphere of national
politics, as local publishers are dependent on state-grants to a considerable
extent. This is one example of how new rules for explicit ethnification of
cultural production may promote alternatives to the paradigm of cultural
homogenization.
The examples of the Tornedalian literary history and the proposal of a Sámi
women’s literary tradition show that there is no ‘essential’ marginal position,
but that ‘the marginal’ is contextual and related to negotiations and perfor-
mances. As negotiations and performances, both Pohjanen and Johansson’s
literary history and Hirvonen’s academic study aim at transforming percep-
tions and shared meanings – what Stuart Hall calls ‘culture’.25 Both speci-
mens of explicitly ethnified literary history differ from traditional, national
constructions of literary history in the Nordic nation-states. While ethnicity is
emphasized in the Tornedalian and Sámi examples, the practice of writing
traditional literary history implies that ethnicity is not highlighted as a rele-
vant category which shapes artistic production, constructions of readerships,
and interpretation. However, this does not mean that traditional histories have
rid themselves of ethnicity. Rather, it implies that majority ethnicity functions
as a tacit norm.26 Traditional literary histories presenting narratives of a peo-
ple with a common culture, language, and history may be described as tacitly
ethnified constructions, whose implicit nation and norm is constituted by the
ethnic majority.27

25
Stuart Hall, “Introduction,” 1.
26
Steve Fenton & Stephen May, “Ethnicity, Nation and ‘Race’: Connections and
Disjunctures,” in Ethnonational Identities, ed. Fenton & May (Basingstoke & New
York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002): 10–11.
27
Fenton & May, “Ethnicity, Nation and ‘Race’: Connections and Disjunctures,”
10–11.
86 ANNE HEITH a

Multiplying narratives of the nation

The fact that ethnic and linguistic minorities in the Nordic nation-states
mobilize by writing their own histories might be taken as an indication that
grand narrative has failed to take them into account. The writing of Torne-
dalian literary history, which bears witness to a rejection of the metanarrative
of the modern Swedish nation-state – which, in turn, comprises the narrative
of the Social Democratic People’s Home – may be interpreted as one form of
protest against historical exclusion from the imagined community of the
people. Although it is a theme which has not been much discussed, Per Albin
Hansson (who launched the concept of the Swedish People’s Home, folk-
hemmet) envisaged the people as a community of ethnic Swedes: “Per Albin
Hansson’s classical version of the Swedish People’s Home was without doubt
meant for ethnic Swedes.”28 However, perceptions and circumstances have
changed over recent decades. The Government Policy Paper “Från erkän-
nande till egenmakt” is one manifestation of a transformation of perceptions
influencing communal political visions which grant legitimacy to alternative
national histories produced by ethnic and linguistic minorities. By including
the voices of historically marginalized minorities in the present-day narrative
of the nation, contemporary visions have the potential to add new dimensions
to the issue of legitimizing new inclusive narratives, as well as acting to coun-
ter socially divisive structures connected with visions of the exclusion of
alternative cultural production seen as a threat to imagined national purity. Of
course, they also have the potential to provoke agonistic responses from poli-
tical groupings that refuse to acknowledge or include narratives of ‘multicul-
tural’ and polynational states. It is obvious that concern about minorities,
migration, and ‘multiculturalism’ has provoked countermeasures among
groupings that wish to protect the perceived purity of the nation, as well as the
comparative high standard of welfare of the Nordic countries. The situation
may be described as a struggle among various visions of society.

‘Minority ethnicity’ as intervention

The negotiation of national traditions performed by Pohjanen and Johansson’s
Swedish Tornedalian literary histories and Hirvonen’s study of Sámi women

28
Björn Hettne, Sverker Sörlin & Ulf Østergård, Den globala nationalismen:
Nationalstatens historia och framtid [global nationalism: the history and future of the
nation-state] (Stockholm: S N S , 2nd rev. ed. 2006): 400. (My tr.)
a Challenging and Negotiating National Borders 87

writers is anti-elitist in a nation-state context. Both studies pose questions

about the authority of the foundation for the writing of the nation which has
marginalized the Tornedalians and the Sámi in nation-building contexts. Hir-
vonen’s thesis draws attention to the multiplicity of alternative narratives
within Sámi ethnicity by highlighting the role of gender, age, and historical
context for the production of diverse and, at times, contradictory, agonistic
narratives. The fact that these alternative ethnified narratives have been pro-
duced, published, and recognized in a wider social sphere testifies to social
and political changes which have opened up a space for the production and
dissemination of alternative knowledge. In 2000, Sweden ratified the Euro-
pean Charter for Regional or Minority Languages and the Council of Europe
Framework Conventions for the Protection of National Minorities. As a result,
Sámi and Meänkieli have become officially recognized minority languages in
Sweden. A similar development has occurred in Norway, where Sámi and the
language of the Finno-Ugric Kven minority have been officially recognized.
In 1999, Norway ratified the Council of Europe’s Framework Convention for
the Protection of National Minorities, and, in 2005, the Kven language was
granted the status of a minority language within the same framework. The
signing of these conventions marks a shift away from the implementation of
assimilationist politics as well as the vision of a culturally and linguistically
homogeneous population. This development may be related to a wider con-
cern with minorities in advanced industrial societies and to issues of belong-
ing and identity politics:
The growth of identity politics may be seen to be challenging cultural
homogeneity and providing spaces for marginal groups to assert the
legacy and importance of their respective voices and experiences.29

When a political space has been established which allows minorities to

define themselves and produce alternative traditions, this involves a change in
perceptions. In discussing variations in the narration of the nation, Bhabha
highlights the potential for minorities to challenge the cultural homogeniza-
tion of modernity:
The marginal or ‘minority’ is not the space of a celebratory, or
utopian, self-marginalization. It is a much more substantial interven-
tion into those justifications of modernity – progress, homogeneity,

29
Patricia Hill Collins & John Solomos, “Introduction: Situating Race and Ethnic
Studies,” in The S A G E Handbook of Race and Ethnic Studies, 6.
88 ANNE HEITH a

cultural organicism, the deep nation, the long past – that rationalize the
authoritarian, ‘normalizing’ tendencies within cultures in the name of
the national interest or the ethnic prerogative.30

Although not all aspects of Sámi and Tornedalian interventions in the name of
ethnic mobilization and identity politics dispense with notions of “cultural
organicism, the deep nation, the long past,” they function as challenges to his-
tories of homogenizing modernity, complicit with Nordic social constructions
of whiteness which have favoured the nation’s ethnic majority. Projects of
establishing Sámi and Tornedalian alternative histories may contain elements
of teleology which they share with all narratives about the emancipation of
the oppressed. Yet they also provide a critique of the rationalizing of normal-
izing tendencies which have established the majority as the norm. It may be
argued that the mere ‘ethnification’ of cultural production draws attention to a
certain systemic complexity:
most states are multinational (comprising a number of national minor-
ities) and / or polyethnic (comprising a range of immigrant groups).
Indeed, most countries in the world have been historically, and remain
today, a combination of the two.31
One effect of the homogeneity narrative has been that a widespread belief has
arisen among majorities that ‘ethnicity’ does not matter, or that it is somehow
connected with the ‘Others’: “ethnicity as a salient feature of identity tends to
remain collocated with both ‘minority’ and ‘outsider’ status.”32 When analys-
ing reasons why the concept of ‘majority ethnicity’ may seem like an oxy-
moron to members of ethnic majorities, Fenton and May propose that this is
related to a failure to recognize or acknowledge that “all groups – both minor-
ity and majority ones – incorporate an ethnic dimension”:
the failure of the latter to recognise or acknowledge this has more to do
with differential power relations between groups than with anything
else. Ethnic majority status is an unaccustomed thought simply be-
cause the majority tends to assume, without much reflection, the
normalised and normative status of their identity, and its (unques-
tioned) place of pre-eminence. In other words, majority group mem-

30
Homi K. Bhabha, “Introduction: Narrating the Nation,” in Nation and Narration,
ed. Bhabha (London & New York: Routledge, 2008): 4.
31
Fenton & May, “Ethnicity, Nation and ‘Race’: Connections and Disjunctures,” 6.
32
“Ethnicity, Nation and ‘Race’: Connections and Disjunctures”, 10.
a Challenging and Negotiating National Borders 89

bers, being neither “ethnic” nor a “minority”, simply represent mod-

ernity, or the modern (civilised) way of life. By extension, this tacit
ethnic status almost certainly includes the equating of an ethnic
majority with a (or even, the) nation.33

Concluding remarks
Discussing the dynamic between established traditions and the emergence of
alternative histories, Bhabha highlights the role of performativity: “Terms of
cultural engagement, whether antagonistic or affiliative, are produced perfor-
matively.”34 In these processes of performative cultural production, the alter-
natives proposed by minorities may be seen as responses to historical trans-
formations related to the legitimacy of minorities to challenge established
power-structures interlinked with social constructions of norms and normality
that have excluded ethnic minorities:
The social articulation of difference, from the minority perspective, is
a complex, on-going negotiation that seeks to authorize cultural
hybridities that emerge in moments of historical transformation. The
‘right’ to signify from the periphery of authorized power and privilege
does not depend on the persistence of tradition.35

‘Articulation of difference’ and ‘tradition’ are key concepts, both of which

may be related to the identity-politics of ethnic and linguistic minorities such
as the Sámi and the Tornedalians. Tradition bestows a partial form of identi-
fication.36 With respect to the dynamic and multi-faceted character of pro-
cesses of identification, Bhabha highlights the transformative, anti-founda-
tional power of performances that challenge paradigms of cultural homo-
geneity:
In restaging the past it introduces other, incommensurable cultural
temporalities into the invention of tradition. This process estranges any
immediate access to an originary identity or a ‘received’ tradition.37

33
“Ethnicity, Nation and ‘Race’: Connections and Disjunctures,” 10–11.
34
Homi K. Bhabha, “Introduction: Locations of Culture,” 3.
35
Bhabha, “Introduction: Locations of Culture,” 3.
36
“Introduction: Locations of Culture,” 3.
37
“Introduction: Locations of Culture,” 3.
90 ANNE HEITH a

In Bhabha’s account, ‘articulation of difference’ functions as a strategy for the

restaging of the past which introduces incommensurability. The main argu-
ment of the present essay has been that the alternative Sámi and Tornedalian
histories, which have been used as examples, may be seen as performances of
fractures in Nordic modernity discourses which have excluded and othered
ethnic minorities.

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5–38.
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Nation,” in Bhabha, The Location of Culture, 199–244.
——. “Introduction: Locations of Culture,” in Bhabha, The Location of Culture, 1–27.
——. “Introduction: Narrating the Nation,” in Nation and Narration, ed. Homi
Bhabha (London & New York: Routledge, 2008): 1–7.
——. The Location of Culture (1994; London & New York: Routledge, 2008).
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Studies,” in The S A G E Handbook of Race and Ethnic Studies, ed. Patricia Hill
Collins & John Solomos (Thousand Oaks C A & London: Sage, 2010): 1–16.
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Cambridge U P , 2009).
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junctures,” in Ethnonational Identities, ed. Steve Fenton & Stephen May (Basing-
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——. “Nils Holgersson Never Saw Us: A Tornedallian Literary History,” in Cold
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——. “Vuokko Hirvonen, Voices from Sapmi,” Journal of Northern Studies 1 (2010):
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——. Voices from Sápmi: Sámi Women’s Path to Authorship (Kautokeino: D A T ,
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——. Den tornedalsfinska litteraturen: Från Kalkkimaa till Hilja Byström (Överkalix:
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a
The Visual Representation of the Boundary
Between Past and Present
Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard
and Suzman’s The Free State1

L IDA K RÜGER

Introduction

T H E F I R S T D E M O C R A T I C E L E C T I O N S in South Africa in 1994 marked

a definite temporal boundary between the past (the time of apartheid)
and the present (the time of democracy). Viljoen and Van der Merwe2
describe the state of South Africa after apartheid as liminal – a state usually
associated with postcolonial contexts, as postcolonialism entails social
change. Gilbert and Tompkins define postcolonialism as an “engagement with
and contestation of colonialism’s discourses, power structures, and social
hierarchies,”3 its specifically political agenda being “to dismantle the hege-
monic boundaries and the determinants that create unequal relations of power

1
Preliminary note: The Cherry Orchard was read in translation. Suzman used a
literal translation of the play by Tania Alexander in her adaptation. However, no such
translation could be found in print. I have therefore used a version of the play by Pam
Gems from the literal translation by Tania Alexander. Although the full title of Janet
Suzman’s play is The Free State: A South African Response to Chekhov’s “The Cherry
Orchard”, I shall refer to it throughout this essay by the main title only.
2
Hein Viljoen & Chris N. van der Merwe, “Introduction: A Poetics of Liminality
and Hybridity,” in Beyond the Threshold: Explorations of Liminality in Literature, ed.
Hein Viljoen & Chris N. van der Merwe (New York: Peter Lang, 2007): 2.
3
Helen Gilbert & Joanne Tompkins, Post-Colonial Drama: Theory, Practice, Poli-
tics (London: Routledge, 1996): 2.
94 LIDA KRÜGER a

based on binary oppositions.”4 In essence, then, postcolonialism is concerned

with the dissolving of the boundaries between various binary oppositions such
as ‘us’ vs ‘them’, ‘black’ vs ‘white’, or ‘colonized’ vs ‘colonizer’. Yet, as
social change implies the crossing of a boundary between past and present,
postcolonialism also creates new boundaries as it dismantles old ones.
While the concept of boundaries is investigated in all genres of (notably
postcolonial) literature, drama is a genre which offers interesting possibilities
in this regard. Because drama is intended to be performed, it is an audio-
visual medium. Spatial or even conceptual boundaries can be explored visual-
ly on stage, as Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard and Janet Suzman’s South
African adaptation, The Free State, show. This essay aims to investigate how
the boundary between past and present is not only described in these plays but
also shown visually through enactment and the attempts by the characters to
re-create the past.
The Cherry Orchard depicts a Russian noblewoman, Lyubov Ranyev-
skaya, and her brother, Leonid Gayev, in the process of losing their estate
because of their extravagant life-style. After the abolition of serfdom, the
Gayev family has to compete economically with the lower classes but are un-
able to do so, leading to the bankruptcy of their estate. Lopakhin, their peasant-
born businessman friend, devises a plan which would save the family’s estate,
but one that entails the chopping-down of their beloved cherry orchard to
make space for a practical housing development. Unable to contemplate the
loss of their orchard, the family rejects the plan, thereby losing their estate.
Although Lyubov claims to be very attached to the estate, she gave it over to
the charge of her adopted daughter, Varya, after her husband died of alcohol
abuse and her infant son drowned. The play opens with Lyubov returning to
the home of her childhood and youth after an absence of five years. Chekhov
uses the medium of theatre to explore the ensuing juxtaposition of past and
present, both verbally and visually.
When Suzman transposed this text to the South African context, she metic-
ulously preserved the structure of Chekhov’s play. The plot of The Free State
is essentially the same as that of The Cherry Orchard, although the setting has
been changed from early-twentieth-century Russia to post-apartheid South
Africa. Lyubov Ranyevskaya becomes Lulu Rademeyer, who, with her
brother, Leo Guyver, is not prepared to cut down her cherry orchard in order
to save her estate. Leko Lebaka, their black businessman friend, then buys the

4
Gilbert & Tompkins, Post-Colonial Drama, 3.
a The Visual Representation of the Past/Present Boundary 95

land at auction, after various failed attempts to persuade the family to divide
their land into plots to be leased out. As whites, Lulu and Leo can no longer
enjoy the benefits of apartheid, and need to compete for business and employ-
ment opportunities on the same footing as those the apartheid government
once regarded as inferior. Although Suzman keeps to Chekhov’s structure in
her text, she reduces his visual juxtaposition between past and present. How-
ever, she adds certain elements to the play which are specifically relevant to
the postcolonial context, such as a preoccupation with politics and the sym-
bolic significance of the farm.

Social change in Russia and South Africa

Although Chekhov’s Russia is not considered a postcolonial context, it is a
place concerned with a similar boundary between past and present, as serf-
dom had been abolished the year after Chekhov’s birth5 although the abdi-
cation of Tsar Nicholas I I , which marked the end of the Romanov dynasty
and Imperial Russia, happened only thirteen years after his death in 1904.6 By
the time he wrote The Cherry Orchard in 1904, the older and established
members of the nobility – defined by lineage and landownership – were
losing influence and were ill-equipped to compete with people from all
classes.7 Although poverty persisted, eighty-five percent of former serfs were
in possession of the land they worked by 1881.8 According to Ralph Fisher,9
tension arose between different social spheres, as educated and wealthy Rus-
sians became aware of the plight of the less fortunate and became critical of
the status quo.
Most Russian authors of the time, notably Tolstoy, himself a landowner,
committed themselves to the peasants’ cause. Chekhov, by contrast, chose to

5
Larisa Zakharova, “The Reign of Alexander I I : A Watershed?” in The Cambridge
History of Russia, vol. 2: Imperial Russia, 1689–1917, ed. Dominic Lieven (Cam-
bridge: Cambridge U P , 2006): 593.
6
Eric Lohr, “War and Revolution, 1914–1917,” in The Cambridge History of Russia,
vol. 2: Imperial Russia, 1689–1917, ed. Dominic Lieven (Cambridge: Cambridge U P ,
2006): 655.
7
Ralph T. Fisher, Jr., “Chekhov’s Russia: A Historian’s View,” in A Chekhov Com-
panion, ed. Toby W. Clyman (Westport C T : Greenwood, 1985): 4.
8
Tim Chapman, Imperial Russia: 1801–1905 (London: Routledge, 2001): 93.
9
Fisher, “Chekhov’s Russia,” 4.
96 LIDA KRÜGER a

remain impartial in his work.10 Because he avoided taking a specific political

stance, Chekhov’s work was often criticized by Russian critics of his time as
being morally indifferent, aimless, and pessimistic.11 Although Maxim Gorky
was the first of Chekhov’s contemporaries to acknowledge his ambivalence
and subtlety,12 it was only well after the Bolshevik Revolution that Chekhov’s
work was generally appreciated for its innovatively subtle and humanist
themes.13
When contemplating these changes and their effects in Russian history,
one can clearly see a similarity to the South African context. South Africa’s
first free and democratic elections in 1994 marked the end of the apartheid
government. The apartheid regime was based on the social segregation of dif-
ferent races, and the hegemony of the white race.14 Like the Russians at the
start of the twentieth century, many South Africans, particularly writers and
theatre makers, became aware of the plight of the non-white South African.
By the 1980s, a significant number of plays were directed against the apart-
heid regime but, after the advent of democracy, playwrights emerged who
focused on creating “a common identity for all South Africans.”15
While Chekhov’s play is set forty-three years after the abolition of serf-
dom, and shows how the accompanying social structures are slowly coming
undone, the structures of apartheid had not yet been dismantled at the time
Suzman’s play is set (six months after South Africa’s first democratic elec-
tions). Consequently, the temporal setting is also markedly liminal. Although
both contexts are characterized by a liminal state, these states differ. In
Chekhov’s context, societal norms have already started to change, despite the
former nobility’s still clinging to their outdated way of life. Suzman’s context,
by contrast, is characterized by a mixture of relief and fear about what the
future might hold.

10
Victor Emeljanow, “Introduction” to Chekhov: The Critical Heritage, ed. Emel-
janow (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1981): 1–2.
11
Victor Terras, “Chekhov at Home: Russian Criticism,” in A Chekhov Companion,
ed. Toby W. Clyman (Westport C T : Greenwood, 1985): 167–68.
12
Terras, “Chekhov at Home,” 168–69.
13
“Chekhov at Home,” 180.
14
Hermann Buhr Giliomee & Bernard Mbenga, New History of South Africa (Cape
Town: Tafelberg, 2007): 314.
15
Charles J. Fourie, “Introduction” to New South African Plays, ed. Fourie (London:
Aurora Metro, 2006): 7.
a The Visual Representation of the Past/Present Boundary 97

It is in this climate of celebration and reconciliation that Suzman appro-

priates Chekhov’s play about social change to the postcolonial context of
post-apartheid South Africa.

Bakhtin and theatre theory

The concept of ‘dialogism’, as conceived by Mikhail Bakhtin, has been suc-
cessfully applied to postcolonial texts, as the publication of works such as
Homi Bhabha’s Nation and Narration and The Location of Culture testifies.16
Bakhtin’s notion of ‘heteroglossia’ can shed light on issues of hybridity in
postcolonialism, while the concept of ‘carnival’ can be used to elucidate the
binary opposition between Self and Other, which is also prevalent in postcolo-
nial texts. The idea of the ‘chronotope’, for its part, can address issues about
space and place. For the purposes of this study, the chronotope is defined as a
literary image that conflates time and space. This image is imbued with both
the physical marks of time and the histories of the characters who have en-
gaged, and continue to engage, with it.17 The chronotope creates a point of
reference for the interaction between past and present, as it provides the
author with a means by which to depict certain motifs, themes, and ideas re-
lating to time and space.18
Despite Bakhtin’s own dismissal of drama,19 his concept of dialogism is
nonetheless particularly applicable to the genre – and, more especially, post-
colonial drama – as various scholars have argued.20 In essence, Bakhtin’s

16
Homi K. Bhabha, ed. Nation and Narration (London: Routledge, 1990), and The
Location of Culture (London: Routledge, 1994).
17
Mikhail M. Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays by M.M. Bakhtin,
ed. Caryl Emerson, tr. Caryl Emerson & Michael Holquist (Voprosy literatury i
estetiki, 1975; Austin: U of Texas P , 1981): 84.
18
John Pier, “Chronotope,” in Routledge Encyclopedia of Narrative Theory, ed.
David Herman, Manfred Jahn & Marie–Laure Ryan (London: Routledge, 2005): 64.
19
Mikhail M. Bakhtin, Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics, ed. & tr. Caryl Emerson,
intro. Wayne C. Booth (Problemy poetiki Dostoevskogo, 1929; Minneapolis: U of
Minnesota P , 1984): 17.
20
See, for example, Helen Gilbert & Jacqueline Lo, “Performing Hybridity in Post-
colonial Monodrama,” Journal of Commonwealth Literature 32.1 (1997): 5–19, and
Helene Keyssar, “Drama and the Dialogic Imagination: The Heidi Chronicles and Fefu
and her Friends,” Modern Drama 34.1 (March 1991): 88–106.
98 LIDA KRÜGER a

claims – that dramatic language is too ‘thin’ to be dialogic21 and that drama
needs a ‘monolithic unity’ which does not allow a dialogic situation22 – have
been contested by these scholars on the basis of theatre semiotics.
Theatre semioticians such as Keir Elam argue that drama uses various
signs to communicate.23 The theatrical sign can be described as ‘rich’, as it
consists of various interacting sign systems. Ever since the Prague struc-
turalist JiĜi Veltruský’s assertion that “all that is on the stage is a sign,”24 it has
been taken for granted that nothing on stage is insignificant. Theatre commu-
nicates verbally as well as non-verbally. The way in which actors deliver a
line, their facial expressions, gestures, costumes, the spatial organization of
the stage, lighting, and sound – all communicate certain things to the audi-
ence. Elam accordingly describes performance as a “multi-channelled, multi-
systemic communication system.”25
Concerning space, the theatrical sign is especially rich because space is not
only described but is also shown visually. In addition, the theatrical sign is
connotative and transformable, which means that various meanings can be
ascribed to one sign-vehicle.26 A sign-vehicle may thus have more than one
meaning, and more than one sign-vehicle may represent the same object or
idea.
Consequently, dramatic language is more complex than Bakhtin’s descrip-
tion of it; a concept such as the chronotope would seem especially applicable
to plays such as The Cherry Orchard and The Free State which deal speci-
fically with space, place, and characters’ attachment to them. This study will
discuss these two plays in terms of Bakhtin’s concept of the chronotope.

21
Simon Dentith, Bakhtinian Thought: An Introductory Reader (London: Rout-
ledge, 1995): 86.
22
Bakhtin, Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics, 17.
23
Keir Elam, The Semiotics of Theatre and Drama (1980; London: Routledge,
2002): 24.
24
JiĜi Veltruský, “Man and Object in the Theater” (1940), in A Prague School
Reader on Esthetics, Literary Structure and Style, ed. Paul L. Garvin (Washington
D C : Georgetown U P , 1964): 84, quoted in Elam, The Semiotics of Theatre and
Drama, 6.
25
The Semiotics of Theatre and Drama, 39.
26
The Semiotics of Theatre and Drama, 9–10.
a The Visual Representation of the Past/Present Boundary 99

The boundary between past and present in The Cherry Orchard

As already mentioned, The Cherry Orchard is a play very much concerned
with the past. The main character, Lyubov Ranyevskaya, longs nostalgically
for the past in which her family’s position as gentry was still secure, and in
which she enjoyed a carefree childhood. But Chekhov does not convey this
nostalgia merely through Lyubov’s recollections and visible attachment to the
site of her childhood – the cherry orchard; he also uses the visuality of theatre
to show us the past and present superimposed. In this way, the house, its vari-
ous rooms, and the orchard become chronotopes which are described to the
reader /audience of the play while, at the same time, becoming visible through
imaginative generational shifts well as the parody of a ball held in Act Three.
Lyubov’s attachment to the house and orchard is clear from Act One, when
she returns for the first time in five years. In a study of the significance of
space and place, Gaston Bachelard explores the connection between memory
and place. He describes a person’s remembrance of a childhood home in later
years and asserts that, in this recollection, memory and imagination remain
closely associated.27 The memory of former homes forms images that, in
dreams, co-penetrate other inhabited places; the memory of the childhood
home always retains the treasures of former days. This home will remain in its
former inhabitant’s mind, imbued with the frozen image of childhood.
These notions are clearly evident in The Cherry Orchard. J.L. Styan has
remarked on the ingenuity of Chekhov’s starting The Cherry Orchard in the
nursery of the old family home.28 As most of the characters must have spent
some time in the nursery when they were children, they are reminded of their
childhood when they enter the nursery. The reader /audience becomes witness
to the characters’ recollections of their childhood or past and, as these en-
trances in Act One introduce the characters, it is clear from the exposition that
the past is a very present force in this play.
When Lyubov enters the nursery, for example, she confirms Styan’s ob-
servation: “I feel a child again.”29 Beholding the orchard, she later comments:

27
Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space, tr. Maria Jolas (La Poétique de l’espace,
1958, tr. 1964; Boston M A : Beacon, 1994): 5.
28
J.L. Styan, Chekhov in Performance: A Commentary on the Major Plays (Cam-
bridge: Cambridge U P , 1971): 250.
29
Anton Pavlovich Chekhov, The Cherry Orchard, in a version by Pam Gems, tr.
Tania Alexander, ed. Brian Woolland (VishnevyƱ sad, 1904; tr. Cambridge: Cambridge
U P , 1996): 18. Further page references are in the main text.
100 LIDA KRÜGER a

Oh my lovely innocent childhood! Sleeping here in the nursery, look-

ing out into the orchard, … every morning waking up to happiness.
And here it is… the same, just the same as it was, nothing’s changed.
[She laughs with delight.] All white… oh my dear orchard! Stormy
autumn, wicked cold winter and here you are, young and fresh and full
of happiness again, … all the darkness over, the angels haven’t for-
saken you. (29)

What becomes evident when Lyubov speaks these words is her idealization of
her childhood in the nursery, so that her recollections become a form of
parody of the past. This corresponds to Bachelard’s ideas about memories of
the home; he describes a recollection of a childhood home as entering a
“motionless childhood” – motionless, as it is merely a fixation of happiness.30
Norman Klein describes this type of static image in a person’s memory as an
imago.31 An imago is a frozen, idealized image of a place in a person’s past
which, by being idealized, constitutes a kind of temporal distortion. Conse-
quently, Lyubov still regards the orchard as pristine and pure, just as she did
in her childhood and youth, even though it is not fertile anymore, and remark-
able only for its size and beauty.
Chekhov also shows the reader /audience glimpses of this imago by sug-
gesting a strong resemblance between Lyubov and her daughter, Anya. Styan
suggests that, in the nursery, “Lyubov will see herself as a child, and here we
shall see Lyubov as a child when we watch her own daughter, Anya.”32 In this
scene, the actress playing the role of Anya will simultaneously portray Lyu-
bov in her own youth. In a Moscow Art Theatre production described by
Michel Saint–Denis, this effect is achieved when Anya enters the nursery in
which she was brought up and, under the guidance of Stanislavsky, “jumps on
to a sofa and, crouching on it, is caught up by a fit of that high–pitched laugh-
ter which is induced by a combination of tiredness and emotion.”33 This en-
trance evoked spontaneous applause from the audience of 2,500 people. Of
course, not every production of The Cherry Orchard will stage this scene in
this way, but this example illustrates the importance of emphasizing Anya’s

30
Bachelard, The Poetics of Space, 5–6.
31
Norman M. Klein, The History of Forgetting: Los Angeles and the Erasure of
Memory (London: Verso, 1997): 3–4.
32
Styan, Chekhov in Performance, 250.
33
Quoted in Chekhov in Performance, 255.
a The Visual Representation of the Past/Present Boundary 101

youth. In a letter to Nemirovich–Danchenko (co-founder of the Moscow Art

Theatre), Chekhov himself wrote:
Anya can be played by anyone at all, even a complete unknown, as
long as she is young and looks like a little girl and speaks in a
youthful, vibrant voice.34

The effect is completed later when Gayev confirms Anya’s resemblance to

her mother by telling her: “God bless you, dearest… oh, how like your mother
you are… Lyuba, she looks just as you did at her age” (22). After this con-
firmation, it is easy to imagine Anya as Lyubov when we see Lyubov remi-
niscing about her carefree childhood in the nursery while registering Anya’s
pronounced youthfulness at the same time. Chekhov stresses this effect even
further by including references to Lyubov’s mother. At the end of the play,
Lyubov reminisces about her mother as she says goodbye to the nursery for
the last time. She remarks to Gayev: “how Mother loved to walk in this room”
(79), and, directly afterwards, Anya calls her mother from outside: “Mama!”
(79). These events make it easy for the audience to imagine that Lyubov is her
mother, walking in the nursery, called by herself from the outside.
Another way in which Chekhov gives the reader /audience glimpses into
the characters’ pasts is by juxtaposing past and present in the third act, in
which the family hosts a ball. This ball is held on the night the orchard is
auctioned off, which confirms Lyubov’s impractical and spendthrift nature
and is also a last attempt to re-create the decadent and luxurious life-style she
enjoyed in her youth. However, the parodies of the past seen throughout the
play culminate in this attempt at re-creation.
For this act, the stage is divided into two areas: an upstage ballroom and a
downstage drawing room, separated by an archway. According to Styan, this
stage set-up represents a juxtaposition of past and present:
In the drawing-room itself we shall be loaded with the anxieties of the
present, while the action in the more formal ballroom beyond repre-
sents a parody of the gay past, the fading sights and sounds of innume-
rable parties on the estate from generation to generation. The sounds
pull us into the past, where, indeed, from time to time we escape with
members of the family.35

34
Anton Pavlovich Chekhov, Letters of Anton Chekhov, tr. Michael Henry Heim &
Simon Karlinsky, ed. & intro. Simon Karlinsky (London: The Bodley Head, 1973):
462.
35
Chekhov in Performance, 295.
102 LIDA KRÜGER a

As Styan aptly suggests, the imago of the past is again shown to the reader /
audience as it is represented by the upstage ballroom. However, this time, it is
also juxtaposed with the present. The first character to comment directly on
how badly the ball compares to those of the past, is Firs, the family’s lifelong
servant. According to him, the family’s balls were attended in the past by
generals and admirals, whereas the main guests at the present ball are the
stationmaster and a post-office clerk. Further, the housemaid, Dunyasha, has
permission to dance with the guests, which would have been unthinkable, of
course, in the heyday of the Russian gentry.
Yet, despite the noticeable contrast between past and present, Firs still be-
haves in ways which would have been appropriate in the past and which have
become redundant in the present. When he starts to look unwell at the end of
the night and Lyubov tells him to go to bed, he replies: “and who’s going to
do the waiting and look after everybody? There’s only me for the whole
house” (62). Through the characters’ unwillingness to accept the passage of
time, an effect is created in which the they are attempting to re-create the past
with an inadequate ‘cast’. The stationmaster and post-office clerk are attempt-
ing to play the roles of generals and admirals. Dunyasha attempts to pass for
an old-fashioned lady and Firs tries to come across as the indispensable foot-
man who runs the whole household. However, as Bhabha remarks, “the desire
to emerge as ‘authentic’ through mimicry [. .. ] is the final irony of partial
representation.”36 The characters’ attempts to re-create the past become a
parody which merely emphasizes their inability to return to that past.
Frank Glass asserts that, in this juxtaposition,
the line between the past and present blurs, and becomes a transparent
and permeable membrane through which ideas move freely back and
forth.”37

Although the characters are unable to return to the past they try to recreate,
the imago of the past is shown to the reader /audience and is juxtaposed with
the present. These rooms and places become chronotopes, as they represent
both space and time. In this manner, Chekhov exploits the visuality of theatre
in order to convey the characters’ complex relationship with their pasts and

36
Bhabha, The Location of Culture, 88.
37
Frank Peyton Glass, “The Thematic Use of Space in Contemporary Theatre”
(doctoral dissertation, University of Texas, Austin, 1974): 189.
a The Visual Representation of the Past/Present Boundary 103

the orchard, through the ballroom and drawing room which become trans-
formable sign-vehicles representing the past and present.
Although she is also concerned with the characters’ complex relationships
with their pasts, Suzman stages these scenes in a different manner by adding
specifically postcolonial elements to her text.

Visual representation of specific

postcolonial boundaries in The Free State
Suzman bases her transposition of Chekhov’s play on a similar situation of
social change between the two contexts. Marisa Keuris points out that this
transposition involves a process of acculturation whereby the boundary be-
tween the contexts is blurred.38 Suzman achieves this blurring of boundaries
by replacing ‘foreign’ signs in the source text (The Cherry Orchard) with
familiar signs in the target text (The Free State). For example, Suzman re-
places Yepichodov’s ‘foreign’ reference to the English historian Buckle in
The Cherry Orchard with Khokoloho’s more familiar reference to the Bible
in The Free State.
While Suzman takes care to preserve certain aspects of the source text, she
also deviates from it in certain respects, making it applicable to its new post-
colonial setting. Hence, the bond between the characters, their pasts, and the
orchard is preserved, while Suzman adds specific postcolonial elements to her
text, such as the aforementioned preoccupation with politics and reference to
a South African garden.
In Storyscapes, Viljoen et al. write that reminiscences about times and
places of the past are often painted in rosy colours.39 Although an experience
at a specific place might have been harsh, it is often remembered as glorious.
Thus Lulu Rademeyer shares Lyubov Ranyevskaya’s attachment to the house
and the orchard. Where Lyubov regards the orchard with the words: “Sleep-
ing here in the nursery, looking out into the orchard, … every morning wak-
ing up to happiness. And here it is… the same, just the same as it was,

38
Marisa Keuris, “Found in Translation: Chekhov Revisited by Reza de Wet and
Janet Suzman,” Journal of Literary Studies / Tydskrif vir Literatuurwetenskap 20.1–2
(March–June 2004): 157.
39
Hein Viljoen, Minnie Lewis & Chris N. van der Merwe, “Introduction: Learning
About Space – and About Ourselves,” in Storyscapes: South African Perspectives on
Literature, Space & Identity, ed. Hein Viljoen & Chris N. van der Merwe (New York:
Peter Lang, 2004): 7.
104 LIDA KRÜGER a

nothing’s changed” (29), Lulu remarks: “Each morning my eyes would spring
open to this – this ocean of white. It’s all just as I remember.”40 Suzman
clearly takes care to transpose Lyubov’s sentiments as faithfully as possible.
Bachelard’s notion about nostalgia and the attachment to a place through
memory41 is equally relevant to the postcolonial situation of The Free State.
Further, Suzman emphasizes this bond between Lulu and her past by
giving the reader /audience glimpses of her and Leo’s childhood – in the same
way that Chekhov does. When Lulu and Leo are reunited in Act One, and
again when they take leave of each other in Act Four, the siblings revert to
their childhood selves in the joy and sadness of the arrival and departure
scenes. In The Cherry Orchard, Gayev refers to his and Lyubov’s childhood
when he recalls how they slept in the nursery as children. In The Free State,
the siblings’ childhood is further evoked when Leo grabs Lulu’s scarf upon
her arrival and runs away with it. She reacts to Leo’s childlike behaviour and
the stage directions state that “they both run off like kids” (6). Their behaviour
brings to mind sibling rivalries of the past, witnessed by the very nursery in
which they occurred. In this way, Lulu and Leo enact the past which also be-
comes visible to the reader /audience of The Free State.
In The Cherry Orchard, Lyubov and Gayev are left alone in the nursery at
the end of the play; they are the last two people to leave the house and the
orchard forever. They embrace each other and cry softly. In The Free State,
this emotional scene also emphasizes a reversion to childhood, as they “sit
together on the window seat, like small children, holding hands. The teddy
bear sits next to them” (73). Their childhood again becomes visible to the
reader /audience, and, this time, it is stressed that the characters are saying
goodbye not only to the house and orchard but also to their respective pasts.
Lastly, Lulu’s final goodbye to the house also suggests a parting with her
mother: “Goodbye, Mama…” (73). In this way, the orchard, house, and
nursery act as chronotopes, recalling as they do the histories of the characters
who have inhabited them while inspiring a feeling of nostalgia in these char-
acters. The past and present are thus juxtaposed in these scenes. The reader /
audience can perceive the present and past simultaneously as well as the

40
Janet Suzman, The Free State: A South African Response to Chekhov’s “The
Cherry Orchard” (London: Methuen, 2000): 21. Further page references are in the
main text.
41
The Poetics of Space, 5.
a The Visual Representation of the Past/Present Boundary 105

tension between present and past; the characters long to return to their child-
hood but are unable to do so.
In the postcolonial context of The Free State, the nostalgia further extends
to political incidents. The yearning for their childhood past that Leo shares
with Lulu contains a more deliberate political element than that of his Russian
counterpart, Gayev. While the sun is setting in Act Two, Leo breaks out in
song right after a discussion on politics led primarily by Pitso. Leo sings the
former national anthem of South Africa in Afrikaans, to the embarrassment of
Anna and Maria. The singing of the anthem is controversial, as it can be seen
as a symbol of apartheid and Leo’s singing a sign of nostalgia for the times of
racial segregation, especially after the preceding political discussion. But Leo
sings only the first four lines of the anthem. These four lines are also included
in the new national anthem of post-apartheid South Africa, as Leo is quick to
point out: “It’s still our national anthem – oh, all right, I’ll shut up. Always
liked the tune” (42).
Leo’s singing is ambivalent because the first four lines of the anthem do
not contain any specific political message, but describe the beauty of the
South African natural scenery. Apart from the political discussion, Leo’s sing-
ing was also preceded by Leko’s remarking on how blessed they are to live in
a country with such natural beauty. Thus, Leo could be singing the anthem
purely for aesthetic and auditory pleasure. By claiming that he is singing the
anthem because he likes the tune, Leo is negating the symbolic value of the
old national anthem either to hide his political faux pas of being nostalgic
about the apartheid era or, insensitive to broader implications, he intends his
singing as a mere ode to nature. His true motives are left unexplored and open
to the reader /audience, or to the director of a given production. Yet his sing-
ing does evoke both South Africa’s political past and its beautiful natural
scenery. Thus, the context in which the orchard is set is depicted as a place of
both beauty and oppression.
With Maria’s and Anna’s ridicule, Suzman counteracts both Leo’s political
conservatismas and the liberalism of Lulu and her deceased, off-stage hus-
band, Johan Rademeyer. In her introduction to the play, Suzman explains that
she decided to base Johan Rademeyer’s character on Bram Fischer, the law-
yer who led the defence of Nelson Mandela at the Rivonia Trial in 1964, “lest
anyone should assume that the Afrikaner was all bad.”42 Rademeyer is pre-

42
Janet Suzman, “Introduction” to The Free State: A South African Response to
Chekhov’s “The Cherry Orchard” (London: Methuen, 2000): xxvi.
106 LIDA KRÜGER a

sented as an Afrikaner who offered his legal skills to the struggle. Unlike
Fischer, he was not incarcerated, but became disillusioned in the process and
surrendered to the alcoholism that caused his death. Although Rademeyer is
an off-stage character, his presence in the house is visually evoked by a large
oil portrait of him which hangs in the nursery. As his history, his struggle
against apartheid, and his tragic death are represented by this portrait, another
chronotope is created. This portrait is not only a device by which the charac-
ters can engage continuously with Rademeyer and his ideals; it also creates a
visual representation of him for the benefit of the audience.
Through the characters’ conversations, it becomes evident that Rademeyer
gave Leko the opportunity to do his M B A , and was an academic mentor to
Pitso. Leko recalls the anti-apartheid conversations that he and Rademeyer
had in the nursery “during the dark days” (13) of apartheid. This debt that
Leko feels towards Johan Rademeyer also explains his loyalty to the family
and his willingness to help them devise a plan to save their estate.
Johan Rademeyer’s portrait contains his liberal ideals as well as his history
and associations with Pitso and Leko. When Anna asks Lulu if she and Pitso
may keep the portrait at the end of the play, Lulu answers that she “can’t think
of a better home for him” (67), referring to the portrait as if it were a living
thing. As a result, Rademeyer’s ideals will not be forgotten when the orchard
is chopped down, but will continue to be remembered by Anna and Pitso in
the new South Africa.
Moreover, the political associations of place are emphasized in the play
when the broader setting of the Free State Province is taken into account. The
play’s main title will have historical and political associations for South Afri-
cans.43 In this manner, the past, present, and future interlock in the title. The
province first came into being as part of a search for freedom when the Afri-
kaners moved from the Cape Colony in the 1800s in an attempt to escape
British colonialism.44 However, as an Afrikaner-dominated province, the state
of freedom that had been striven for ironically excluded freedom for non-
whites during the white-racist era.
However, when it is interpreted in a literal sense, the title can have a diffe-
rent meaning. The word ‘free’ is inescapably self-evident and, while ‘state’
refers to the organized political community in which the play is set, it may

43
Keuris, “Found in Translation,” 157–58.
44
“Orange Free State,” in Standard Encyclopaedia of Southern Africa, ed. D.J. Pot-
gieter et al. (Cape Town: N A S O U , 1973), vol. 8: 346.
a The Visual Representation of the Past/Present Boundary 107

also refer to a human condition generally – a situation in which one (white,

black, or Coloured) is free. As Suzman repeatedly stresses her optimistic
intentions in writing the play,45 the title could convey her liberatory vision of
the new South Africa. In this manner, the title interconnects past, present, and
future, as Keuris suggests.
This temporal-historical interlocking is emphasized again in Act Three
when a party is held on the night the orchard is to be auctioned off. As in The
Cherry Orchard, this party is a mere ghost of the parties of the past – as the
old servant, Putswa, informs the reader /audience: “Once upon a time judges,
professors, surgeons would come to our parties. But now we send for a band
of tsotsis from the location” (54). Like Chekhov, Suzman visually juxtaposes
the past and the present in Act Three, but instead of staging this scene in a
drawing room with an adjacent ballroom, she sets it on the veranda of the
house, with the garden visible behind it. As South African homesteads nor-
mally have neither ballrooms nor drawing rooms, and because the weather
generally permits and encourages outdoor entertainment, the veranda and
garden serve as an obvious choice for the party in Act Three. According to the
stage directions, the audience should see the glow of a barbecue, tables, and
chairs on the veranda as well as dancing in the garden. A balustrade – which
corresponds to the archway in The Cherry Orchard – separates these two
areas.
Despite these correlating factors, the third acts of these two plays differ
significantly. As the dancing in the garden does not necessarily evoke the
entertainment of past years, the interaction between past and present is not as
clear in The Free State as in The Cherry Orchard. Yet, this scene still acts as
a chronotope, showing the liminal state in which the characters find them-
selves, as the garden and veranda take on a very specific postcolonial signifi-
cance in this context.
Discussing the play Generations by the Canadian playwright Sharon Pol-
lock, Gilbert and Tompkins describe the veranda of a house on the prairie as
“a site of negotiation and a corridor of possible dialogue, not only between the
various characters but also between the settlers and the land.”46 The veranda is
seen as a liminal space, the boundary between the untamed wilderness and the
safe shelter of the home. Viljoen et al. also regard the position of the farm in
postcolonial contexts as ambivalent because it serves as an icon of a heroic

45
Suzman, “Introduction,” xxi.
46
Gilbert & Tompkins, Post-Colonial Drama, 152.
108 LIDA KRÜGER a

struggle against the wilderness.47 It represents both a safe home and the con-
stant fear of losing that home. The safety offered by the homestead from the
forces of nature is thus only temporary.
In The Free State, the veranda and garden represent this type of postcolo-
nial liminal space. These spaces form a boundary, not only topographically
between the wilderness and safe shelter of home, but also temporally between
past, present, and future. As already mentioned, the scene with the dancing in
the garden does not evoke the past in the way in which the ball in The Cherry
Orchard does. Instead, the veranda where Lulu is caught up in the problems
of the present is juxtaposed with the garden in which the other characters
dance in a carefree manner, despite the family’s uncertain circumstances. The
garden may thus represent the untroubled life of the past and the threat of
losing that way of life in the future, while Lulu is shown on the brink of that
loss. By superimposing these two states in the garden, Suzman suggests that a
carefree state might be achieved by crossing the boundary into the threatening
outdoors. Again, past, present, and future interlock, except that this time the
boundaries between them are shown visually to the audience in the staging of
the scene, again exploiting the semiotic richness of the theatrical sign.
As she notes in her introduction, Suzman does not deconstruct Chekhov’s
as many postcolonial ‘response’-texts do. Her text is, rather, an adaptation of
Chekhov’s: by transposing the latter to a different context, Suzman appro-
priates The Cherry Orchard for her own purposes. She acculturizes Chekhov’s
play almost seamlessly into its new context by scrupulously adhering to the
contours of the original plot, thus emphasizing the similarities between the
two contexts. In both contexts, an unfair social hierarchy (one based on class,
the other on race) is coming to an end. Yet, while Chekhov shows this trau-
matic situation of social change with ironic detachment, refusing to endorse a
specific stance, Suzman aligns the play with her own optimistic and liberal
ideology, – for instance, by giving the off-stage Johan Rademeyer an impor-
tant role as an anti-apartheid lawyer. She transforms Chekhov’s text from an
observation into a celebration, thus reading The Cherry Orchard only as an
indictment of the outdated social systems of pre-revolutionary Russia.
While Chekhov shows the reader /audience only the boundary between
past and present, and its accompanying trauma, Suzman shows the boundary

47
Viljoen, Lewis & Van der Merwe, “Introduction: Learning About Space – and
About Ourselves,” 10.
a The Visual Representation of the Past/Present Boundary 109

between the present and future, and how this future beckons optimistically to
the characters.

Conclusion
Although somewhat dated,48 Suzman’s transposition of Chekhov’s play to
contemporary South Africa proves an interesting endeavour. As well as ex-
ploring the manifestation of boundaries in the respective contexts of twen-
tieth-century Russia and contemporary South Africa, Suzman’s play also
invites investigation of the particular subjective and intersubjective nature of
these boundaries. Both Lyubov Ranyevskaya and Lulu Rademeyer idealize
their past, and these various pasts become imagos, versions viewed through a
rose-coloured lens. Both characters wish to escape their present and return to
this past. However, while Chekhov shows the complexity of the relationship
between the characters and their pasts without taking a specific stance, Suz-
man is politically liberal and optimistic.
In Act Three of The Cherry Orchard, the characters attempt to re-create
the past by hosting a ball which could be read as a failed ‘enactment’ of the
glamorous balls once held in the house. While it gives the reader /audience a
glimpse of the characters’ past visually, the attempt to re-create the past can-
not succeed. The ball is a mere parody of the past, pointing up the inability of
the characters to escape the radical transformation (and future obligations) of
the present. By showing the reader /audience additional glimpses of Lyubov’s
childhood through her daughter, Anya, The Cherry Orchard stresses the
difficulty the characters have in breaking with their past, however corrupt that
past may have been. The characters in The Cherry Orchard are paralysed by
their situation: they are unable to let go of the past and, inevitably, unable to
move forward.
Although keeping painstakingly to the plot-structure of Chekhov’s play,
Suzman appropriates The Cherry Orchard to her own purposes. She adds a
specifically postcolonial layer to the text by transposing Chekhov’s Act Three
from ballroom and drawing room to garden and veranda. Chekhov’s striking
juxtaposition between past and present in this act is abandoned in favour of a
visual set-up which not only evokes current postcolonial theories about the

48
See Marisa Keuris, “The (Re)Working of Dramatic Language in Janet Suzman’s
The Free State,” Journal of Literary Studies / Tydskrif vir Literatuurwetenskap 23.1
(March 2007): 14.
110 LIDA KRÜGER a

garden and veranda as boundary between ‘civilization’ and the wilderness,

but also proposes a return to a carefree state by letting go of the past. Suz-
man’s characters are on the cusp of an exciting, immediate future, while
neither the audience nor the characters are sure of what will become of Che-
khov’s characters. While this supports Suzman’s optimistic intentions, it is
also the reason why the play was so quickly overtaken by real events.
Suzman’s postcolonial interpretation of Chekhov’s play includes political
debates and conversations. Not only does she show and condemn a character
who is possibly nostalgic for South Africa’s political past, but she also re-
presents the rose-coloured ideals of Johan Rademeyer visually through his
chronotopic portrait. In contrast to Chekhov’s text, Suzman’s text assumes a
specifically liberal political stance.
Although these texts differ in certain fundamental aspects, they both ex-
ploit the drama as a mode of multi-systemic communication. These plays
describe and show the various chronotopes containing the various characters’
childhoods. By using these visual elements as transformable sign-vehicles,
Chekhov and Suzman create an interesting opportunity for the characters as
well as the reader /audience to engage with these chronotopes on more than
one level.

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Giliomee, Hermann Buhr, & Bernard Mbenga. New History of South Africa (Cape
Town: Tafelberg, 2007).
Glass, Frank Peyton. “Thematic Use of Space in Contemporary Theater” (doctoral
dissertation, University of Texas at Austin, 1974).
Keuris, Marisa. “Found in translation: Chekhov revisited by Reza de Wet and Janet
Suzman,” Journal of Literary Studies / Tydskrif vir Literatuurwetenskap 20.1–2
(March–June 2004): 148–64.
——. “The (Re)Working of Dramatic Language in Janet Suzman’s The Free State,”
Journal of Literary Studies / Tydskrif vir Literatuurwetenskap 23.1 (March 2007):
1–15.
Keyssar, Helene. “Drama and the Dialogic Imagination: The Heidi Chronicles and
Fefu and her Friends,” Modern Drama 34.1 (March 1991): 88–106.
Klein, Norman M. The History of Forgetting: Los Angeles and the Erasure of Memory
(London: Verso, 1997).
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vol. 2: Imperial Russia, 1689–1917, ed. Dominic Lieven (Cambridge: Cambridge
U P , 2006): 655–69.
“Orange Free State,” in Standard Encyclopaedia of Southern Africa, ed. D.J. Potgieter
et al. (Cape Town: N A S O U , 1973), vol. 8: 343–57.
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Cambridge U P , 1971).
Suzman, Janet. The Free State: A South African Response to Chekhov’s “The Cherry
Orchard” (London: Methuen, 2000).
——. “Introduction” to The Free State: A South African Response to Chekhov’s “The
Cherry Orchard” (London: Methuen, 2000): xxi–xxxix.
112 LIDA KRÜGER a

Terras, Victor. “Chekhov at Home: Russian Criticism,” in A Chekhov Companion, ed.

Toby W. Clyman (Westport C T : Greenwood, 1985): 167–83.
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a
Earth as Home
Nature and Refuges/Living Spaces
in Some Afrikaans Narratives

S USAN M EYER

I N T H E P O E T I C S O F S P A C E (1969), Gaston Bachelard argues that a home

constitutes a special place in the collection of metaphors relating to
humankind’s spatial experience. He argues that the essence of human
existence can be seen to be contracted and concentrated within specific pro-
tective borders.1
Establishing a home is an important cultural act.2 The appropriation of
space and the construction of homes and shelters constitute part of a human
being’s efforts to understand his /her existence in and link to the world.3 This
essay investigates three recent Afrikaans narrative works which reveal how
humankind’s understanding of their place in nature as context finds expres-
sion in the processes of the building and organizing of homes.
The works selected for this study are Engela van Rooyen’s volume of re-
collections of her youth, Met ’n eie siekspens, published in 1994 and reprinted

1
Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space, tr. Maria Jolas (La Poétique de l’espace,
1958; Boston M A : Beacon, 1969): xxxii.
2
Amos Rapoport, “A Critical Look at the Concept ‘Home’,” in The Home: Words,
Interpretations, Meanings, and Environments, ed. David N. Benjamin (Aldershot:
Avebury, 1995): xii; David M. Hummon, “House, Home and Identity in Contemporary
American Culture,” in Housing, Culture and Design: A Comparative Perspective, ed.
Setha M. Low & Erve Chambers (Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P , 1989): 209.
3
Marita Wenzel, “Appropriating Space and Transcending Boundaries in The Africa
House by Christina Lamb and Ways of Dying by Zakes Mda,” Journal of Literary
Studies / Tydskrif vir Literatuurwetenskap 19.3–4 (August–November 2003): 316.
114 SUSAN MEYER a

in 2005, and two publications from 2007: Sabbatsreis by Annelie Botes and
Chinchilla by Nanette van Rooyen.4 In these works, nature is an essential,
integral part of the processes of demarcating and establishing personal space
through the design and building of sheltering and living spaces. In other
words, humankind’s interaction with nature forms part of the way(s) in which
personal space is occupied and defined.
The relation between humans and nature has been an important theme in
Afrikaans prose writing since its beginnings in the late-nineteenth century.5
Since then, the corpus of works in Afrikaans depicting human coexistence
with nature has grown constantly,6 which means that one has to be selective to
keep the project within manageable proportions. This essay forms part of a
broader comparative investigation of the interaction between humans and
nature and focuses on specific contemporary works.
Works with evident differences were chosen. The present selection serves
to cover the experiences of characters at various stages in life: the young child
(Met ’n eie siekspens); the young adult (Chinchilla); and the middle-aged
(Sabbatsreis). Exploring experiences of nature and spaces of refuge and home
by such characters may contribute to establishing more reliable conclusions
about human nature interactions as depicted in Afrikaans prose.
Further, the texts selected involve characters confronting widely differing
situational factors. Met ’n eie siekspens depicts experiences within the boun-
daries of a more or less normal way of life. The two other works feature char-
acters caught up in extraordinary situations, challenged by events which are
out of the ordinary but which are particularly relevant to our times. The main
character in Sabbatsreis finds herself in a diasporic situation: like other Afri-

4
Engela van Rooyen, Met ’n eie siekspens [with my own sixpence] (Cape Town:
Tafelberg, 1994); Annelie Botes, Sabbatsreis [Sabbath’s journey] (Cape Town:
Tafelberg, 2007); Nanette van Rooyen, Chinchilla (Cape Town: Human & Rousseau,
2007).
5
Hunting stories and narratives focusing on the veld and animals have been popular
in Afrikaans literature as far back as the colonial era, and most conspicuously in the
first decades of the twentieth century. See, for example, Henriette Roos, “Perspektief
op die Afrikaanse prosa van die twintigste eeu” [perspective on twentieth-century
Afrikaans prose], in Perspektief en Profiel [perspective and profile], vol. 1, ed. H.P .
van Coller (Pretoria: Van Schaik, 1998): 28.
6
Susan Meyer, “Riviere as identiteitskonstrueerders” [rivers as constructors of
identity], Literator 27.3 (2006): 59–61, provides a synopsis of the more recent corpus
of Afrikaans works of fiction depicting aspects of human–nature interrelations.
a Earth as Home 115

kaners, she has to move to another country in search of work. The central fig-
ure in Chinchilla is the victim of another devastating phenomenon in society,
that of domestic violence.
These differences are intended to add to the reliability and significance of
resemblances found in analysing the characters’ means of interaction with
nature, both in different life phases and in diverse situational contexts. A final
way to ensure reliable results and conclusions flowing from this study was to
choose texts that represent different prose traditions in Afrikaans. Van
Rooyen’s book belongs to a tradition of remembrance literature,7 Botes’s
work is autobiographical, and Van Rooyen’s fictional.
Central to this investigation is the literary manifestation of the interface
between two spheres: that of cultural expressions as the outcome of humans’
interaction with their context, and that of nature, a sphere explicitly integrated
in the building and occupation of homes, as represented in these literary
works. My interest focuses on the processes by which boundaries fade away,
specifically those conventionally believed to exist between the spheres of
nature and culture in situations where human–nature experiences form the
core of cultural expression. My concern is to help break down the borders be-
tween humans and nature erected by the dualistic thinking that has structured
so much of Western thought.
Critics regard Met ’n eie siekspens as a treasure of cultural history; it is the
portrayal of a way of life led in a harsh South African region in a bygone era.8
Critics have appreciated the book’s gripping depiction of characters who had
to make a living in a faraway valley on the edge of a desert,9 the frankness in
depicting these people, and the wealth of folk memory displayed.10 In some
reviews, critics suggest briefly that the natural environment should ideally not

7
J.P. Smuts, “Die nuwe herinneringsliteratuur in Afrikaans” [the new Afrikaans
literature of remembrance], Stilet 19.2 (1997): 2, describes literature of remembrance
in the Afrikaans literary tradition as rather short, autobiographical, and essayistic prose
works in which bygone eras and people are revisited in memory in a nostalgic way.
8
J.C. Kannemeyer, “Só ’n ‘siekspens’ is nie ’n tiekie ’n bos nie” [such a sixpence is
not a tickey a bunch], Rapport (31 July 1994): 34.
9
Riëtte Botma, “’n Jeug wat heelwat meer as ’n sikspens werd was” [a youth worth
much more than sixpence], Die Burger (12 October 1994): 5; Marietjie Smit, “Jeug-
herinneringe vloeiende vertelling wat boei” [memories of youth a flowing and en-
gaging narrative], Volksblad (4 July 2005):6.
10
Audrey Blignault, “Siekspens ’n aangrypende vertelling” [Sixpence a gripping
tale], Die Volksblad (6 March 1996): 7.
116 SUSAN MEYER a

be separated from characters and their fortunes: the landscape of river and
desert is seen as omnipresent in van Rooyen’s recollection of these earlier
times,11 or the characters are seen as fully integrated with their natural en-
vironment.12 These, however, are only passing comments, resembling the cur-
sory way in which the role of nature in Sabbatsreis and Chinchilla is men-
tioned.
Some critics appear to be aware of the fact that the natural surroundings in
Botes’s and Van Rooyen’s works are more than a convincing backdrop for
the events. Yet it is only vaguely suggested that human–nature interrelation
may be the key to a more comprehensive interpretation of these texts, and to a
better understanding of the way the characters deal with their challenges. Cari
Coetzee describes Sabbatsreis as a story “about survival and healing, about an
African garden in London,”13 but does not pay any particular attention to how
the woody environment on the outskirts of London is involved in the pro-
cesses of cure or recovery in the book. Reviews of Chinchilla include one or
two comments on the precise, detailed description of nature surrounding the
family farm, which offers the main character a secure as well as a realistic,
recognizable place of reference in the processing of physical and inner trauma.14
Meyer focuses more directly and closely on the role played by nature in deal-
ing with crisis situations and in working through trauma in Sabbatsreis and
Chinchilla.15

11
Blignault, “Siekspens ’n aangrypende vertelling,” 6.
12
Gretel Wybenga, “Aards en eg nes die Gariep” [down-to-earth and authentic, just
like the Gariep], Beeld (27 June 1994): 8.
13
“van oorlewing en genesing, van ’n Afrika-tuin in Londen.” Cari Coetzee, “Botes
leer haarself aanvaar in Sabbatsreis” [Botes learns to accept herself in Sabbatsreis],
Burger (20 August 2007):11.
14
Carina le Grange, “Godin van vlees en bloed se worsteling” [struggle of a goddess
of flesh and blood], Burger (13 August 2007): 11. Petra Müller, “Só ’n boek bring
nuwe lug in longe” [such a book lets you breathe fresh air], Rapport (19 August 2007):
5.
15
Susan Meyer, “Ver van die huis, maar naby die grond: die rol van die natuur ten
opsigte van krisishantering in die vreemde in Stiltetyd (Marita van der Vyver) en
Sabbatsreis (Annelie Botes)” [far from home, close to the land: the role of nature in
dealing with crises in foreign places in Stiltetyd (Marita van der Vyver) and Sabbats-
reis (Annelie Botes)], Stilet 21:2 (September 2009): 160–82. Susan Meyer, “Hetero-
topiese ruimtes van krisis en die natuur se genesende invloed in Chinchilla (Nanette
a Earth as Home 117

Critics have, however, failed to grasp the full import of the processes of
establishing and defining personal space in these works, as these are unique
components crucial to the unfolding of the characters’ inner worlds. Only
after the role of nature in these processes has been determined will these
literary works be thoroughly understood; only then will the reader be able to
fathom the literary manifestation of the multiple dimensions of human
coexistence with nature and to understand the dissolving of borders that this
coexistence entails.

Met ’n eie siekspens

With Met ’n eie siekspens, Van Rooyen changed her image as author of “good
popular prose” in the eyes of many critics.16 With the representation of youth-
ful experiences and memories of times gone by, this book forms part of a sig-
nificant tradition in Afrikaans literature.17 In the 1990s, regional and remem-
brance literature gained a more important status within the literary canon of
Afrikaans literature, which can be ascribed to the fact that the sub-genre has
changed in the past few decades from its traditional shape and, since the
1990s, has become more closely connected with matters that transcend the
individual.18 Meyer argues that a reading of the reprint of Met ’n eie siekspens
yields new connections with certain topicalities in the changed socio-political
and economic contexts of South Africa.19

van Rooyen)” [heterotopic spaces of crisis and the healing influence of nature in
Chinchilla (Nanette van Rooyen)], Tydskrif vir Letterkunde 47.2 (2010): 79–94.
16
Met ’n eie siekspens is regarded as a “prose contribution rising above the regional
tale” (Kannemeyer, “So ’n ‘siekspens’,” 34), “an autobiography with a dense structure
of meaning” (Wybenga, “Aards en eg,” 9), and “one of the best prose works to have
appeared in Afrikaans in recent times” (Blignault, “Aangrypende vertelling,” 7).
17
Lucas Malan, “’n Geskakeerde bydrae tot herinneringsliteratuur: Die aarde waar-
op ek loop, Dolf van Niekerk” [a nuanced contribution to remembrance literature: The
Earth that I Walk on, Dolf van Niekerk], Literator 25.1 (2004): 189. Malan here refers
to the reworking of youth experiences of initiation by highly regarded Afrikaans
authors such as Hennie Aucamp, Pirow Bekker, Henriëtte Grové, Chris Barnard, Petra
Müller and others.
18
Hennie Aucamp, “Die beperkte boog van bestaan: gedagtes oor herinnerings-
literatuur” [the limited span of existence: some thoughts on remembrance literature],”
Stilet 15.2 (2003): 22.
19
Susan Meyer, “Riviere as identiteitskonstrueerders,” Literator 27.3 (2006): 64–65.
118 SUSAN MEYER a

Van Rooyen’s youthful umwelt is the Northern Cape and more specifically
the region of Neus, a small farming community on the banks of the Orange
River near Kakamas. Her ancestors ended up near Great River20 after disas-
trous years of drought, because a haven for impoverished farmers was foun-
ded in Kakamas, where a canal from the river had to be dug to help establish
small irrigated lots. Below Neus, Van Rooyen’s father bought a small piece of
land in 1940. This region is described as a “strange contradiction of river and
desert,”21 because the green band of the irrigation settlement cuts through the
red of the Kalahari dunes and the rocky desolation of this arid area.
When the author puts into words the memories of her sojourn here, the
imagery of nature is prominent. In the chapter “Ark on an ant’s nest,” the little
plots of land bordering the river are described as “ants’ nests that hum and
[…] thrum” in the silent desert area, and the mountain “bends like a horn to
the east.”22 The modest house in which the author grew up is described thus:
standing on a barren hill, with two […] thorn trees on either side […].
Lower down there are dunes covered with camel thorns stretching to
the large canal, the river, the island. Further back, distantly blue, the
mountain.23
Elements of the natural environment dominate not only the memories of
Van Rooyen’s place of sojourn but her whole life experience. On the plots of
her childhood, life is enabled through the “life artery” of the large canal which
brings irrigation water to the land. The relationship with Great River involves
an absolute dependence on “the turbid water which is our life” as well as on
acknowledging the river’s gifts to and care for those living in its “marsupial
pouch.”24 Yet this book is far from being a nostalgic representation of a

20
In the book, the Orange River is not called the Great River but simply ‘Great
River (“Grootrivier”). The respect of the characters for the river as ‘personified pres-
ence’ is clearly revealed in this mode of naming.
21
“vreemde teenspraak van rivier en woestyn”; Engela van Rooyen, Met eie
siekspens (Cape Town: Tafelberg, 1994): 3. As here, the original Afrikaans wording is
given in the footnote along with the relevant page reference.
22
“Ark op ’n miernes”; “miernessies wat gons en […] dreun”; “wat soos ’n horing
ombuig oostekant toe” (140).
23
“op ’n haai (kaal) bult, met twee […] doringbome aan weerskante […]. Ondertoe
af lê die vaal duine vol kameelbome tot by die grootvoor, die rivier, die eiland. Heel
agter, vérblou, die berg” (140; my emphases).
24
“die troewel water wat ons lewe is”; “buidel” (1).
a Earth as Home 119

paradisiacal condition. Meyer discovers a postcolonial perspective on issues

such as labour and the relationship between humans and nature in this
volume.25 Van Rooyen portrays her people as “enslaved to a life of unimagi-
nable suffering next to an untameable primitive stream,” subjected to and not
subjecting nature, “at the mercy of the hardest labour and the greatest imagi-
nable disasters.”26 The question arises:
Does this landscape even want people in it, or does it consistently try
to work them out with the untameable high waters and the stinking
muddy stagnant pools, with the thick cloying dust storms, the searing
heat and the terrible plagues?27
The chapter “Ark on an ant’s nest” focuses on the house in which the
author lived as a child, on the processes of demarcating and establishing the
personal space of the family through building and occupying this house, and
on the clear indications of interaction with nature in these processes. Inter-
action with nature is visible first in the spatial orientation of the house, de-
signed by her parents themselves. Through its design and its orientation, this
house is an extension of the natural environment and seems to proclaim the
idea that living space is part of the larger geographical whole. The back door,
which offers the most important entry to the house, “looks to the hills”; the
bare little veranda “sits in the direction of the river” and provides a place to
sleep under the stars at night.28
No clear man-made division exists between the homestead and the larger
natural space surrounding it: “When you step across the threshold, you are
suddenly in nature, and nature is around you.”29 Outside the back door, there
is only a piece of dung floor “that smells of veld and scrub.”30 The hills start

25
Meyer, “Riviere as identiteitskonstrueerders,” 60.
26
“verkneg tot ’n lewe van godsonmoontlike swaarkry langs ’n ontembare oer-
stroom […], uitgelewer aan die swaarste arbeid en die grootste rampspoede denkbaar”
(3).
27
“Wil hierdie landstreek ooit mense in hom hê, of probeer hy hulle knaend uitwerk
met sy onstuitbare hoogwaters en sy moddervrot staanwaters, met sy dikduister
stofstorms, sy bloedige hitte en bose plae?” (3).
28
“kyk rante toe”; “sit erf se kant toe” (141).
29
“Sit jy jou voet oor die drumpel, is jy meteens in die elemente, en die elemente in
jou” (142).
30
“wat ruik na veld en bossies” (142).
120 SUSAN MEYER a

immediately outside the house, so that a “borderless homestead”31 comes into

being, implying the fading of borders between human and natural sites. The
‘intrusion’ of nature into the living space of the family is commonly experi-
enced: at night, spiders dash across the light thrown by the lamp, ants nibble
on the walls and curtains, and geckos hide behind the portraits (141–42).
Practically all references to indoor spaces in this chapter contain an aware-
ness that nature dominates the content of these spaces. There are red cement
floors, impractical, because they show dust easily (141), windows with sliding
frames which rattle when the night winds push against them (141), a kitchen
with the fragrance of a wood fire, and the soughing of the wind in the chim-
ney (144). A cloud that passes or a breeze lets the tin roof cool down with a
rattle and a pop (142). Experiencing nature is part of experiencing home, and
this emerges from observations such as: “There is a slit between two tin roof
plates which, if you lie down and study it, looks like a sandy river planted
with trees.”32
The natural surroundings also form the context for the most intimate in-
doors rituals, such as going to bed. The writer recalls crawling under a blanket
of animal hide, listening to the rising wind, a night owl or plovers (145).
Earlier in the volume, in the chapter “Land of my Soul” (“Adamsland”), the
narrator describes how the senses are attuned to the river at night in order to
gain enough tranquillity of spirit to sleep soundly. Should the rushing of the
river over the little waterfall in the mountain quieten, the author’s family can
‘read’ the nightly telegram from nature indicating whether it is stagnant or
high water (144).
When this house is no longer in use, the author asks her mother how old
the house was. Her mother’s response reveals that the notion of living space
involves far more than the plain cement structure against the hill, because her
answer encompasses a far greater temporal and spatial frame: “Who bothers
with dates here where Great River has been lying and breathing for cen-
turies?”33 This answer harbours the suggestion that home is the larger whole
of nature within which humans find an existence. Here, one finds a link with

31
“grenslose werf” (151).
32
“Daar is ’n skreef tussen twee sinkplate wat, as jy dit lê en bestudeer, soos ’n
sandrivier vol bome lyk” (142).
33
“Wie bodder met datums hier waar Grootrivier sedert eeue lê en asemhaal?”
(145).
a Earth as Home 121

what Jan Dawson regards as one of the most familiar metaphors of post-
modern ecological consciousness – that of earth as home.34
The home metaphor cannot be dealt with in any simple way, since home
does not have pleasant associations for all people – it could imply restriction
or recall destructive experiences that occurred in the parental home. In Met ’n
eie siekspens, both the positive and the negative components of this metaphor,
which depicts the earth as the larger and more essential home of humankind,
are activated. This is achieved by representing the riverside people’s complex,
conflicting relationship with nature as a giant who both feeds and enslaves
them, who both cherishes and tears them apart with periods of “gruelling
drought and standing water” 35 or destructive floods. Wybenga sees in this
relationship the human tragedy of longing for precisely this worldly home
which dominates humans, often without mercy, and which dwarfs and almost
destroys them.36
The aspect of longing brings us to the interesting spectrum of psycho-
logical connotations of ‘home’. Although the word ‘home’ is often seen both
popularly and academically as a synonym for ‘house’, this confusing usage, it
has been argued, “fatally contaminates” the use of the term ‘home’.37 The
house, the structure or building, is the container or shell for the home, which
has “psychological resonance and social meaning.”38 ‘Home’ can also be de-
scribed as defined by cultural, socio-demographic, psychological, political,
and economic factors.39

34
Jan D. Dawson, “Landmarks of Home in the Pacific Northwest,” Interdisciplinary
Studies in Literature and Environment 2.2 (1996): 2. In modern times the idea of earth
as home regularly manifests itself as a damaged site, polluted by urban ruin, violence,
freaks, the inhabitants nearly uncontrolled and possessed by grotesque desires and
visions of unlimited power; see, for example, Langdon Elsbree, The Rituals of Life:
Patterns in Narratives (Port Washington N Y : Kennikat, 1982): 19.
35
“uitmergelende droogtes en staanwater” (221).
36
Wybenga, “Aards en eg” (9).
37
Amos Rapoport, “A Critical Look at the Concept ‘Home’,” in The Home: Words,
Interpretations, Meanings, and Environments, ed. David N. Benjamin (Aldershot:
Avebury, 1995): 41.
38
Roderick J. Lawrence, “Deciphering Home: An Integrative Historical Perspec-
tive,” in The Home: Words, Interpretations, Meanings, and Environments, ed. David
N. Benjamin (Aldershot: Avebury, 1995): 56.
39
Rapoport, “A Critical Look at the Concept ‘Home’,” 39.
122 SUSAN MEYER a

In Met ’n eie siekspens, the perception that the most intimate living spaces
are an integral part of the larger desert and river landscape echoes the percep-
tion that people’s lives are integrated into the broader natural environment and
the larger rhythm of the seasons. The image of earth as home is particularly
appropriate here, encompassing various aspects of the concept of ‘home’
located on the psychical level; I shall devote my attention to these below.
For Juhani Pallasmaa, ‘home’ implies “a set of rituals, personal rhythms
and routines of everyday life.”40 When Van Rooyen remembers the rituals
and routine of work, school, and religious practice from her youth, these are
described in the context of earth as home. The laws of nature are the guiding
principles for labour performed near Great River: “What you plant, you have
to keep irrigating. Take your hand off it, and everything dies, and the desert
takes over.”41 Nature dominates her memories of school routine: she recalls
the reed scaffold under which the pupils assemble (127) and how the island
children, half frozen, arrive by boat in the mornings (129). Even in religious
rituals, nature is present: the author recalls hands pressed together in prayer,
“gnarled and knotted in respect like ancient succulents.”42
Although people attribute different connotations to the idea of ‘home’, it is
mostly associated with positive qualities.43 In Met ’n eie siekspens, the clear-
est memories from the author’s childhood are those of safety and security,
which are linked specifically to the river and the sense of living in its “mar-
supial pouch.”44 Even when a flood occurs, the author remembers “the half
peaceful sense that the lion does roar, but never devours its young.”45 Stefan
Brink emphasizes the permanent link individuals may have with ‘home’ and
the very special relationship to it resulting from being cherished and

40
Juhani Pallasmaa, “Identity, Intimacy and Domicile: Notes on the Pheno-
menology of Home,” in The Home: Words, Interpretations, Meanings, and Environ-
ments, ed. David N. Benjamin (Aldershot: Avebury, 1995): 133.
41
“Wat jy plant, moet jy aanhou natlei. Trek jy jou hand weg, vergaan alles, en die
woestyn neem oor” (156).
42
“in eerbied geknot soos óú vetplante” (128).
43
Lawrence, “Deciphering Home: An Integrative Historical Perspective,” 28.
44
“buidel” (1).
45
“die half vreedsame gevoel dat die leeu wel brul, maar nooit sy kleintjies opvreet
nie” (222).
a Earth as Home 123

protected.46 For Van Rooyen, Great River is the composite notion of all the
elements in the river region for which she longs during her later life: the rocky
hills, the moon over the white homestead road and quiver trees, the smell of
the muddy water, and dry lucerne (4).
Sojourn in the desert region also implies elements of privation and enslave-
ment – as noted earlier – which agrees with the fact that, in negative situa-
tions, home can also be a concretization of human misery. Yet this natural
space is ‘home’ for the writer in the fullest sense of the word; it meets both
spiritual and material needs. In her experience, Dawson’s definition of ‘home’
resonates: “Home is a place where people choose to stay, not because it is
ideal, but because it is the locus of connectedness – of an existential fit.”47
In a different way from Met ’n eie siekspens, but equally clearly, contact
and interaction with nature in Sabbatsreis and Chinchilla form part of the way
in which the characters establish and define the personal space of their refuges
and homes. Indeed, there are strong parallels in the way the main characters
use nature as a purposeful and well-integrated element in designing and con-
structing a refuge.
Despite thematic differences, Sabbatsreis and Chinchilla are linked in
interesting ways. In both texts, the main figures are characterized in terms of
their crises; both deal with a traumatic past. In the autobiographical Sabbats-
reis, Botes departs for England, intending to jump from a bridge as soon as
she has earned enough to pay the enormous debt she has accumulated through
compulsive gambling. She finds work as a caregiver for Granny, bed-ridden
and senile, who lives in a cottage on the luxurious estate of her newly married
daughter, Clare, and her son-in-law, Luke. Chinchilla deals with the physical
and emotional trauma that emanates from a love relationship. Lea Louw flees
from Swakopmund and from Martin, the lover whose irrational jealousy leads
to his kicking to death their unborn child. She finds refuge on the farm in the
Roggeveld region of the Karoo where she grew up.

46
Stefan Brink, “Home: The Term and the Concept from a Linguistic and Settle-
ment-Historical Viewpoint,” in The Home: Words, Interpretations, Meanings, and
Environments, ed. David N. Benjamin (Aldershot: Avebury, 1995): 20, 22.
47
Dawson, “Landmarks of Home in the Pacific Northwest,” 19.
124 SUSAN MEYER a

Sabbatsreis
In Sabbatsreis, Botes finds herself in a situation of self-imposed exile at
Eastland Manor, in an isolated and forested residential area on the outskirts of
London. She has to care for a demanding old lady “who never stops calling
and complaining,”48 and she has practically no private space or time. When
the situation threatens to overwhelm her, Botes takes refuge in the wet oak
wood behind Granny’s cottage. Here she finds a new objective: “There was a
need in me to create a garden home in the oak wood.”49
The “garden home” that Botes builds is nothing more than a kind of shel-
ter, a place of comfort and security. Joseph Rykwert explains that ‘home’
does not require any building and can be made anywhere, because it refers a
situation of well-being, stability, and security.50 By measuring out the house
and building outlines with tree trunks, the author confirms the way “the shel-
tered being gives perceptible limits to his shelter.”51
Botes searches a garbage dump for rejects to be used in decorating her
house in the wood. She chooses items in which Africa and its colours reso-
nate, a cracked clay pot and ochre roof tiles, for “floor and paving.”52 This
choice of items reflects the author’s link with Africa, in terms of both heart
and geography, and her action can be understood in the context of Bache-
lard’s description of how a meaningful relationship develops between a per-
son and his /her refuge. For Bachelard, the house53 – in the first place a
protective place – comes into being within the thoughts, dreams, and memo-
ries of its inhabitant.54 One’s imagination and memories are irrevocably
linked with places; in this way, a memory is a kind of dream in which places
and experiences merge. In memories, one cherishes the happiness of the past
or reconstructs it as fictional dreams of happiness. Because the house protects
the dreamer, offering a refuge in which to dream, Bachelard considers it a

48
“wat nooit ophou roep en kla nie,” Botes, Sabbatsreis, 10.
49
“Daar was ’n begeerte in my om ’n tuinhuis in die akkerbos te skep” (103).
50
Joseph Rykwert, “Home: A Place in the World,” Social Research 58.1 (1991): 54.
51
Bachelard, The Poetics of Space, 5.
52
“vloere en plaveisel” (103).
53
Bachelard uses the word ‘house’, but in his reflection on the essence of this con-
cept takes us away from the physical properties of house into the psychical territory of
the mind.
54
Bachelard, The Poetics of Space, 4–5.
a Earth as Home 125

strong force in the integration of thoughts, memories, and dreams.55 Sabbats-

reis demonstrates how the memories and dreams of the author as an uprooted
African person are integrated into the building process of the house in the
wood. The narrator carries tree trunks to her house “like an African queen”;56
she says, “I knew that African power would get it to here,”57 and she calls this
house her “African Garden.”
The trunks she collects serve as seats, but they are described in the first
place as items from nature, “moss-encrusted, heavy with winter rain.”58
Gnarled trunks also become dressing tables and kitchen cupboards in the
house in the wood, tangled branches form a partition, handfuls of bark are
broken up and strewn around as floor mats (112, 114). Objects of nature are
shown to be far more than utility articles or building material – Botes focuses
intently on contact with nature as an anchor for her emotional survival (53).
Grubbing in the earth with her fingers when she lifts and replants bush ferns
comes to be an important part of her survival: “Every time when I touch the
primitive spirits under the earth with my finger, I can turn away from the rail-
ings of the bridge.”59
Contact with the earth has become a conscious survival mechanism from
shortly after her arrival. On the second morning, deeply aware of her
brokenness and of the enormous demands of caring for the neglected old
woman, she buried herself in the thick carpet of leaves in the oak wood, “face
in the leaf-mould,” fingers scrabbling in the wet soil and with handfuls of
leaves pressed over her ears, “so as not to hear my keening sobs.”60 Here,
lying on the floor of the wood, she felt a quivering coming “from the under-
belly of the earth”61 and from Africa to her, and she recognized the bleating of
the goat she had raised on a farm on the southern continent. From there ema-
nates the decision to use the earth as a metronome in order to maintain a

55
The Poetics of Space, 6.
56
“soos ’n Afrika-koningin” (112).
57
“Ek het geweet my Afrikakrag sal dit tot hier kry” (112).
58
“mosbegroei, swaar van winterreën” (104).
59
“Elke keer as ek met my vinger aan die oergeeste onder die grond raak, kan ek
wegdraai van die brugrelings” (211).
60
“gesig in die molm”; “om nie my eie tjanke te hoor nie” (10).
61
“uit die ondermaag van die aarde” (10).
126 SUSAN MEYER a

sound spiritual rhythm and focus: “All that I have to do is to keep my ear to
the ground, so that I can pick up the throbbing sound.”62
Early in the book, it is stated: “The oak wood has become my home.”63
This has to do with the tangible presence of nature and the inhabitants of the
oak wood whose space she is pleased to share and whose presence she needs
in her loneliness and social isolation: birds, squirrels, and field-mice (27, 114).
She keeps it secret that the mice are nibbling away the wooden floor of the
cottage kitchen, to avoid having to kill them, because “it will be like the death
of close family.”64 She is well aware that humans, superior or not, are but one
species among others on a shared planet – and that earth is home for all living
creatures.
The idea of earth as home is deftly explored further on in the work. Re-
flecting on the process of defining place as ‘home’, Dawson remarks that
“intimacy is nearness to self.”65 For Botes, the wood inspires contact with the
“silent place within myself” where she is able to “sort. Cut open. Read sun-
dials. Set my compass”66 Unrolling her reed mat in her refuge and listening to
the Cape Robin creates essential time for reflection, to see that her Sabbath
journey67 implies the “paging back into the book of my life”68 in order to
understand all the “riddles and twisting paths.”69 She concludes: “I would like
to stay here all day. [. ..] Curled up against myself.”70 This resonates with
Bachelard’s perception of the bodily experience of ‘home’:

62
“Al wat ek moet doen, is om deurentyd my oor op die grond te hou. Sodat ek die
klopklank kan optel” (25).
63
“Die akkerbos het my huis geword” (27).
64
“dit sal wees soos die dood van nabyfamilie” (27).
65
Dawson, “Landmarks of Home in the Pacific Northwest,” 13.
66
“stilteplek in myself”; “sorteer. Oopvlek. Sonwysers lees. Kompas instel” (205).
67
The title of Sabbatsreis (Sabbath journey) refers, according to the dictionary de-
finition, to the distance of two thousand yards the Israelites were allowed to walk from
their homes on the Sabbath – H A T : Verklarende Handwoordeboek van die Afrikaanse
Taal, ed. F.F. Odendal & R.H. Gouws (Cape Town: Pearson Education South Africa,
2005): 967. The term also implies that there would always be a return home. In the
novel, the concept of the ‘Sabbath journey’ also manifests itself on the figurative level
as a journey undertaken to come to an understanding of aspects of the writer’s past,
before she allows herself to turn home (53).
68
“terugblaai in die boek van my lewe” (60).
69
“raaisels en dwaalpaaie” (53).
70
“Ek wil heeldag hier bly. […] Teen myself opkrul” (134).
a Earth as Home 127

We have nooks and corners in which we like to curl up comfortably.

To curl up belongs to the phenomenology of the verb to inhabit, and
only those who have learned to do so can inhabit with intensity.71
Hummon argues that domestic symbols may become significant elements
in personal identity as symbols of past experiences and relationships.72 The
most valued domestic item Botes possesses is an earthenware dish with three
sea stones from the coastal town of Schoenmakerskop (Shoemaker’s Hill) in
South Africa. These stones are the only gifts she asked for when her husband
came to visit and she plans to leave them behind as “part of my African soul
that will forever sojourn here in the oak wood.”73 This provides further proof
of the extent to which interaction with nature, and specifically with elements
from the African space the author misses so intently, forms part of the occu-
pation and definition of her intimate personal sheltering space.

Chinchilla
In Nanette van Rooyen’s debut novel, Chinchilla,74 the notion of ‘at-home-
ness’ is strongly contrasted with the sense of being ‘out of place’. After a
period of imprisonment in Martin’s house in Swakopmund, Lea flees to the
farm of her youth, bearing the signs of being wounded and confused by the
man who came to “entice her away from saltbush and ironstone, the karee
bush and the rocky open veld.”75 ‘At-homeness’ involves an experience of
reality in which one is “comfortable in and familiar with the everyday world
in which one lives and outside of which one is ‘visiting’, ‘in transit’, ‘out of
place’, or ‘travelling’.”76 Such relatedness to the world, some writers suggest,
involves a “centeredness” in a valued locale, a place of return and repetition;77

71
Bachelard, The Poetics of Space, xxxiv.
72
Hummon, “House, Home and Identity in Contemporary American Culture,” 219.
73
“as deel van my Afrikasiel wat vir altyd hier in die akkerbos sal bly swerf” (151).
74
The book is named after the chinchilla, a Southern American rodent, in great
demand for its soft, silvery-grey fur. Caring for the chinchillas on the farm where Lea
grew up is part of the way in which she deals with the trauma of her abusive marriage.
75
“kom weglok het van die soutbos en ysterklip, die kareebos en die klipperige oop
veld,” van Rooyen, Chinchilla, 10.
76
Hummon, “House, Home and Identity in Contemporary American Culture,” 220.
77
David Seamon, A Geography of the Lifeworld: Movement, Rest, and Encounter
(New York: St. Martin’s, 1979): 11.
128 SUSAN MEYER a

a “rootedness” in place, grounded in the familiarity of knowing and being

known in a particular place;78 a sense of being “really me” here.79
Lea’s arrival at the farm is, in the first place, ‘at-homeness’ in nature. Ar-
riving at Sutherland railway station, she decides to walk the road to the farm,
“in order that the fragrance of the herbal shrubs can enclose her: saltbush, rhino-
ceros bush, and buchu.”80 Initially, she stays in the farmhouse of Zacharias,
her falconer father, who has a closer relationship with his raptors than with
her, and who has little patience with her emotional baggage. She soon decides
that “From now on I will create my own order. I’ll build my own house, and
I’ll invite into it whoever I want and when I want.”81 Building this house
implies taking back control after all the years she had been Martin‘s “puppet.”
It is designed to demonstrate that, for her, ‘at-homeness’ is a matter of being
tied to nature. She sinks her roots “under the blue shadow of the Adams fig.”82
Lea chooses rocks and sandstone from the Karoo environment for her
house. On the side facing Zacharias’s house, this stone house has only narrow
window slits, “two parallel tears in the stone wall,”83 which resemble the split
openings between rocks in a cave, indicating how nature is made part of the
building plan. Lea’s house becomes “a castle and fortress, defence against
injury and violence,” as Rykwert sums up the essence of ‘home’.84 In a
figurative sense, she turns her back on the old farmhouse where she had felt
out of home, rejected and lonely as a child (23).
Through its design, the house invites the Karoo space to enter. The door
and the main windows open on to the hills, they “look” towards the Skurwe-
berg and “away from the others on the farmstead.”85 A bath as spacious as a
mountain pool is built of rock in the middle of the house (109); there is a
skylight through which the stars tumble inward (137). Lea fetches lava rocks

78
Edward C. Relph, Place and Placelessness (London: Pion, 1976): 34.
79
Seamon, A Geography of the Lifeworld, 11.
80
“sodat die geur van kruiebos op haar kan kom lê: soutbos, renosterbos, plakkie en
boegoe” (19).
81
“Van nou af skep ek my eie orde. Ek bou my eie huis en ek bring daarin wie ek
wil en wanneer ek wil” (89).
82
“onder die blou skadu van die Adamsvy” (146).
83
“twee eweredige skeure in die klipsteentjiesmuur” (131).
84
Rykwert, “Home: A Place in the World,” 53.
85
“weg van die ander op die werf” (131).
a Earth as Home 129

from Salpeterkop (50) for her fireplace, while round river stones are cemen-
ted around the house (174).
Not only does Lea demonstrate a way of escaping from the dominance of
male occupation; she also rejects conventional building plans. This is a circu-
lar house, there are no inner walls dividing up rooms (109, 131). Bachelard
suggests that grace is attributed to curves and inflexibility to straight lines.86
The grace of a curve is an invitation to stay, for the curve has “nest-like
powers.” Bachelard even hints that the angle can be considered masculine and
the curve feminine. This round house, without the rigid lines of walls and
corners, thus confirms Bachelard’s view that an entire past comes to dwell in
a new house,87 or, as Pallasmaa states, “home integrates memories and
images, desires and fears, the past and the present.”88
Lea describes her place of protection as “simple, actually bare.”89 The sim-
plicity of this round, one-roomed house reminds one of Bachelard’s ideas
about the primitiveness of refuge and his concept of a ‘hermit’s hut’, which
ties in with the dream of finding refuge in a hut or ‘nest’, like an animal in its
hole.90 Bachelard regards the centre of the house as the major zone of protec-
tion and the notion of a hermit’s hut links up with ideas about centralization.
He refers, among others, to “the centres of condensation of intimacy” which
cannot easily be found in palatial homes with many rooms.91 At the centre of
Lea’s one-room house is the stone bath where she can “hear” the stars, one by
one, “plunge into the bath and sink down to lie on the bottom like light blue
crystals.”92 This is possibly an example of what Bachelard might have meant
by “the images by means of which we live our day-dreams of intimacy,”93
and surely also proof of a link with nature on the most intimate level.

86
Bachelard, The Poetics of Space, 146.
87
The Poetics of Space, 5.
88
Pallasmaa, “Identity, Intimacy and Domicile: Notes on the Phenomenology of
Home,” 133.
89
“Dis eenvoudig, kaal eintlik” (145).
90
Bachelard, The Poetics of Space, 29–30.
91
The Poetics of Space, 29
92
“plons in die bad en dan stadig wegsink om soos ligblou kristalle op die bodem te
bly lê” (137).
93
Bachelard, The Poetics of Space, 31.
130 SUSAN MEYER a

Bachelard also refers to “the centre of concentrated solitude,” indicating

the hermit’s intention to meditate in prayer.94 Lea’s building assistant refers to
the house with the row of niches in the wall, intended for candles, as hardly a
house but, rather, “Miss Lea’s one-person church.”95 In asserting this, he puts
his finger on the idea of introspection and recovery that Lea has in mind
through a kind of harmonious union with the environment of mountain, rock,
and stars.
Lea’s stone house is an integral part of the natural surroundings which
offers her the experience of ‘at-homeness’. When she stands inside it, she is
“in the circle of her Karoo rock, in the circle of the Adam’s fig, close up
against the curve of her water pool.”96 The house and surrounding nature
together embody home in exactly the way Pallasmaa interprets the concept:
“Home is a collection and concretization of personal images of protection and
intimacy.”97
Lea’s past explains why she wants to have the house blend into the Karoo
environment and why the tangible elements of nature have to be built into this
strictly guarded personal space with the metal bolt on the door. Nature func-
tions above and beyond human shortcomings and power-relations, thus offer-
ing escape routes from human violence and meanness.98
At the end of the novel, when Lea has regained her emotional equilibrium,
she observes her house from the mountain-side and sees it “standing in the
circle of the white almond blossoms and recording the beginning of spring.”99
In this final sentence, ‘earth’ and ‘home’ practically become one concept.
This novel, together with Sabbatsreis and Met ’n eie siekspens, clearly
illustrates how nature is actively involved in the definition of personal human

94
The Poetics of Space, 32.
95
“miss Lea se eenman-kerkie” (109, 130).
96
“in die kring van haar Karooklip, in die sirkel van die adamsvy, dig teen die
ronding van haar waterpoel” (147).
97
Pallasmaa, “Identity, Intimacy and Domicile: Notes on the Phenomenology of
Home,” 135.
98
Heilna du Plooy, “Afstand en belewenis: liminale ruimtes en oorlewing in Niggie
deur Ingrid Winterbach” [distance and experience: liminal spaces and survival in
Cousin by Ingrid Winterbach], Literator 27.7 (2006): 9.
99
“Sy skreef haar oë teen die lig en trek die buiterand van haar huis met haar
voorvinger na. Haar huis, daar waar dit in die kring van die spierwit amandelbloeisels
staan en dit aanteken as die begin van die lente” (201).
a Earth as Home 131

spaces and made part of the refuge and living spaces in which, according to
Bachelard, the essence of human existence is contracted. The various ways in
which this is done may be summarized by referring to the conclusions of the
analyses of the different texts.
Met ’n eie siekspens demonstrates ‘borderless’ home–nature experiences,
of nature dominating indoor spaces and even the most intimate indoors rituals.
Here, earth is ‘home’ for people in both a positive sense of safeguarding and
nurturing and, in more negative ways, of imposing subjection. In this novel,
nature is an essential part of the characters’ life rituals and routines, the latter
firmly integrated into the natural environment and the rhythm of the seasons.
All these strongly contribute to their sense of earth as home.
Sabbatsreis and Chinchilla depict various strategies for integrating nature
with spaces of refuge, whether a temporary shelter or a solid, permanent place
of safety. These strategies include, among others, the planning of the shelter’s
spatial orientation, the design of both the outside and inside of the refuge, as
well as the physical and mental occupying thereof. Building these refuges
from materials chosen from nature, focusing on contact with nature, and
gathering domestic symbols from nature – all demonstrate a yearning for
nature in times of unsettlement. In these novels characters are shown mentally
and bodily taking refuge in earth as home.
From the analysis of these texts flows an awareness of the dissolving of
boundaries underlying the human–nature dualism in conventional thinking.
The conclusions drawn in this study will, it is hoped, stimulate thinking about
humankind as living within and alongside nature, feeling part of earth rather
than master of it, rather than dominating it. Earth is home.

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a
Borders and Abjection in Triomf

A DÉLE N EL

Introduction

T WO S O U T H A F R I C A N F I L M S , released in 2009, evoked wide and di-

vergent reactions from both critics and viewers. These were the South
African-born Neill Blomkamp’s successful District 91 and Michael
Raeburn’s controversial adaptation2 of Marlene van Niekerk’s Noma Award-
winning novel, Triomf.3 At first glance, the two films seem to have nothing in
common. Blomkamp’s film was an unprecedented success at the box-office
(in South Africa and internationally), receiving four Academy Award nomi-
nations in 2010. Although Raeburn’s film was the winner of the Best South
African Film Award (2008), conferred at the Durban International Film Fes-
tival, its initial release was limited to a few Nu-Metro theatres in South Africa
and it received mixed reaction from the public. Although District 9 is cate-
gorized as science fiction and Triomf can be labelled a claustrophobic family

1
Neill Blomkamp, dir. District 9 (TriStar Pictures, USA | New Zealand | Canada
|South Africa 2009; 112 min.).
2
Michael Raeburn, dir. Triomf (Focus Films¸ G H Films¸ Giraffe Creations, South
Africa¸ France¸ U K 2008; 118 min.).
3
Marlene van Niekerk, Triomf, tr. Leon de Kock (Cape Town: Queillerie, 1994; tr.
Johannesburg: Jonathan Ball; Cape Town: Queillerie, 1999). There is also a standard
English version, published in London by Little, Brown, 1999. It is not within the scope
of this essay to refer to the novel or the merits of the screen adaptation which Raeburn
co-wrote with Malcom Kohll. It is relevant only to note that they kept to the basic idea
of the novel, but the ending of the latter is radically different in the film. One must also
keep in mind that an adaptation of a novel is also a crossing of a media-specific boun-
dary, between telling (the novel is seen through mind's eye) to showing (films directly
engage the various senses).
136 ADÉLE NEL a

drama, some general commonalities may be pointed out. Both narratives, as

well as the characters, are authentically South African and both refer to the
pain and fears of a previous regime. Both films can be described as shifting
the boundaries in the South African cinematic landscape. In this context, Alex
Perry’s remark in Time Magazine4 that South African filmmakers are deter-
mined to take back the country’s stories5 and invest them with a spirit that
goes further than skin-deep is relevant. He quotes Kenneth Nkosi (who played
in Tsotsi and District 9):
Now we are telling our own stories. This is not just about making
movies. This is about our changing political landscape, our democracy,
the fact that anyone can say anything now. This is about shaping a
nation.6
Both filmmakers seemed to be fascinated by the revolting or sordid, and con-
cerned with the subversive capacity of cinema to confront us with what we
may not wish to see; in this case, the structure of abjection in relation to the
moving image. Shaun de Waal, for example, complains about “much gritty,
grungy nastiness shoved at us” and refers to the character’s “repulsiveness” in
Triomf, as well as the filmgoer’s “distaste.”7 De Waal’s remarks bring to mind
Julia Kristeva’s notion of the abject.
Kristeva’s model of abjection offers a useful interpretative approach to the
analysis of popular culture, art, and cinema as well as a lens through which to
view Triomf and District 9. It is not only a theoretical exposition of the psy-
chological origins and mechanisms of fear, loathing, and disgust but also an
explanation of the materiality of the subject’s embodied existence and corpor-
eal boundaries. The notion of abjection can also help us think about how
sexualized, racialized, and classed others function as abject in certain theoreti-
cal discourses, such as psychoanalytic and film theories.8 In this regard, I

4
Alex Perry, “Beyond Black and white,” Time Magazine (20 April 2009): www
.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1890053,00.html (accessed 24 January 2012).
5
Perry refers to the fact that South Africa’s most important stories were made in
Hollywood (films such as Invictus, In My Country, Red Dust, Catch a Fire, and
Goodbye Bafana, to name but a few).
6
Perry, “Beyond Black and white.”
7
Shaun de Waal, “Triomf,” Mail & Guardian (23 April 2009), http://www
.theguide.co.za/movies_detail.php?moviesid=3920 (accessed 24 January 2012).
8
See Tina Chanter, The Picture of Abjection: Film, Fetish, and the Nature of Diffe-
rence (Bloomington & Indianapolis: Indiana U P , 2008): 18.
a Borders and Abjection in Triomf 137

agree with Tina Chanter that the relationship between film and theory is one
that is “not so much dialectical as mutually constitutive, wherein theory can
illuminate film; yet, equally, film can open up, reorganise, challenge – recon-
stitute – theory.”9
It is not within the scope of this essay to discuss comprehensively Kris-
teva’s theoretical reflections, so I highlight only those concepts relating to the
abject that are applicable to the analysis of the film under discussion. In pur-
suing Kristeva’s model, I argue that abjection and borders have everything in
common with each other. My premise is that abjection and liminal experi-
ences manifest themselves in many ways in Triomf. For Kristeva,10 the abject
is the ‘border zone’ between being and non-being, the border of one’s condi-
tion as a living being. She emphasizes the following feature of abjection:
It is thus not lack of cleanliness or health that causes abjection but
what disturbs identity, system, order. What does not respect borders,
positions, rules. (4)

According to Elizabeth Grosz, the abject demonstrates “the impossibility of

clear-cut borders, lines of demarcation, divisions between the clean and the
unclean, the proper and the improper, order and disorder.”11 Concurring with
Kristeva, several critics state that the concept of the border is central to the
construction of the abject, and that which crosses or threatens to cross the
‘border’ is abject. Barbara Creed argues:
The place of the abject is where meaning collapses, the place where I
am not. The abject threatens life. It must be radically excluded from
the place of the living subject, propelled away from the body and
deposited on the other side of an imaginary border which separates the
self from that which threatens the self.12

9
Chanter, The Picture of Abjection, 1–2.
10
Julia Kristeva, Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection, tr. Leon S. Roudiez
(Pouvoirs de l’horreur, 1980; tr. New York: Columbia U P , 1982): 3. Further page
references are in the main text.
11
Elizabeth Grosz, “The Body of Signification,” in Abjection, Melancholia and
Love: The Work of Julia Kristeva, ed. John Fletcher & Andrew Benjamin (London &
New York: Routledge, 1990): 89.
12
Barbara Creed, The Monstrous-Feminine: Film, Feminism, Psychoanalysis (Lon-
don & New York: Routledge, 1993): 65.
138 ADÉLE NEL a

What is notable about the abject is its ambiguous nature: it repels but simul-
taneously attracts. Kristeva provides a useful avenue into this matter:
We may call it a border; abjection is above all ambiguity. Because,
while releasing a hold, it does not radically cut off the subject from
what threatens it – on the contrary, abjection acknowledges it to be in
perpetual danger. But also because abjection itself is a composite of
judgement and affect, of condemnation and yearning, of signs and
drives. (9–10)

Besides the relationship between abjection and boundaries or liminal experi-

ences, Triomf may also be viewed in terms of the recent focus in the humani-
ties and social sciences on borders and boundaries. In the field of literary
studies, this has led to attempts to conceptualize a ‘border poetics’ in which
borders /boundaries can be accounted for as forms of representation.13 In his
discussion of the ontology of boundaries and the methods applied to their
analysis, Svend Erik Larsen regards boundaries as ambiguous, because any
given boundary is always a boundary between: i.e. a possible obstacle, and a
boundary to: i.e. a possible opening. He rightly argues that the role of a boun-
dary as a barrier or as a gate can be changed through interaction.14
Concurring with Kristeva, Michael Herbst15 distinguishes between a pro-
cess of abjecting (an operation to instil abjection) and the state of being abject
(condition of abjection). The first aspect is an active one in which one party
rejects, banishes, degrades or, in some other way, denigrates another party. In
the context of a border poetics, this would have to do with a border-in-pro-
cess. The state of being abject is what follows an act of abjection: it is a dis-
position, a place of exclusion; in other words, the condition of being behind a
boundary, a fence, or barrier. Herbst emphasizes the relation between abjec-
tion as a politics as well as a power-play because, without exception, the party
that does the abjecting is the one in a position of power, while the one de-

13
See Johan Schimanski & Stephen Wolfe, Border Poetics De-Limited (Hannover:
Wehrhahn, 2007).
14
Svend Erik Larsen, “Boundaries: Ontology, Methods, Analysis,” in Border
Poetics De-Limited, ed. Johan Schimanski & Stephen Wolfe (Hannover: Wehrhahn,
2007): 98–99.
15
Michael Herbst, “Goya’s Grotesque: Abjection in Los Caprichos, Desastres de la
Guerra, and Los Disparates” (doctoral dissertation, University of the Witwatersrand,
1999): 16.
a Borders and Abjection in Triomf 139

graded is robbed of power and the right to societal inclusion. Gail Weiss
maintains the same distinction and argues thus:
Abjection refers to a process of expulsion, whereby that which has
been designated as abject (this can include other people, food, vermin,
body fluids, rodents and an infinite number of phenomena) is rejected
and, at the same time, the rejection itself is disavowed. The generic
term, “the abject object” is used to cover all of the possible sites of
abjection.16
In this essay, I aim to focus on abjection and border experiences in Triomf. I
will identify and investigate the different aspects of the mechanism of abjec-
tion in the film – the urban space of Johannesburg as a city of various boun-
daries and spaces of abjection, abjection and the politics of borders and fear,
and the abject borders of cinematic bodies. In other words, this essay attempts
to expose and evaluate the impact that abjection and that which crosses, or
threatens to cross, the border have on the characters and action of the film, as
well as the way boundaries and the notion of abjection produce meaning.

Johannesburg: City of various boundaries and abject spaces

The abject is also concerned with space, and the term ‘space of abjection’ is
sometimes used to refer to a space inhabited by abjected things or beings or
“menacing things.”17 Kristeva explains that the one to whose detriment the
abject exists is crucially concerned with the question ‘where?’:
Instead of sounding himself as to his ‘being’, he does so concerning
his place. ‘Where am I?’ instead of ‘Who am I?’ For the space that
engrosses the deject, the excluded, is never one, not homogenous, nor
totalizable, but essentially devisable, foldable, and catastrophic. (8;
Kristeva’s emphases)
The title, Triomf, as well as the opening sequence of the film, in which the
camera pans slowly over the urban cinematic landscape of Johannesburg as
spatial and narrative structure, foregrounds the integral role of the city-as-
space. From the visual iconography of the cityscape, it moves centripetally

16
Gail Weiss, “The Abject Borders of the Body Image,” in Perspectives on Embodi-
ment: The Intersections of Nature and Culture, ed. Gail Weiss & Honi Fern Haber
(New York & London: Routledge, 1999): 57.
17
Bert Olivier, “Nature as ‘abject’, critical psychology, and ‘revolt’: The pertinence
of Kristeva,” South African Journal of Psychology 37.3 (August 2007): 455.
140 ADÉLE NEL a

towards the vibrant and rhythmic pulse of the inner-city streets, conveying the
dynamics of urban street life with its strollers, moving vehicles, and urban
noises. From there, it moves with the protagonist, Treppie, on his way home
to the suburb of Triomf, depicting the visual landscape and surfaces of the
urban poor. At the same time, it underlines the relation between the spatial
structure and the abjectly impoverished and neglected inhabitants of the sub-
urb. Finally, the camera enters the intimate and claustrophobic interior of the
Benade family’s dilapidated house.
Although Cape Town with its spectacular location is now home to a
thriving film industry,18 it is Johannesburg that is the place of production and
diegetic location for some of the better South African films of the post-apart-
heid period: Tsotsi, Taxi to Soweto, Jerusalema, District 9, and Triomf. These
films are distinctly South African, with Johannesburg as the topographical
and relational setting that binds characters together and places them in a
shared time and space that Leslie Saks refers to as “the national habitus.”19
Blomkamp explains his view thus to David Smith:
In my opinion, the film [District 9] doesn’t exist without Jo’burg. It’s
not like I had a story, and then I was trying to pick a city. It’s totally
the other way around. I actually think Johannesburg represents the
future. What I think the world is going to become looks like Johan-
nesburg.20

In Triomf Johannesburg as urban setting takes on “an atmosphere of apocaly-

ptic possibility”21 on the brink of the 1994 election. The film addresses the
discourses of racial polarization, spatial dislocation, class differentiation, and
the geography of poverty and blatant sexism. This point of departure offers a
unique view on themes of racism, acute fear of the unknown, anxious xeno-
phobia, sexual abuse, dysfunctional family relationships, and the malaise of
incest, and marginalized people. Raeburn chose the ragged, poor, and desolate

18
Perry, “Beyond Black and white.”
19
Leslie Saks, Cinema in a Democratic South Africa: The Race for Representation
(Bloomington: Indiana U P , 2010): 2.
20
David Smith, “District 9: South Africa and apartheid come to the movies,” The
Guardian (20 August 2009), http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2009/aug/20/district-9-
south-africa-apart heid/ (accessed 24 January 2012).
21
Jack Shear, “Haunted House, Haunted Nation: Triomf and the South African
Postcolonial Gothic,” Journal of Literary Studies / Tydskrif vir Literatuurwetenskap
22.1–2 (March–June 2006): 89.
a Borders and Abjection in Triomf 141

mini-suburb of Jan Hofmeyer, nestled beneath Johannesburg’s distinctive

Brixton Tower, as his central location and place of production.22 “It’s terrific”
he said. “If I had asked a studio boss to get a designer to build the main loca-
tion as a set, it would not have been as perfect as what I have found here
underneath the Brixton Tower.”23
The Benade family – mum Mol (Vanessa Cooke) and dad Pop (Paul Luck-
hoff), their son, Lambert (Eduan van Jaarsveldt), and Pop’s brother, Treppie
(Lionel Newton) – leads a hopeless and bleak existence on the fringe of the
backward white suburb of Triomf. Mol has an incestuous relationship with
Lambert, who is slow-witted and prone to epileptic fits. She is verbally, phy-
sically, and sexually abused by Lambert and Treppie (Newton describes his
violent character as “walking scar tissue”). On the day of the first free elec-
tion, Lambert will be turning twenty-one, and the obstreperous Treppie plans
a special birthday present for him: an encounter with the black prostitute Cleo.
It is this plan, however, that destroys the precarious equilibrium in the narra-
tive and leads to unforeseen and disastrous consequences.
Kristeva is of the view that abjection can explain the structural and political
acts of inclusion /exclusion which form the basis of the social existence of
people and groups. She points to the fact that abjection has a dual aspect: it
operates on both the individual and the collective level; thus the act of abjec-
tion can be executed by both individual and group rituals of exclusion. The
cityscape of Johannesburg, built on gold mining and white capitalist wealth,
and the low-income white neighbourhood of Triomf specifically, reflect
layered social, cultural, political, and historical commentary which, simul-
taneously, offers intertextual references for events in the narrative. Johannes-
burg as metropolis is marked by various borders and defined by spatial di-
chotomies, as well as social, cultural, political, and economic contrasts. Judith
Butler argues that, through the forces of abjection and exclusion, the abject is
provided with a concrete identity and, as a place, occupies “a zone of uninha-
bitability,” a place where society can dispose of its “excrement.”24 In this
light, the inhabitants of Triomf can be identified as excluded people on the

22
Jan Hofmeyer was chosen because the current multiracial Sophiatown (Triomf) is
too ‘middle-class’.
23
Anon, “Triomf is re-born on the screen,” The Witness (November 2007), www
.triomf-movie.com/download/the-witness.pdf (accessed 24 January 2012).
24
Judith Butler, Bodies that Matter: On the Discursive Limits of “Sex” (New York
& London: Routledge, 1993): 244.
142 ADÉLE NEL a

edge of society, both literally and metaphorically. Despite the fact that the
Afrikaner characters in the film are presented as culturally, socially, and poli-
tically superior because of ethnic differences, the family leads an abject,
poverty-stricken, and isolated existence at the bottom of the social ladder.
Topographical and symbolic borders separate them not only from the affluent
white ruling class but also from the exiled black population on the city’s
fringes. Wilhelm Snyman convincingly argues that, on another level, the film
is simply about class, about “those who are the victims of any societal ar-
rangement, those who cannot cope and turn inwards, into an unwittingly self-
destructive psychosis.”25 Because they fall outside the normative idealized
subjects that stand for the status quo (white, middle-class, nuclear family,
wealthy, educated), the family is trapped behind barriers, within a state of
being abject. They are also trapped within themselves and in their shared his-
tory, not only a dark family history, but also a history of privileged whiteness
and apartheid, as well as an (imagined) utopian nationalist identity.
Linking up with Kristeva’s notion of the “breaking down of a world,”
Butler explains the literal meaning of the word:
Abjection (in Latin, abjicere) literally means to cast off, away, or out
and, hence, presupposes and produces a domain of agency from which
it is differentiated.26

Thus the term refers to all people who are shifted out of the centre – a specific
sort of boundary-crossing from one space /world to another. Triomf as cine-
matic space delivers implicit historical commentary on forced removals dur-
ing the apartheid regime, which is linked to abjection and the breaking of
borders. As an historical intertext, Triomf and District 9 share the communal
history of the former Sophiatown and District 6, with the emphasis on the
destructive, violent, and unethical forced removals. Under the Group Areas
Act (41/1950), people of different races could not reside together, which made
it possible for the South African Government to facilitate racial segregation.27

25
Wilhelm Snyman, “Film of major S A novel a triumph,” Cape Times (20 Feb-
ruary 2009): www.triomf-movie.com/download/the-cape-times (accessed 24 January
2012).
26
Judith Butler, Bodies that Matter, 243.
27
For an historical overview of the apartheid city in South Africa, see Paul Maylam,
“Explaining the Apartheid City: 20 Years of South African Urban Historiography,”
Journal of Southern African Studies 21.1 (March 1995): 19–39.
a Borders and Abjection in Triomf 143

The title of Triomf evokes the history of the forced removals in the early
1950s from erstwhile Sophiatown – at that time, a vibrant cosmopolitan
multiracial community, and the cultural heart of black Johannesburg and the
mecca of jazz and Drum magazine – to Meadowlands in Soweto. Sophiatown
(and its concomitant dynamic cultural and social practices) was flattened and
removed from the map of Johannesburg to make room for the white working-
class neighbourhood of Triomf. However, in an attempt to ‘re-wind’ history,
the Johannesburg City Council took the decision in 2006 to reinstate the old
name, Sophiatown. The title of District 9 resonates with District 6, an inner-
city suburb in Cape Town, which was declared a white area by the apartheid
government – as a consequence, 60,000 residents were forcibly relocated to
the Cape Flats, and all buildings except those used for religious purposes were
demolished on the grounds of “slum clearance.”28
This systematic banishing of certain Others to the edge of society as an
ideological and political strategy can also be seen as a process of abjection
where subjects abandon others to abject states. The underlying motive in both
cases was political and economic: to marginalize the black population and to
disempower them in the name of urban development to the advantage of
white South Africans. However, the Johannesburg that emerged at the begin-
ning of the twentieth century was a city with various boundaries,29 and it
exhibited almost all the aspects that were to characterize the apartheid city
until the 1990s, with racial enclaves that were formed spatially. Even poor
whites, working-class, and lower-middle-class white families (as well as
waves of impoverished Afrikaners) were forced into peripheral townships.
Mbembe and Nuttall also emphasize that Johannesburg clearly shows that
one of the characteristic features of a metropolis is an ‘underneath’:
beneath the visible landscape and the surface of the metropolis, its
objects and social relations, are concealed or embedded other orders of
visibility, other scripts that are not reducible to the built form, the
house facade, or simply the street experience of the metaphorical
figure of the flâneur.30

28
Roddy Bray’s Guide to Cape Town (2008), http://www.capetown.at/heritage/city
/district%206.htm (accessed 24 January 2012).
29
Achille Mbembe & Sarah Nuttall, “Introduction: Afropolis,” in Johannesburg:
The Elusive Metropolis, ed. Sarah Nuttall & Achille Mbembe (Johannesburg: Wits
U P , 2008): 21.
30
Mbembe & Nuttall, “Introduction: Afropolis,” 22.
144 ADÉLE NEL a

Metaphorically, the ruins of Sophiatown may even be seen as burial grounds

– as abject urban spaces. Jack Shear comments on the residue of Sophiatown
in the novel Triomf:
Unable to find a final resting place, the spirits of old Sophiatown
struggle to the surface in the form of wreckage that the Benades churn
up from underneath their home.31

The secret underground is revealed in the film when the family buries the
dog, Gerty, in the garden. This scene, imbued with pathos, is one of the few in
which a grain of humaneness is conveyed: the camera focuses on the stunned
and bewildered Mol with the small animal corpse in her arms while Lambert
digs the grave, sobbing loudly and heart-wrenchingly. These signs of love and
humaneness are cruelly and ironically juxtaposed with what the soil reveals –
the residue of Sophiatown in Triomf. Lambert discovers a flute – an iconic
sign of the cultural practices of the erstwhile inhabitants of Sophiatown. In a
subversive manner, Treppie then refers to it as the remains of these inhabi-
tants’ possessions (he uses the racist term ‘kaffirs’ to refer to the black South
Africans) which were buried when their property was razed to the ground by
bulldozers.

Abjection and the politics of borders and fear

Derek Hook32 goes so far as to postulate that abjection can be labelled
‘border-anxiety’, and see it as an urgent response that arises in order to separ-
ate one’s self from a potentially overwhelming or contaminating external
quality or entity. It is March 1994 in South Africa. In a few days’ time, the
first democratic elections will take place, after which there will be an end to
apartheid, and a new black government will rule the country. The inclusion of
authentic documentary news footage from 1994 on the television in the
Benades’ house constantly reminds the characters and the spectator of the
historical urgencies and the border-anxiety of the time. When we encounter
Mol and Pop on the screen, Allan Boesak’s voice is heard in the background
referring to the “last white president.” The camera then focuses on his face as
he intones his repeated, inflammatory chant: “our future is coming.” While

31
Jack Shear, “Haunted House, Haunted Nation: Triomf and the South African
Postcolonial Gothic,” 77.
32
Derek Hook, “Racism as abjection: A psychoanalytic conceptualisation for a post-
apartheid South Africa,” South African Journal of Psychology 34.4 (2004): 685.
a Borders and Abjection in Triomf 145

President F.W. de Klerk issues a plea for the success of the election for all
parties concerned, images of (white) police violence and riotous crowds are
projected.33
Although the new order is only hinted at in the course of the action, the
artificial borders already start to crumble as the excluded others, the family’s
new black neighbours, move into the street and their new half-caste neigh-
bours have rowdy barbecues next door. De Waal refers to Treppie as a
“violent, foulmouthed misanthrope endlessly blaring his hatred of the world
and everyone in it.”34 Passing the neighbours’ house, without being provoked,
Treppie yells: “Fokof terug Kaap toe!” (fuck off back to the Cape!) and his
neighbour’s wry reply in a typical Cape accent is: “Fokof terug Holland toe!”
(fuck off back to Holland!). Again, one must keep in mind that abjection is
based on exclusion, but, as Herbst warns,
You can exclude it, but you cannot erase it. This means that prohibited
things and / or people, abject things or persons, have a certain revolu-
tionary power, whether real or imagined and as such they challenge the
ordering formation.35

Triomf presents a discourse of fear which characterizes the realities of the

city but also the fear of a violent ‘black take-over’. Leonie Sandercock de-
scribes the discourse of fear specifically related to cities. Among others
things, she argues that
individual identity is often suffused with anxiety, and that these anxi-
eties are projected onto the figure of the stranger, the alien, whose very
presence seems to challenge and undermine the known social order.
[. . . ] In numbers, strangers may come to be seen as an invading mass
or tide that will engulf us, provoking primitive fears of annihilation, of
the dissolving of boundaries, the dissolution of identity.36

33
As Vivian Sobchack puts it, the inclusion of documentary footage in fiction de-
signates an “experienced difference in our mode of consciousness, our attention toward
and our valuation of the cinematic objects we engage.” Sobchack, Carnal Thoughts:
Embodiment and Moving Image Culture (Berkeley: U of California P , 2004): 261.
34
De Waal, “Triomf.”
35
Michael Herbst, “Goya’s Grotesque,” 116.
36
Leonie Sandercock, “Difference, Fear and Habitus: A Political Economy of Urban
Fears,” in Habitus: A Sense of Place, ed. Jean Hillier & Emma Rooksby (Abingdon &
Burlington V T : Ashgate, 2005): 221–22.
146 ADÉLE NEL a

One needs to keep in mind that, in the logic of the old order, black or coloured
South Africans were the ‘strangers’, the ‘aliens’ or the abject Others in the
psyche of white Afrikaners. Melissa Steyn also offers an insightful perspec-
tive on the psychological dynamic of white fears at the time of transition:
For whites in this country the new South Africa can be understood as
an encounter with Africa, with the “other” that it did not want to know
except in terms of knowledge constructions that facilitated control.
The fear of a reversal of position with the repressed “other” has always
dominated the psyche of white South Africa, achieving apocalyptic
proportions in the white imagination.37

The gist of the plot in Triomf is a family trapped not only in poverty but also
in history in a world where boundaries are threatened and where they fear the
breaking-down of their world, on both the individual and the collective level.
They are trapped in a border zone between the collapse of the past – the old
white certainties around which their world as they know it had been built –
and the unsure future of a new world to be born. “Being-there-yet-not-there”38
is central to the troubled present. Their political, social, and cultural fears are
manifested in the presence of Sonny (Obed Baloi), the ‘black Other’, waiting
patiently in his car in the streets or at the borders of the suburb to claim back
the land that was taken from his people. In the discourse of the city-as-space,
Sonny appears as a figure of the vagrant who moves at the borders of the
establishment through practices of transgression, combined with the African
sâpeur – the figure of spatial transition, operating in the interstices of large
cultures.39 Raeburn swirls his audience straight into the centre of the racial
tension and white fears at the beginning of the film, as the camera cuts be-
tween a dumbfounded Treppie and a pleased Sonny, as they watch a passing
lorry with boisterous A N C supporters. The impact of the moment is stressed
by Sonny’s words: “Mister Treppie! The day of judgement is at hand!” These
words refer to the first free elections and the historical, almost eschata-

37
Melissa Steyn, “Taxi to Soweto and Panic Mechanic: Two Cinematic Represen-
tations of Whiteness in South-Africa Post-1994,” in Shifting Selves: Post-Apartheid
Essays on Mass Media, Culture and Identity, ed. Herman Wasserman & Sean Jacobs
(Cape Town: Kwela, 2003): 238.
38
Jack Shear, “Haunted House, Haunted Nation: Triomf and the South African
Postcolonial Gothic,” 76.
39
Sarah Nuttall, “Literary City,” in Johannesburg: The Elusive Metropolis, ed.
Sarah Nuttall & Achille Mbembe (Johannesburg: Wits U P , 2008): 199.
a Borders and Abjection in Triomf 147

logically wished-for demise of apartheid, but also, in an ironically prophetic

way, to the impending apocalypse for the family that will soon erupt from
within.
Concomitantly, the film projects the fear of the loss of white power, of the
disintegration of social structures, of (Afrikaner) identity, and even of a cohe-
rent self. Border-anxiety is projected onto black South Africans, “resulting in
a deeply irrational fear of miscegenation, and precipitating the paranoia which
is the heart of apartheid”40 If the elections are followed by (black) anarchy
and the family are “dissolved by blackness,” they have an escape plan:
enough fuel in Lambert’s bedroom to take them on an escape route to the
north in their old Volkswagen. Ironically, this border-anxiety and horrible
imaginings, in tandem with their escape plan, lead to the horrific finale when
their world comes to an apocalyptic end.

The abject borders of the cinematic bodies in Triomf

Elizabeth Grosz discusses the ways in which the experience of power is mani-
fested in the human body.41 She sees the body as a socio-cultural artefact and
deduces, among other things, that bodies become inscribed with the social
codes, laws, norms, and ideals they are subjected to. Put differently, the socio-
political milieu is inscribed on the subject’s body and Western bodies become
infiltrated with social codes of power and meaning. The consequences of the
state of abjection – even the process of abjection itself – for the cinematic
body in its specific social and political context are thus catastrophic. Ulti-
mately, the spectator’s confrontation with the abject body in cinema is also a
border experience: a confrontation with disgust but also with a pleasure in
perversity. Steven Shaviro stresses the impact of the abject cinematic body on
the spectator, which is at once captivating, violently repulsive, and out of con-
trol:
Film [. . . ] brings me compulsively, convulsively face to face with
Otherness that I can neither incorporate nor expel. It stimulates and
affects my own body, even as it abolishes the distances between my

40
Matthew Brophy, “Shadowing Afrikaner Nationalism: Jungian Archetypes,
Incest, and the Uncanny in Marlene van Niekerk’s Triomf,” Journal of Literary
Studies / Tydskrif vir Literatuurwetenskap 22.1–2 (March–June 2006): 97.
41
Elizabeth Grosz, Space, Time and Perversion: Essays on the Politics of Bodies
(London & New York: Routledge, 1995): 34–35.
148 ADÉLE NEL a

own and other bodies. Boundaries and outlines dissolve; representation

gives way to a violently affective, more-than-immediate, and non-
conceptualizable contact. Cinema allows me and forces me to see what
I cannot assimilate or grasp.42

Kristeva includes bodily wastes as well as dead bodies as the ultimate in

abjection. Although these wastes are part of ourselves, we reject them and
expel them in order to protect our boundaries:
These body fluids, this defilement, this shit are what life withstands,
hardly and with difficulty, on the part of death. There, I am at the
border of my condition as a living being. My body extricates itself, as
being alive, from that border. (3)

According to Kristeva, we reject our excreting bodies because they are sig-
nifiers of chaos, reminders of the body’s multiple boundaries or limits (be-
cause of leakages from multiple orifices), and of its ultimate death. In Triomf,
Lambert is the obvious manifestation of the abject in relation to the cinematic
body. Lambert’s epileptic fits, shown in their grotesque realism, time and
again stress these excretions of the body in an extreme situation. In this way,
he becomes a model of the abject body which loses control, form, and inte-
grity. Matthew Brophy points out that epilepsy, according to Freud,
has the ‘uncanny’ effect for the viewer not only because one sees a
‘demon’ arise out of someone else, but also because one suspects that
a demon might also reside in one’s own personality.43

Raeburn demonstrates this demonizing process through ocularization: the re-

lation between the position of the camera and what the homodiegetic charac-
ter is supposed to be seeing. When an epileptic fit threatens, the border be-
tween reality and illusion vanishes, and the person in Lambert’s vision
changes into a bestial, threatening monster. The depiction of these monsters
on the screen can be seen by Lambert as well as the spectators. Sabine
Schlickers speaks of “double perspectivation”44 when the spectator is to gain

42
Steven Shaviro, The Cinematic Body (Minneapolis & London: U of Minneapolis
P , 2006): 259.
43
Matthew Brophy, “Shadowing Afrikaner Nationalism: Jungian Archetypes, In-
cest, and the Uncanny in Marlene van Niekerk’s Triomf,” 106.
44
Sabine Schlickers, “Focalization, Ocularization and Auricularization in Film and
Literature,” in Point of View, Perspective, and Focalization: Modeling Mediation in
a Borders and Abjection in Triomf 149

an impression of what a character sees and feels and thinks. The demons
Lambert sees are Treppie or Pop, who are responsible for what Kristeva calls
“the deed of the beginning.”45 When Lambert murders his ‘fathers’ at the ex-
plosive climax of the film, he actually wants to get rid of the menacing mon-
sters responsible for his creation, and not necessarily Treppie or Pop.
For Kristeva, the abject is also characterized by an attraction to the pre-
Oedipal state, prior to the acquisition of language and prior to what Lacan
calls the Law of the Father, and is marked by prohibition. She links the abject
to the maternal, to lack of control and helplessness. The abject is thus an in-
between or border zone where we are “neither subject nor object” (1). In order
to become a separate being and construct an identity, an infant must release its
hold on the maternal entity, hence, abjecting the maternal, the object that has
created us. The grotesque and monstrous are placed in the forefront of the
film when Lambert appears on the screen for the first time. He lies passively
on the bed and his body position resembles that of a baby. In close shots, the
camera moves slowly and horizontally to reveal his body-as-flesh: from his
filthy bare feet over his fat, almost repugnant body and naked torso to his
face. This cinematic representation of Lambert and his body as excessive
flesh also refers to the grotesque body which constitutes the grotesque subject.
Sara Shabot argues that flesh is an essential feature of the grotesque subject
and defines the grotesque body thus:
a body that defies clear definitions and borders and that occupies the
middle ground between life and death, between subject and object,
between one and many. This should be understood mainly as a con-
sequence of the grotesque’s ambiguous essence.46

Mikhail Bakhtin also emphasizes the corporeality of the grotesque body:

This means that the emphasis is on the apertures or the convexities, or
on various ramifications and offshoots: the open mouth, the genital
organs, the breasts, the phallus, the potbelly, the nose. The body dis-
closes its essence as a principle of growth which exceeds its own limits

Narrative, ed. Peter Hühn, Wolf Schmid & Jörg Schönert (Berlin & New York: De
Gruyter, 2009): 246.
45
Julia Kristeva, Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection, 61.
46
Sara Cohen Shabot, “The Grotesque Body: Fleshing Out the Subject,” in The
Shock of the Other: Situating Alterities, ed. Silke Horstkotte & Esther Peeren (Am-
sterdam & New York: Rodopi, 2007): 59–60.
150 ADÉLE NEL a

only in copulation, pregnancy, childbirth, the throes of death, eating,

drinking and defecation.47

From Lambert’s baby face, the camera cuts back to Mol. She gives him a
two-litre Coke which he drinks messily from the bottle (like a baby), still
lying on his back. In this way, the unnatural/aberrant mother–child relation-
ship is emphasized cinematically, as is Lambert’s lack of control and helpless-
ness. When Treppie enters the room, he provokes Lambert with his defiant
and challenging behaviour. Consequently, the adult child literally transforms
to a growling attacking monster which loses all integrity and control. This
scene is iteration on a narrative level because, while Lambert assaults Treppie
in a state of uncontrolled rage, Pop seeks refuge in the bathroom and Mol in
the bedroom, where she undresses partially and waits for an incestuous sexual
assault on her body. The implication is also that the patriarchal authority
simultaneously crumbles in an abject manner as it is subjected to the physical
and psychological violence of the incestuous child in whom they both pos-
sibly share – either Pop or Treppie could be Lambert’s biological father. Kris-
teva claims that abjection is seen as a symbol for “the breaking down of a
world” (4), and this becomes true for the family because their repulsive beha-
viour disturbs identity, system, and order.
Related to the idea of the grotesque is that of the monstrous. The monster is
what “crosses or threatens to cross the border”48 – for example, the border be-
tween human and non-human, normal and abnormal gender behaviour and
sexual desire, the clean, proper, well-formed, and the dirty or deformed body.
At the same time, these aspects are related to the maternal and the universal
taboo of incest. Not only is Lambert the abject product of his family’s in-
breeding, but he has been unable to break the psychological hold his mother
has on him. Consequently, the spectators are forced to become witnesses of
the extreme crossing of borders when Lambert has abusive intercourse with
Mol in a shocking and revolting sequence. At the same time, it becomes a
forceful demonstration of the subversion of the mother–child relationship and
the perversion of the mother’s body; in other words, of abjection at work, be-
cause the spectator is forced to watch the abject dehumanization of both the
mother and the monstrous child.

47
Mikhail M. Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, tr. Hélène Iswolsky (Tvorchestvo
Fransua Rable, 1965; tr. Cambridge M A : M I T Press, 1968): 26.
48
Barbara Creed, The Monstrous-Feminine: Film, Feminism, Psychoanalysis, 11.
a Borders and Abjection in Triomf 151

The family secret concerning Lambert’s incestuous origin is revealed at the

climax of the film, leading to the final apocalyptic crossing of borders. For the
Benades, the violence they feared and expected from a possible racial struggle
erupts from within, and their world ends literally and symbolically in flames.
Lambert’s planned sexual meeting with Cleo goes awry from the start, partly
because of his incapacity to perform sexually when the barrier between his
fantasies and reality is removed, and partly because Cleo, realizing in time the
danger of his underlying aggression, flees. As the family examines the events
of the previous evening, a frustrated Treppie realizes that his plan has gone
awry. In a moment of extreme provocation, the confrontational and highly ag-
gressive Treppie tells Lambert that the girlfriend is a whore, and reveals the
secret of the “Benade’s genesis”: the fact that he, Mol, and Pop are siblings.
His provocation invites violence upon himself, but the abject chaos he evokes
also leads to the destruction of Pop, his brother. Consequently, Lambert mur-
ders both possible fathers in a last monstrous crossing of boundaries and in
the process burns down his room with the petrol he has hoarded. Lambert’s
murderous acts visually transform the embodied subjects into dead bodies or
body-objects which are, for Kristeva, “the utmost of abjection” (4). The final
irony is the fact that the mother who gave birth to this monster succeeds in
saving Lambert, unconscious in an epileptic fit, from the burning inferno with
the help of Sonny, the ‘black’ manifestation of their collective fears. On the
front of Sonny’s tee-shirt, there is a reproduction of the face of Nelson Man-
dela, the symbol of peace and reconciliation for the forthcoming ‘rainbow
nation’. This is the last image, offered to the spectator in a freeze frame, be-
fore the final titles roll against the background of T V footage showing
jubilant black masses.
On a collective level, the positive implication of the final scene is that the
border-shifting liberation of 1994 applies not only to the marginalized black
population but also to oppressed women in a malfunctional patriarchal soci-
ety. Consequently, the result of the first free election in South Africa meant
not only the end of official white rule, based on an incestuous apartheid sys-
tem, but also the start of a process of reconciliation and rebuilding of which
Nelson Mandela became the worldwide icon. In Larsen’s terminology, it
means the replacement of the boundary between people (i.e. barriers of race)
by a boundary to (i.e. a new multiracial society without symbolic and material
distinctions between people).49 On a personal level, however, the outcome of

49
Svend Erik Larsen, “Boundaries: Ontology, Methods, Analysis,” 98–99.
152 ADÉLE NEL a

the final scene is disastrous for the Benade family. Justice will call Lambert to
account for his murderousness. Without the financial support of Treppie and
Pop, Mol has to face a bleak outlook, as she will still be trapped in poverty, in
urban alienation, and in fear of the unknown. Even Sonny has to come to
terms with the fact that he can’t ‘re-wind the past’ (as Treppie has warned)
and simply take it for granted that he will become a landowner.
In the discourse of abjection, it may be concluded that the film deals with
extreme confrontation with the abject (abject spaces and monstrous beha-
viour, bodily wastes, and the construction of the grotesque body, the inter-
action with the maternal body, and the act of incest) in order to finally “eject
the abject,”50 and redraw the boundaries between the human and nonhuman /
inhuman, the clean and the unclean, the proper and the improper, order and
disorder. Seen from Kristeva’s viewpoint, Triomf as artistic experience
“rooted in the abject it utters” is “catharsis par excellence” (17) because it
functions, by the same token, to purify the abject.

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Anon. Roddy Bray's Guide to Cape Town (2008), http://www.capetown.at/heritage
/city/district%206.htm (accessed 24 January 2012).
Bakhtin, Mikhail M. Rabelais and His World, tr. Hélène Iswolsky (Tvorchestvo Fran-
sua Rable, 1965; Cambridge M A : M I T Press, 1968).
Blomkamp, Neill, dir. District 9 (TriStar Pictures, U S A | New Zealand | Canada |
South Africa 2009; 112 min.).
Brophy, Matthew. “Shadowing Afrikaner Nationalism: Jungian Archetypes, Incest,
and the Uncanny in Marlene van Niekerk’s Triomf,” Journal of Literary
Studies / Tydskrif vir Literatuurwetenskap 22.1–2 (March–June 2006): 96–112.
Butler, Judith. Bodies that Matter: On the Discursive Limits of “Sex” (New York &
London: Routledge, 1993).
Chanter, Tina. The Picture of Abjection: Film, Fetish, and the Nature of Difference
(Bloomington & Indianapolis: Indiana U P , 2008).
Creed, Barbara. The Monstrous-Feminine: Film, Feminism, Psychoanalysis (London
& New York: Routledge, 1993).
De Waal, Shaun. “Triomf,” Mail & Guardian (23 April 2009), http://www.theguide
.co.za/movies_detail.php?moviesid=3920 (accessed 24 January 2012).

50
Barbara Creed, The Monstrous-Feminine: Film, Feminism, Psychoanalysis, 14.
a Borders and Abjection in Triomf 153

Grosz, Elizabeth. “The Body of Signification,” in Abjection, Melancholia and Love:

The Work of Julia Kristeva, ed. John Fletcher & Andrew Benjamin (London &
New York: Routledge, 1990): 80–103.
——. Space, Time and Perversion: Essays on the Politics of Bodies (London & New
York: Routledge, 1995).
Herbst, Michael. “Goya’s Grotesque: Abjection in Los Caprichos, Desastres de la
Guerra, and Los Disparates” (doctoral dissertation, University of Witwatersrand,
1999).
Hook, Derek. “Racism as abjection: A psychoanalytic conceptualisation for a post-
apartheid South Africa,” South African Journal of Psychology 34.4 (2004): 672–
703.
Kristeva, Julia. Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection, tr. Leon S. Roudiez
(Pouvoirs de l’horreur, 1980; New York: Columbia U P , 1982).
Larsen, Svend Erik. “Boundaries: Ontology, Methods, Analysis,” in Border Poetics
De-Limited, ed. Johan Schimanski & Stephen Wolfe (Hannover: Wehrhahn, 2007):
97–113.
Maylam, Paul. “Explaining the Apartheid City: 20 Years of South African Urban His-
toriography,” Journal of Southern African Studies 21.1 (March 1995): 19–39.
Mbembe, Achille, & Sarah Nuttall. “Introduction: Afropolis,” in Johannesburg: The
Elusive Metropolis, ed. Sarah Nuttall & Achille Mbembe (Johannesburg: Wits U P ,
2008): 1–33.
Nuttall, Sarah. “Literary City,” in Johannesburg: The Elusive Metropolis, ed. Sarah
Nuttall & Achille Mbembe (Johannesburg: Wits U P , 2008): 195–218.
Olivier, Bert. “Nature as ‘abject’, critical psychology, and ‘revolt’: The pertinence of
Kristeva,” South African Journal of Psychology 37.3 (August 2007): 443–69.
Perry, Alex. “Beyond Black and white,” T I M E (20 April 2009), www.time.com
/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1890053,00.html (accessed 24 January 2012).
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Africa¸ France¸ U K 2008; 118 min.).
Saks, Leslie. Cinema in a Democratic South Africa: The Race for Representation
(Bloomington: Indiana U P , 2010).
Sandercock, Leonie. “Difference, Fear and Habitus: A Political Economy of Urban
Fears,” in Habitus: A Sense of Place, ed. Jean Hillier & Emma Rooksby (Abingdon
& Burlington V T : Ashgate, 2005): 91–118.
Schimanski, Johan, & Stephen Wolfe, ed. Border Poetics De-Limited (Hannover:
Wehrhahn, 2007).
Schlickers, Sabine. “Focalization, Ocularization and Auricularization in Film and
Literature,” in Point of View, Perspective, and Focalization: Modeling Mediation in
Narrative, ed. Peter Hühn, Wolf Schmid & Jörg Schönert (Berlin & New York: De
Gruyter, 2009): 243–58.
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Shabot, Sara Cohen. “The Grotesque Body: Fleshing Out the Subject,” in The Shock of
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New York: Rodopi, 2007): 57–67.
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P , 2006).
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colonial Gothic,” Journal of Literary Studies / Tydskrif vir Literatuurwetenskap
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of Whiteness in South-Africa Post-1994,” in Shifting Selves: Post-Apartheid Essays
on Mass Media, Culture and Identity, ed. Herman Wasserman & Sean Jacobs
(Cape Town: Kwela, 2003): 235–48.
Van Niekerk, Marlene. Triomf, tr. Leon de Kock (Cape Town: Queillerie, 1994; tr.
Johannesburg: Jonathan Ball; Cape Town: Queillerie, 1999).
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(New York & London: Routledge, 1999): 41–59.

a
Body, Corpus, and Corpse
Delineating Henrik Ibsen in
A.S. Byatt’s The Biographer’s Tale

E LLEN R EES

O V E R T H E P A S T H A L F - C E N T U R Y , the number of literary works that

fictionalize the lives of identifiable historical people has expanded
exponentially. Linda Hutcheon identified the development in the
1980s as “historiographic metafiction,”1 and more recently scholars have set
out to create typologies of the various subgenres that problematize and experi-
ment with the hybridization of fact and fiction. In such texts, historical data
about a person who once lived are used explicitly in order to construct that
person as a character in a work of fiction. Such works often overtly thematize
the traditional distinction between the factual and the fictional. This type of
writing has been classified variously as ‘fictional biography’, ‘biofiction’, ‘fic-
tional metabiography’, ‘the biographical novel’, and ‘biographical fiction’.2

1
Linda Hutcheon, A Poetics of Postmodernism: History, Theory, Fiction (London:
Routledge, 1988): 105.
2
Fictional biography: Ida Schabert, In Quest of the Other Person: Fiction as Bio-
graphy (Tübingen: Francke, 1990): 4; biofiction: Martin Middeke & Werner Huber,
Biofictions: The Rewriting of Romantic Lives in Contemporary Fiction and Drama, ed.
Middeke & Huber (Rochester N Y : Camden House, 1999): 3; fictional metabiography:
Ansgar Nünning, “Fictional Metabiographies and Metaautobiographies: Towards a
Definition, Typology and Analysis of Self-Reflexive Hybrid Metagenres,” in Self-
Reflexivity in Literature, ed. Werner Huber, Martin Middeke, & Huburt Zapf (Würz-
burg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2005): 201; the biographical novel: David Lodge,
The Year of Henry James, or, Timing is All: The Story of a Novel (London: Harvill
Secker, 2006): 8; biographical fiction: Dennis Kersten, “Life after the Death of the
Author: The Adventures of Robert Louis Stevenson in Contemporary Biographical
156 ELLEN REES a

Fictionalizations of the lives of literary authors make up a surprisingly sub-

stantial subset of this phenomenon.3 Yet despite the efforts to create typo-
logies of this development, little has been written about the broader theoreti-
cal implications of this type of writing. In what follows, I shall explore how
biographical fiction problematizes and challenges our received notions about
fact and fiction as separate categories. I am interested in how writers of this
kind of fiction adapt and revise a different empirical writer’s life itself, rather
than (or in addition to) specific works produced by that writer, and in how
such writing changes the way we as readers think about the author-character,
and indeed about the conceptual boundaries of fiction itself. As a test case, I
will examine the fictionalization of the life of the nineteenth-century dramatist
Henrik Ibsen in A.S. Byatt’s novel The Biographer’s Tale (2000), a text pre-
occupied with conceptual boundaries of many kinds. My suspicion here is
that, through complicating the boundaries between fact and fiction in the life
of the historical author (in this case Ibsen) specifically, the writer engages in a
kind of literary reception.
Byatt’s complex and self-reflexive novel has, along with a few others, be-
come a recurring example in discussions of biographical (meta)fiction:
not only their content, but also their complex structures, intertextual
networks, and metabiographic self-consciousness foreground the para-
doxical relation between life and writing which the somewhat oxy-
moronic term ‘biography’ somewhat unsuccessfully tries to conceal.4

Fiction,” in “Hello, I Say, It’s Me”: Contemporary Reconstructions of Self and Sub-
jectivity, ed. Jan D. Kucharzewski, Stefanie Schäfer & Lutz Schowalter (Trier: W V T ,
2009):
3
Some ground-breaking examples include Peter Ackroyd’s Chatterton (1987, about
Thomas Chatterton), J.M Coetzee’s Foe (1986, about Daniel Defoe), Penelope
Fitzgerald’s The Blue Flower (1997, about Novalis), Michael Cunningham’s The
Hours (1998, in part about Virginia Woolf), and Dorrit Willumsen’s Bang (1997,
about Hermann Bang). There have been numerous studies on the topic. See, among
many others: David Lodge’s long essay about the process of writing his biographical
novel about Henry James, Author, Author (London: Harvill Secker, 2006): 8–9; the
essays on fictionalizations of the lives of writers as far back as the classical age in Paul
Franssen & Ton Hoenselaar, The Author as Character: Representing Historical Writ-
ers in Western Literature (Madison W I : Fairleigh Dickinson U P , 1999); and Bio-
fictions: The Rewriting of Romantic Lives in Contemporary Fiction, ed. Martin Mid-
deke & Werner Huber (Columbia S C : Camden House, 1999).
4
Ansgar Nünning, “Fictional Metabiographies and Metaautobiographies,” 196.
a Body, Corpus, and Corpse 157

Byatt’s novel depicts the efforts of a fictional postgraduate student, Phineas

G. Nanson, as he attempts to write a biography of a fictive biographer whom
Byatt names Scholes Destry–Scholes. Phineas comes to believe that the key
to Destry–Scholes lies in understanding why his archived papers include notes
toward biographies of no fewer than three historically prominent people, Carl
von Linnaeus (1707–78), Francis Galton (1822–1911), and Henrik Ibsen
(1828–1906). This narrative is interwoven with excerpts and citations from
other texts, some fictive, some existing, either by or about these historical
figures. In what follows, I shall first outline a model for thinking about how
the transgressive nature of biographical fiction might serve as a form of recep-
tion, before moving on to analyses of the ways in which Byatt uses Ibsen’s
body, Ibsen’s literary corpus, and, finally, a photographic representation of
Ibsen’s corpse in her fictional investigation of Ibsen the author.

Biographical fiction and the author function

Dennis Kersten argues that biographical fiction not only responds to and in-
corporates literary theory but also functions as a form of theory itself.5 While
Kersten rightly links biographical fiction to questions of “texts and textuality,
authors and authority, subjects, and subjectivity,” I would argue that this criti-
cal engagement also extends to questions specifically related to the ethics of
life writing.6 In particular, we need to ask where and how an author like Byatt
sets the boundary for where the history ends and the fiction begins in a
literary account of an historical person’s life. Lena Steveker argues that Byatt
establishes “respect for the biographical other as an ethical category”7 in The
Biographer’s Tale and the earlier novel Possession. Yet this conclusion ap-
pears only to hold when applied to the fictive ‘biographical Others”’in the

5
Dennis Kersten, “Life after the Death of the Author,” 194. Carla Rodríguez
González makes a related point: “The Biographer’s Tale transcends what has been
described as ‘the way that postmodernist theory deadens literary practice’ by repro-
ducing postmodern strategies in order to interrogate them from within”; “A Dialogue
with Literary Theory: A.S. Byatt’s The Biographer’s Tale,” English Studies 89.4
(August 2008): 449.
6
Kersten, “Life after the Death of the Author,” 194.
7
Lena Steveker, “Imagining the ‘Other’ – An Ethical Reading of A.S. Byatt’s Pos-
session and The Biographer’s Tale,” in The Ethical Component in Experimental Brit-
ish Fiction Since the 1960s, ed. Susana Onega & Jean-Michel Ganteau (Newcastle
upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars, 2007): 128.
158 ELLEN REES a

novel. Steveker does not consider the ethics involved in Byatt’s overt (and
sensationalizing) fictionalization of Henrik Ibsen and the other historical fig-
ures who disrupt the layers of fictions within this complex text. Instead, each
of the examples that Steveker presents as evidence for the respectfulness that
she perceives is an instance of a purely fictive biographical Other, such as
Destry–Scholes. Thus, one might argue that the ethic that Steveker identifies
in Byatt’s writing applies only within the boundaries of the purely fictive;
once the line dividing fact and fiction is crossed, those ethics no longer apply
in full.
Such questions are particularly interesting given the striking prevalence of
biographical fiction that focuses on the physical bodies and erotic or other-
wise scandalous aspects of the lives of esteemed literary figures. In numerous
examples from the subgenre, social boundaries of propriety and modesty are
crossed deliberately. On a simplistic level, there appears to be a drive to con-
struct a humanized, warts-and-all image of the author as a counterbalance to
the idealized projection of literary genius that long held sway. It might also be
understood as a kind of literary criticism in and of itself, since it engages with
key theoretical questions regarding the nature of the subject and the author, as
both Kersten8 and David Lodge suggest.9 Since the 1990s, literary scholars
have demonstrated renewed interest in the status of the author, as evidenced
by Seán Burke’s aptly titled The Death and Return of the Author (1992).10
Building on Burke’s work, Jon Helt Haarder has coined the term ‘biographi-
cal irreversiblity,’11 to denote the situation that arises when we as readers
become aware of a biographical fact about an empirical writer. According to
Haarder, that biographical fact inevitably influences our interpretation of the
writer’s works. We read texts differently depending on who we think a given
author is. Both Burke and Haarder ground their theoretical approach in the
notion inherited from Michel Foucault, among others, that the author is a con-
structed entity, and Haarder in particular predicates his idea on the impossi-
bility for the reader to maintain a clear boundary between the text and the real.

8
Kersten, “Life after the Death of the Author,” 201.
9
Lodge, The Year of Henry James, 11.
10
Edinburgh: Edinburgh U P , 3rd ed. 2008.
11
Jon Helt Haarder, “Don’t try this at home – performativ biografisme i Rifbjergs
Nansen og Johansen [performative biographism in Rifbjerg’s Nansen and Johansen],
Den blå port [the blue port] 61 (2003): 4.
a Body, Corpus, and Corpse 159

According to Foucault, there appear to be two competing forces at play in

the construction of the ‘author’ or “author function,” which Foucault defines
most broadly as being “characteristic of the mode of existence, circulation,
and functioning of certain discourses within a society.”12 On the one hand is
the empirical writer himself, who willingly allows him- or herself to become
obscured by his or her texts: “Using all the contrivances that he sets up be-
tween himself and what he writes, the writing subject cancels out the signs of
his particular individuality.”13 Ibsen, who protected his privacy vigilantly and
tightly controlled the public image he projected, provides a striking example.
On the other hand, the critical and public reception of a writer’s work strives
to construct an author function that is often in conflict with the writer’s at-
tempt to shield himself behind his works. Foucault is critical of literary schol-
arship, which, from his perspective in 1969, was guilty of using the construc-
ted author function as
the basis for explaining not only the presence of certain events in a
work, but also their transformations, distortions, and diverse modi-
fications (through his biography, the determination of his individual
perspective, the analysis of his social position, and the revelation of his
basic design).14
Thus, at times competing, at times collaborating forces struggle for control
over how the projected author is to be understood by those who read his or
her works. If we accept Haarder’s notion of biographical irreversibility, the
question inevitably arises of the factual status of biographical information; the
range of sources for information on the life of the empirical author is poten-
tially limitless. Ostensibly objective sources such as author statements in
interviews, literary historical writing, and above all biographies have tradi-
tionally been the provenance for such data. But since at least Hayden White’s
watershed rejection of the possibility of positivist historiography, and his re-
cognition of its narrative and literary nature, we know that all such factual
sources are only understood within a constructed narrative that inevitably has
no absolute or objective truth-value. And, once the objective nature of such
sources comes into question, one opens for a potentially limitless range of

12
Michel Foucault, “What is an Author?” (“Qu’est-ce qu’un auteur?” 1969), in The
Foucault Reader, tr. Josué V. Harari, ed. Paul Rabinow (New York: Pantheon, 1984):
108.
13
Foucault, “What is an Author?” 102.
14
“What is an Author?” 111.
160 ELLEN REES a

other sources for information about an historical figure’s life. It seems clear
though that far less ‘objective’ sources, such as overtly fictional representa-
tions of the empirical author, have the potential to create what we might call
‘fictional biographical irreversibility’, and, further, that such fictionalizations
have the potential to influence our reception of the writer who is represented
in the fiction.
Turning to A.S Byatt’s The Biographer’s Tale, we can see how a number
of these theoretical considerations are explored in the novel. Three aspects of
Byatt’s fictional representation of Ibsen in particular need to be examined
here: first, Byatt’s problematization of Ibsen’s physical body, particularly in
terms of his (repressed) sexuality; second, Byatt’s appropriation of Ibsen’s
literary corpus as a means of characterizing the empirical author who attempts
to hide behind them; and finally Byatt’s insertion of a photographic represen-
tation of the empirical author Ibsen’s corpse into the novel.

Ibsen’s body
One of the elements of The Biographer’s Tale most singled out for criticism
was the insertion of the three relatively long narrative sequences describing
the lives of Linnaeus, Galton, and Ibsen that the first-person narrator, Phineas
G. Nanson, ascribes to the fictive biographer Scholes Destry–Scholes.15 Byatt
challenges the boundaries of what the novel genre can and should contain.
She underscores this probing of narrative boundaries by having her narrator,
Phineas, comment metacritically on the presence of fictitious invention in
Destry–Scholes’ biographical writing about Linnaeus, Galton, and Ibsen. As
Phineas reflects upon his failed attempt at constructing a biographical narra-
tive about Destry–Scholes, he wonders:
There was also the question [. . . ] of the three fictive fragments of bio-
graphy, where the biographer had quite deliberately woven his own

15
For example, Ruth Franklin writes: “Rather than interspersing ‘original texts’ with
narrative, as she did so effectively in Possession, Byatt allows the three mysterious
manuscripts to occupy nearly seventy pages smack in the middle of the novel, and they
are slow going, not least because it is virtually impossible to make head or tail of
them”; “Inauthentic Fabrics,” New Republic (20 April 2001): 39. Michiko Kakutani is
even more damning: “Ms. Byatt insists on giving the reader the full text of the three
biographical sketches as well as many of the index card entries, an exercise that fills up
half this volume and makes for eye-glazing reading”; “A Bumbling Literary Sleuth
Ends Up Clueless,” New York Times (23 January 2001), sec. 3: 20.
a Body, Corpus, and Corpse 161

lies and inventions into the dense texture of collected facts. Was this a
wry comment on the hopeless nature of the project of biographical ac-
curacy, or was it just a wild and whimsical kicking-over of the traces?16
Read metacritically, however, Byatt appears here to be challenging her reader
to question her own use of “fictive fragments” about historical figures.
Neither answer suggested by Phineas is satisfactory. Throughout the narra-
tive, Phineas tries to see the links between the three historical figures, attempt-
ing to piece them together into a whole that will explain Destry–Scholes,
using Galton’s invention of the composite photographic image as a model; he
hopes that the composite biographies of these three personages will eventually
produce a biography of Destry–Scholes, or perhaps of himself (237). Yet, as
we know, Galton is a largely discredited scientist, making it improbable that
Phineas’ emulation of his composite approach is advisable. And even if it is,
Phineas himself admits, “Ibsen perhaps didn’t quite fit” (126). In what fol-
lows, I shall pursue the ways in which Byatt’s composite representation of
Ibsen transcends the boundaries of the novel and enters the realm of critical
reception.
In the long narrative about Ibsen that Byatt’s Phineas attributes to Destry–
Scholes (79–95), she problematizes Ibsen’s deliberate construction of his pub-
lic persona. The sequence commences with a description of that public
façade, and contrasts the strict outer appearance with its hidden interior:
The onlookers, even as they watched the precise, dandified advance,
knew they saw the outside, not the inside. They let their imaginations
flicker round the inchoate ‘inside’, which remained bland and opaque.
(79–80)
This brief scene may in fact be read as enacting the popular reception of Ibsen
the author.17 Byatt writes, “He had constructed himself to be looked at” (79),
and that façade served as a deliberately impenetrable author function (it is not
for nothing that Ibsen was known popularly as ‘the sphinx’). The image of the
dramatist’s physical body as a concealing vessel or pouch reappears only a
few paragraphs later:

16
A.S. Byatt, The Biographer’s Tale (London: Vintage, 2001): 236. Further page
references are in the main text.
17
For a number of intelligent discussions of the many myths that developed about
the empirical author Ibsen during his lifetime, see the articles in Den biografiske Ibsen
[the biographical Ibsen], ed. Astrid Sæther, Ståle Dingstad, Atle Kittang & Anne Marie
Rekdal (Oslo: Acta Ibseniana, 2011).
162 ELLEN REES a

So there he was, man and troll, badger and bear, black integument and
lined parchment sac containing blood, bones, and busy creatures, pro-
ceeding towards the Grand Hotel [. . . ]. (81)
This is a complex image, which both picks up on a dominant trope in Ibsen’s
writing – namely, the questioning of the ontological status of the human
through the metaphorical merging of human, half-human, and animal18 – and
introduces the notion that the author-character is merely an empty vessel,
albeit a vessel vital to the production of literature. The passage is thus con-
cerned with borders on at least two levels; it problematizes the distinction
between human and animal, and it interrogates the delineation of the human
being in terms of inside and outside. The “parchment sac” of Ibsen’s exterior
(his skin, just like the sheepskin of real parchment) associated with the act of
writing is oddly disconnected from the blood and bones that in a living body –
a fully integrated, living biological system – are inseparable from it. The re-
ference to “busy creatures” is ambiguous, suggesting the dramatic characters
that Ibsen imagined into being, but also the myriad parasites, bacteria, viruses
and other microscopic entities that populate a human body. The body that
Byatt imagines for Ibsen has only the most tentative corporeality and mate-
riality, obscured as it is by the black-and-white membrane of Ibsen’s public
persona, a persona predicated entirely upon writing.
Ivo de Figueiredo raises the question of how to ‘read’ Ibsen’s body or,
rather, the façade that he presents in lieu of a truly corporeal body, in the
second volume – symptomatically subtitled “The Mask” – of the massive new
Norwegian Ibsen biography published in conjunction with the 100th anniver-
sary of Ibsen’s death. In a chapter entitled “Ibsen’s Body,” de Figueiredo dis-
cusses the many Ibsen portraits in various media created in the 1890s, in
nearly all of which his body is obscured by the male fashions of the late 1800s:
What is there to say about Ibsen’s body, really? Primarily this: He had
no body, not one of flesh and blood at any rate. Among the men of
Ibsen’s generation nothing of the body was to be seen except the head
and hands.19

18
For a thorough discussion of Ibsen’s hybrid humans in the context of Peer Gynt,
see Asbjørn Aarseth’s Dyret i mennesket: Et bidrag til tolkning av Henrik Ibsens Peer
Gynt [the animal in the human: A contribution to the interpretation of Henrik Ibsen’s
Peer Gynt] (Bergen: Universitetsforlaget, 1975). The book contains a summary in
English.
19
Ivo de Figueiredo, Henrik Ibsen: Masken [Henrik Ibsen: the mask] (Oslo: Asche-
a Body, Corpus, and Corpse 163

From this polemical statement, de Figueiredo argues that Ibsen undertook a

campaign to reinvent himself as a mythical figure rather than a mortal of flesh
and blood, starting with his critical breakthrough in 1866 with Brand.20 This
biographical narrative about the author’s self-invention is, as Birgitte Possing
argues in a critique of de Figueiredo’s project, nothing new, though it is pro-
vocatively stated.21 Nonetheless, de Figueiredo’s “He had no body” does
highlight an aspect of the prevailing popular and critical reception of Ibsen
that Byatt appears to want to counteract in her text.
Destry–Scholes’ (Byatt’s) way past Ibsen’s strategy of concealing his body
is to construct a fictive meeting between Ibsen and the most outrageous proof
of his corporeality, his illegitimate son (somehow so much more a mark of
Ibsen’s body than the legitimate son, who was sanctioned within social con-
ventions of propriety). This meeting is witnessed by “various gentlemen,”
including “Edvard Munch, the painter,” in the Café at the Grand Hotel (88), a
setting that paradoxically both authenticates it (since Ibsen’s presence and
habits there are well documented) and guarantees its fictional nature (since it
would have been impossible for such a meeting to have taken place there
without its having been equally well documented). There are, indeed, rumours
that Ibsen met his illegitimate son, who allegedly came to the writer’s home
on one occasion toward the end of his life, and there are also rumours that
some of Ibsen’s friends plotted a meeting much like the one fictionalized by
Byatt. Michael Meyer, the biographer acknowledged by Byatt as one of her
sources for The Biographer’s Tale, repeats these rumours as passed down by
the scholar Francis Bull in the first volume of his three-volume biography of
Henrik Ibsen. In constructing the dramatic dialogue between Ibsen and Hans
Jacob Henriksen, Byatt appears to be taking up the imaginative challenge im-
plied in the following passage, in which Meyer sums up the rumoured meet-
ing:

houg, 2007): 454. (My tr.) For an analysis of photographic portraits of Ibsen, see Peter
Larsen’s “Et liv i bilder: Den fotografiske Ibsen-biografi” [a life in pictures: The
photographic Ibsen biography] in Den biografiske Ibsen. For a discussion of the many
Ibsen caricatures, see Erik Henning Edvardsen’s “Freidige streker: Karikaturtegneren
som biograf” [fresh lines: The caricaturist as biographer] in the same volume.
20
de Figueiredo, Henrik Ibsen: Masken, 459.
21
Birgitte Possing, “Om kunsten at skrive biografi om Ibsen” [on the art of writing
biography about Ibsen], in Den biografiske Ibsen [the biographical Ibsen], ed. Astrid
Sæther, Ståle Dingstad, Atle Kittang & Anne Marie Rekdal (Oslo: Acta Ibseniana,
2011): 15–37.
164 ELLEN REES a

What is sure [sic] is that some of Ibsen’s acquaintances, led by Chris-

ten Collin [. . . ], hit on the idea of a fearful prank – to dress Hans
Jacob, who, in build and general appearance, much resembled his
father, in clothes such as Ibsen wore, and, having paid him a small sum
to secure his willingness, to sit him in Ibsen’s chair at the Grand to see
what would happen when Ibsen himself walked through the door. But
either they or Hans Jacob lost courage, and this macabre jest remained
a thing of the imagination.22
Byatt also inserts the apocryphal parting insult (reported by Bull to Meyer)
that Ibsen allegedly addressed to his son into the dramatic meeting between
father and son that she constructs. She relocates the purported exchange from
the doorstep of the Ibsen home to the “Ibsen table” at the Grand Café. This
move has interesting boundary implications; Byatt removes it from the purely
private to the far more complicated social space of the café, which, as Jürgen
Habermas has demonstrated, represents an intermediate border zone between
the private and the sphere of public authority. She thus publicly legitimizes
the private rumour, crossing, I would add, an ethical boundary as she does so.
In the novel, the rumoured insult is transformed into a carefully constructed
“last act,” and Ibsen the dramatic character speaks the lines at a remove; they
are presented in quotation marks as the words Ibsen had prepared in advance
for a possible meeting with his son (95). One can surely debate the ethics of
reproducing rumour in a biography, but the question here is what happens
when this kind of speculative material is given a life of its own, as it were, in
a fictionalization of the historical figure. In effect, Byatt’s novel canonizes or
historicizes the fictional meeting, suggesting a critique of the ethics of Ibsen,
who is more typically held up as an exemplar of modern and enlightened atti-
tudes about individual rights and identity.
Perhaps the complicated nexus of fictive and factual narratives that Byatt
assembles in her novel has blinded critics to the extraordinary hybrid status of
the Henriksen–Ibsen episode. As I see it, the passage also functions indepen-
dently of the rest of A Biographer’s Tale as an instance of Byatt’s critical
engagement – as not only an acclaimed fiction writer, but also as a biographer
and scholar –with the literary reputation and legacy of Ibsen. Towards the end
of the text, she has her narrator remark parenthetically: “did I say that Destry–
Scholes’s fabrication of Linnaeus’s fabrication of his visit to the Maelstrøm

22
Michael Meyer, Henrik Ibsen: The Top of a Cold Mountain, 1883–1906 (London:
Rupert Hart–Davis, 1971): 206.
a Body, Corpus, and Corpse 165

[sic] was pastiche of Edgar Allan Poe?” (256). She presents no such gene-
alogy for the Henriksen–Ibsen episode, though in fact there is one, as we have
seen. In revealing Ibsen in one of his least flattering personal failings (his re-
fusal to have contact with his illegitimate child), she attempts to do something
with how we understand Ibsen as an historical figure. This manoeuvre effec-
tively jolts the reader conceptually beyond the boundaries of the narrative of
The Biographer’s Tale – Phineas’ story of his failed biography of Destry–
Scholes – and into the realm of critical reception and canonization of Ibsen.
The conversation between Hans Jacob Henriksen and Ibsen thematizes the
complex linkage between body and its boundary (the façade), with oblique re-
ferences to Ibsen’s published works. Henriksen is physically the mirror image
of Ibsen: “He is wearing identical clothes, down to the row of miniature medals.
He has the same thick white whiskers, bushy white hair, jutting brow” (89).
Beyond the uncanny physical similarity (attested in Meyer), Byatt suggests
that Henriksen is also an intellectual double; in the dramatic dialogue, he
gives Ibsen the image of marble portrait busts that secretly conceal hideous
animal feature that the empirical Ibsen used in his last play, When We Dead
Awaken (91). Upon hearing Henriksen’s suggestion, Ibsen comments “I like
the image of the marble busts with the beast faces. That’s worthy of being one
of mine” (92). While that trope functions in the actual Ibsen play as a social
critique aimed at the hypocrisy of people in power, in the context of Byatt’s
dialogue it refers back to Ibsen’s own body and his apparent need to conceal
and control its animal excess through strict maintenance of his public boun-
daries.
Henriksen thus claims a special status through his biological linkage to
Ibsen that manifests itself both physically and intellectually. Despite the re-
semblance, however, Henriksen’s corporeality is not so contained as Ibsen’s,
as his multiple children attest:
We have five little Ibsens, with your eyes, old man, and your stubby
fingers, and one with your thin lips. Three in the churchyard, with the
soft skin rotted off the sweet skulls, which are still constructed like
your mighty brainpan. (I know about that too.) Two sickly girls left to
us. Have you never once thought, in all those years, of all this swarm-
ing life that came out of an act of yours when you were a boy of six-
teen? I have buried five of your grandchildren, Henrik Ibsen, and wept
for each one. Have you never thought of them? (94)
The swarming life, the adolescent sex-act, the dead babies and stubby fingers
collude to create an almost overwhelming indictment of the constructed Ibsen
166 ELLEN REES a

as an author who has denied his corporeality. The melodrama of the mono-
logue is reinforced by Byatt’s brilliant mimicry of Ibsen’s own dramatic form.
Byatt transforms Ibsen the author into a character in an Ibsen play. This man-
oeuvre undermines the author function, and creates an image of the man be-
hind the myth. It is, however, crucial to keep in mind that Byatt’s cruel and
ascetic Ibsen can never be more than a fictional construct, and that, as such, it
serves specific rhetorical functions in Byatt’s text. It is perhaps symptomatic
of what both Kersten and Steveker have identified as Byatt’s overarching aim
in The Biographer’s Tale of problematizing biographical writing as a whole
that she picks the most speculative anecdotes in Meyer’s biography to fiction-
alize. Byatt’s concern, however, is not only with the (re)construction of the
physical man behind the myth; she also engages directly with Ibsen’s writing,
his corpus.

Ibsen’s corpus
In a later phase of the novel, the narrator explores the contents of two shoe-
boxes belonging to Destry–Scholes; the one contains a collection of notes on
index cards, the other a large number of photographs and other images. This
collection functions as a kind of archive, which, as Jacques Derrida notes,
harbours an inherent and inescapable violence.23 The archive is “[. . . ] at once
institutive and conservative. Revolutionary and traditional,”24 and, most im-
portantly, “the archivization produces as much as it records the event.”25 In
other words, through the process of selection and archivization, Byatt pro-
duces (a version of) Ibsen. Byatt provides her readers with the contents of
fifty-one of the index cards, mentions a few more in passing in the main body
of the text, and has Phineas add other relevant information not found in
Destry–Scholes’ collection of notes. The notes ‘reproduced’ in the novel are
unequally divided among the three biographical subjects; eight concern Lin-
naeus and seventeen Ibsen, while fully twenty-six relate to Galton. As with
the three long narratives, Phineas struggles to understand the notes as a com-
posite that will explain Destry–Scholes, but it is also possible to sort them in a

23
Jacques Derrida, Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression, tr. Eric Prenowitz (Mal
d’Archive: Une Impression Freudienne, 1995; Chicago: U Chicago P , 1996): 7.
24
Derrida, Archive Fever, 7, italics in the original.
25
Derrida, Archive Fever, 17.
a Body, Corpus, and Corpse 167

different and rather obvious way (by subject) in order to see what they say
about the subjects individually rather than as part of a composite.
The seventeen citations that concern Ibsen consist of the following: one
quotation from Brand (1866), five quotations from Peer Gynt (1867), one
quotation from When We Dead Awaken (1899), one list of Ibsen’s medals,
one biographical description of Ibsen’s response to the suicide of Ludvig
David based on Ibsen’s first letter to the Danish literary critic Georg Brandes
in 1866, one excerpt from Ibsen’s 1888 notes to The Lady from the Sea, one
1871 letter written by Ibsen to Brandes, one citation from the 1870 poem
“Balloon-Letter To a Swedish Lady,” two passages of Ibsen’s reported speech
about his writing process, and three citations from other historical figures
writing about Ibsen (Brandes, the literary historian Henrik Jæger, and the
sculptor Stephan Sinding). Through the conceit of the protagonist’s biographi-
cal research, Byatt establishes a hierarchical relationship between Destry–
Scholes’ three long biographical narratives and the fictive biographer’s archi-
val boxes of index cards and photographs. The long narratives are, ostensibly
at least, a consciously formed product of the research that the (again osten-
sibly) far less artfully arranged index cards document. The archive of the
index cards presents the reader with a presumed innocence (randomness) that
belies the fact that the sequence and contents are quite carefully shaped by the
hand of Byatt.
Crucially, as Byatt herself points out, the long narratives contain overtly
fictive material, while, in the case of Ibsen, all of the ‘sources’ on the index
cards are actual historical documents from the corpus of writing by and about
the historical Henrik Ibsen. Byatt thus presents her readers with a deliberate
bricolage of existing ‘documentation’ within her own fictional text. Impor-
tantly, however, fully eight of the seventeen citations are themselves fictional
(non-documentary, non-historical), excerpted as they are from Ibsen’s own
plays and poetry. Just as Phineas sorts through the apparently random index
cards, looking for patterns, the reader may also ask why Byatt cobbles to-
gether these particular excerpts in this way. I shall first consider the non-lite-
rary citations before examining Byatt’s use of Ibsen’s literary texts.
The non-literary citations can in turn be divided into two types: Ibsen’s
own descriptions of his works and creative process; and the words of others.
While the first of Ibsen’s discussions of his writing process is specific to The
Lady from the Sea, the latter two are more general, concerning how he con-
ceptualizes his characters, and how he revises those characters as he comes to
know them “through and through” (232). The notes on The Lady from the Sea
168 ELLEN REES a

link Ibsen thematically to Galton and Linnaeus through references to the

natural world and science, while at the same time the scientific discourses of
all three men are undermined repeatedly in the quotations chosen by Byatt
through instances of pseudo-scientific speculation. On the one hand, Ibsen
refers to the theory of evolution (“One species of fish is a vital link to the
chain of evolution. Do rudiments of it still reside in the human mind?”); on
the other, he taps into a discourse of the occult when he writes: “The sea ope-
rates a power over one’s moods, it works like a will. The sea can hypnotize”
(168). Similarly, Ibsen’s descriptions of his writing process describe a delicate
balance between a rigorous and (pseudo-)scientific approach to character and
an awareness of the fundamentally fictional nature of the object of Ibsen’s
inquiry, his characters. While such passages highlight the tentative state of
scientific discourse in the nineteenth century, they also function metacritically
as a commentary on the speculative nature of biographical writing. Both the
discourses of science and life-writing are revealed here to have highly un-
stable conceptual boundaries.
The first of the texts written about Ibsen by others to appear in the novel is
a biographical description of Ibsen’s response to the suicide of a young Dane
named Ludvig David in Rome in 1866 (card 21, page 145). The brief passage
contains commentary that presents Ibsen in a strange light; the ‘biographer’
comments dryly that “HI made it his business to be present at the autopsy,”
“HI peered doubtless into the cavern of the skull,” and “It is odd that he re-
corded all this in what appears to be his first letter to B[randes]” (145). The
‘biographer’ here posits Ibsen as having a strikingly unsentimental and scien-
tific approach to death, and a similarly unsentimental lack of concern for pro-
priety in communicating by letter. In fact, Ibsen’s actual letter to Brandes con-
veys a much richer range of feeling, entirely in keeping with prevailing atti-
tudes toward friendship and death in his time.26 The next description of Ibsen
contained in the index cards is Stefan Sinding’s observations about Ibsen as
an artist’s model, particularly regarding his extraordinary eyes (card 78, page
177). This description appears word-for-word in Meyer (254), and is one of
the most frequently cited sources in the establishment of the mythic Ibsen.27

26
See the first chapter of Audrey Linkman’s Photography and Death (London:
Reaktion, 2011): 14–16, for an overview of Victorian attitudes toward death and the
proper treatment of the dead.
27
See, for example, de Figueiredo, Henrik Ibsen: Masken, 453–54, for a discussion
of the same passage.
a Body, Corpus, and Corpse 169

Soon after, Byatt reproduces a list of Ibsen’s medals, echoing the repeated
emphasis that Meyer places on this idiosyncratic passion.28 After a long
narrative sequence, there is a citation from Jæger’s review of the Copenhagen
premier of Hedda Gabler (card 79, page 229) describing Ibsen’s approach to
human psychology as analogous to the approach of Louis Pasteur and Robert
Koch to bacteria (this citation also appears in Meyer, 170). Again Ibsen is
construed as cold and mercilessly scientific. “Card no. 79” also contains an
appended statement by the Swedish critic Georg Göthe, which calls into
question the dramatic viability of the main character in Hedda Gabler. The
inclusion of these two statements, with their emphasis on Ibsen’s purported
failure to communicate with or entertain his audience in Stockholm, clearly
works to undermine Ibsen’s position as a dramatist of merit.
The last word from another historical figure appears in the citation of a
letter written by Brandes to C.J. Salomonsen (card 113, pages 229–30). The
1874 letter is arguably the most damning statement about Ibsen in The Bio-
grapher’s Tale, in terms both of his intellectual engagement and of his ideo-
logical stance. In a curiously biological metaphor, Brandes writes:
The man sits there producing very little, unable to draw intellectual
nourishment from the world around him because he lacks the organs to
do so [. . . ]. (229)
Here we again have an image of Ibsen’s body as a sac, in this case emptied of
the normal functioning organs.29 Here we have Ibsen conceptualized as pure
façade, or even as pure boundary, with no real content. Brandes then launches
into a diatribe in which he criticizes Ibsen’s anti-democratic advocacy of what
appears to be class-based genocide, which in turn echoes Galton’s ideological
programme of eugenics:
Fancy – he seriously believes in a time when ‘the intelligent minority’
in these countries ‘will be forced to enlist the aid of chemistry and
medicine in poisoning the proletariat’ to save themselves from being
politically overwhelmed by the majority. And this universal poisoning
is what he wants. (229)

28
Meyer rather humorously includes “Medals, Ibsen’s obsession with” (340) as one
of the categories in the index to Henrik Ibsen: The Top of a Cold Mountain, 1883–
1906.
29
Not, of course, to be confused with Gilles Deleuze’s notion of a “body-without-
organs.”
170 ELLEN REES a

As recent biographical research on Ibsen has revealed, Ibsen did indeed

espouse elitist and anti-democratic attitudes.30
Eight of the Ibsen-related citations are taken from his poetry and drama.
The first literary citation from Ibsen comes from his breakthrough closet
drama, Brand (1866). It is the well-known fish-and-owl metaphor from the
first act of the play, which presents a profoundly pessimistic outlook on
human life. John Northam describes the views expressed by the character
Brand as
so unnatural, so exclusive of the essentials to natural human existence,
that it emerges as a kind of perversity of judgment. Brand’s stature, his
courage, drive and tenacity, remain unchallenged; but already he ap-
pears to be a strangely twisted character.31

As discussed above, the citation from When We Dead Awaken (card no. 55,
pages 168–69) concerns the sculptures with hidden animal faces, which ex-
tends the focus on unnatural humanity established by the Brand citation. Byatt
also cites from the lesser-known poem, “Balloon-Letter to a Swedish Lady.”
The verse letter conveys Ibsen’s thoughts upon visiting Egypt as part of the
official Swedish–Norwegian delegation at the opening of the Suez Canal in
1869, and here again we find a number of metaphors and tropes that support
the particular image of Ibsen that Byatt constructs. First, Ibsen describes the
conglomeration of passengers from various nations who took part on a boat
trip up the Nile as a menagerie on a Noah’s ark, and uses various animals to
symbolize the nations represented, creating a link both to the human–animal
statues from When We Dead Awaken and to the opening of the fourth act of
Peer Gynt, which problematizes national identity.32 Byatt lifts this passage
directly from Meyer, reproducing exactly his ellipses, which leave out many

30
Jon Nygaard, “Ibsens selvbiografiske fragmenter” [Ibsen’s autobiographical
fragments] in Den biografiske Ibsen [the biographical Ibsen], ed. Astrid Sæther, Ståle
Dingstad, Atle Kittang & Anne Marie Rekdal (Oslo: Acta Ibseniana, 2011), sheds new
light on Ibsen’s patrician family background. Nygaard describes the dramatist’s atti-
tude toward the new social structures of the nineteenth century in the following terms:
“Ibsen hated the new class and the new ideals that established themselves in Norway
after 1830. He is against the modern state run by bureaucrats and bureaucratic rules,
and all the pettiness he calls ‘politics’ ” (76–77). (My tr.)
31
John Northam, Ibsen: A Critical Study (Cambridge: Cambridge U P , 1973): 35.
32
Indeed, Ibsen himself refers to Peer Gynt only a few lines before in the “Balloon
Letter.”
a Body, Corpus, and Corpse 171

lines. By isolating these particular passages of a much longer work, Byatt ef-
fectively narrows the scope of Ibsen’s literary production down to fit her par-
ticular reading of both the work and the author.
The remaining five literary citations originate in Ibsen’s 1867 closet drama
Peer Gynt. Here again, the selections highlight certain very specific aspects of
the work. The first citation comes from the opening of the fifth act, and pre-
sents an exchange between Peer and the Strange Passenger. With its refer-
ences to autopsy, this passage parallels the biographical description of Ibsen’s
presence at the autopsy of Ludvig David. The Strange Passenger tells Peer he
wants his body “To help my researches,” and continues “It’s to your advan-
tage. I’ll open you up and let in the light. I want to discover the source of your
dreams” (151). The resonances suggest a reading in which the Strange Pas-
senger is to be understood as Ibsen himself.33 Byatt includes two citations
from the second act of Peer Gynt in the “Hybrids and Mixes” cluster that
Phineas creates (168). The citations render the Old Man of the Mountain’s
assessment of Peer as a future son-in-law – essentially an evaluation of his
genetic stock and of the possibility of interspecies propagation (again an ex-
ample of the man–animal boundary that fascinated Ibsen) – suggesting that
only a slight intervention (a cut in Peer’s left eye) will make the underlying
animal nature of the trolls imperceptible to Peer. Next, Byatt includes the
reference to the photographic process made by the Thin Man in the fifth act of
the dramatic poem. The Thin Man explains to Peer that in a negative “light
and dark are reversed; / And the result, to the ordinary eye, is ugly. / But the
image of the original is there” (178). The problem for Peer, of course, is that
his negative has been smudged, and thus cannot be developed. Finally, on the
second to the last of the ‘index cards’ included in The Biographer’s Tale,
Byatt presents what are arguably the two most famous passages concerning
the construction of identity in Peer Gynt: namely, the button-moulder’s threat
to melt and re-mould Peer, and the onion analogue.
In the associations she creates between biographical writing about Ibsen
and Ibsen’s own literary work, Byatt appears here to be both exploring and

33
The symbolic meaning of the Strange Passenger has been the object of extensive
scholarly speculation. See, for example, Daniel Haakonsen, “Om den fremmede pas-
sasjer” [on the Strange Passenger] in Omkring Peer Gynt [on Peer Gynt], ed. Otto
Hageberg (Oslo: Gyldendal Norsk Forlag, 1967), and Asbjørn Aarseth,“Finnes det en
sannhet om den fremmede passasjer?” [is there a truth about the Strange Passenger?],
Nytt norsk tidsskrift 5.2 (1988): 9–28.
172 ELLEN REES a

exploiting the widespread practice of using a writer’s creative work in biogra-

phical narrative as a way of explaining aspects of a writer’s life. The proble-
matic nature of the relationship between (fictive) fiction and (factual) fiction
is thrown into relief when the lines in When We Dead Awaken about the
“something subtle and equivocal” beneath the surface of Rubek’s portrait-
busts appear on an index card (168–69). As noted above, in the fiction about
the historical Ibsen that Byatt constructs, this image originates with Ibsen’s
illegitimate son (91). The reader familiar with Ibsen’s play will recognize this
as fiction immediately, but for those who are not, the later appearance of
Rubek’s lines on the index card suggests that Ibsen was a profoundly unscru-
pulous literary poacher, who not only disowned his son but also stole his idea.
That all the other references to Ibsen’s life are authentic lends a certain
authority to the longer narrative that cannot completely be erased.
The collective effect of the citations gathered in the index cards is that of
abridgement. Byatt represents Ibsen’s wide-ranging and complex corpus by a
very narrow selection, and chooses biographical statements that focus on his
vanity and lack of insight. Taken together, these two strategies suggest that
there is no need to read further in Ibsen’s corpus.

Ibsen’s corpse
Roughly midway through the series of index cards, Byatt inserts a digression
about two photographs, both of which are reproduced in the text. Phineas has
just designated a series of five index cards as “the (composite) portrait photo-
graphy, or composite portrait (photography) cluster” (175), and this grouping
leads him to re-examine the box of Destry–Scholes’ photographs. Among
these he finds post-mortem photographs of Ibsen and Galton. Phineas com-
ments at some length on their physical appearance, and claims that they re-
semble each other in death. Byatt invites the reader implicitly to evaluate
Phineas’ analysis by reproducing both images on the adjacent page (181). The
two photographs function as a spectacle in the text, interrupting the narrative
and confronting the reader with paradoxical images that both are and are not
representations of the respective biographical subjects; on the one hand, it is
beyond all doubt that the photograph of Ibsen lying in state is an authentic
visual representation of Ibsen’s body; on the other, that body is quite simply,
but also quite profoundly, dead.
The photographic image as an art form has been the subject of much de-
bate ever since the introduction of the new technique in 1839. Two of the
a Body, Corpus, and Corpse 173

most important theorists of photography, Roland Barthes and Susan Sontag,

comment on the uncanny apparition of death captured – apparently inherently
and universally – within the boundaries of the photographic portrait. Barthes
writes:
By giving me the absolute past of the pose (aorist), the photograph
tells me death in the future. [. . . ] Whether or not the subject is already
dead, every photograph is this catastrophe.34
Sontag posits that “All photographs are memento mori”35 that remind viewers
of their own mortality, and she claims later on that “this link between photo-
graphy and death haunts all photographs of people.36 Byatt rehearses this
body of photographic theory in the text, having Phineas echo these claims
overtly: “I have written that photographs partake of death” (179). The specific
nature of post-mortem portraiture further complicates these issues, combining
this general and unavoidable sense of memento mori with far more intimate
and personal processes of mourning. As Audrey Linkman explains,
the meaning of the photographs for the people who commissioned,
took or cherished them can only be understood in the context of wider
cultural attitudes to love, death and memorialization. The images are
therefore located within the context of attitudes and cultural practices
that surround death, disposal of dead bodies, and bereavement.37

By removing the post-mortem portraits of Ibsen and Galton from the specific
cultural context in which they were produced and placing them in the quite
different context of a novel, Byatt strips them of their affective meaning and
makes them into weird and archaic artifacts.
A photographic portrait has a perceived documentary truth-value of a dif-
ferent order from that of other forms of portraiture, despite the many ways in
which a photograph can be manipulated. Photographs are popularly (and er-
roneously) understood as essentially distinct from painting and other non-
mechanical forms of visual reproduction, because they appear to render an
authentic living being in a more immediate and ‘documentary’ fashion. It has
become standard to include photographic reproductions in biographies and

34
Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida, tr. Richard Howard (La Chambre Claire, 1980;
New York: Hill & Wang, 1981): 96.
35
Susan Sontag, On Photography (1977; Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1979): 15.
36
Sontag, On Photography, 70.
37
Audrey Linkman, Photography and Death, 9.
174 ELLEN REES a

autobiographies as further evidence and documentation of the veracity of the

narrated account of the subject’s life.38 The use of photographic images in
literary texts has also produced critical studies, prompting a new set of
terminology to deal with the multimodal quality of such texts.39 The photogra-
phic genre of post-mortem portraiture, however, is so rare that little has been
written about its uses in literature.40 The appropriation of post-mortem photo-
graphs in Byatt’s The Biographer’s Tale, with its transgression of the tradi-
tional boundaries of both fictional and biographical writing, presents a most
unusual set of theoretical and ethical problems regarding the representation of
biographical subjects.
Susan Bruce has examined responses to post-mortem photography in two
quite different contexts, Alejandro Amenábar’s film The Others (2001) and
the online database thatanos.net. Bruce suggests that the post-mortem portrait
achieves “the oddly contradictory act of ‘fixing’ a limbo; it makes permanent

38
For discussions of the use of photographs in autobiographical narrative see,
among many others, Linda Rugg, Picturing Ourselves: Photography and Autobio-
graphy (Chicago: U of Chicago P , 1997), Gunnthórunn Gudmundsdóttir, Borderlines:
Autobiography and Fiction in Postmodern Life Writing (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2003),
and Marius Wulfsberg, “On Phototextuality. History, Reading, and Theory,” in the
anthology Aesthetics at Work, ed. Arne Melberg (Oslo: Unipub, 2007): 129–54.
39
See, for example, Nancy Armstrong, Fiction in the Age of Photography: The
Legacy of British Realism (Cambridge M A : Harvard U P , 1999), Literature and Photo-
graphy: Interactions 1840–1990, ed. Jane M. Rabb (Albuquerque: U of New Mexico
P , 1995), and Timothy Dow Adams, “Photographs on the Walls of the House of
Fiction,” Poetics Today 29.1 (Spring 2008): 175–95.
40
As a ‘commercial’ genre, however, it has been well-covered. See, for example:
Stanley B. Burns, Sleeping Beauty: Memorial Photography in America (Altadena
C A : Twelvetrees, 1990), and Sleeping Beauty I I : Grief, Bereavement and the
Family in Memorial Photography, American and European Traditions (New York:
Burns Archive, 2002); Jay Ruby, Secure the Shadow: Death and Photography in
America (Cambridge M A & London: M I T Press, 1995); Bert Sliggers, Naar het
lijk: het Nederlandse doodsportret, 1500–heden (Zutphen: Walburg, 1998); Sigur-
jón Baldur Hafsteinsson, “Post-Mortem and Funeral Photography in Iceland,” His-
tory of Photography 23.1 (Spring 1999): 49–54; Emmanuelle Héran, Le Dernier
Portrait (exh. cat., 5 March–26 May 2000, Musée d’Orsay; Paris: Réunion des
Musées Nationaux, 2002); and Audrey Linkman, “Taken from Life: Post-Mortem
Portraiture in Britain 1860–1910,” History of Photography 30.4 (Winter 2006):
309–47, and Photography and Death.
a Body, Corpus, and Corpse 175

and unchanging the very moment of transience and incipient decay.”41 In an

(in many cases) opposite and far more uncanny way than in portrait photo-
graphy of the living, “the person it shows both is, and is not, at the same
time.”42 There is, as Bruce points out, an inherent and unavoidable anachro-
nism in the post-mortem photograph that disrupts the stream of narrative we
use to construct a life:
Through its anachrony, its bringing back, or returning, of the material
traces of the past to the present, the post-mortem photograph interrupts
the trajectory from birth, through life, to death and finally burial,
undermining its most fundamental certainties.43
Suspended eternally as they are on the verge of burial, the photographic repre-
sentations of the dead Ibsen and Galton undermine any sense of closure or
clear delineation in the biographical narratives that the narrator Phineas tries
to piece together about them, or about Destry–Scholes, or about himself. Fur-
ther, the (reproduced) visual presence of their (real) corpses inverts the mys-
tery of the fictional Destry–Scholes’ absent body (in the fiction of the text, he
vanishes without a trace at the Saltstraumen maelstrom). Yet Byatt seems to
undermine the reader’s recognition of the strangeness of including these re-
productions through Phineas’ unexpectedly sanguine response to them:
The photographs of the truly dead are not shocking as the photographs
of the living are shocking. For one thing their eyes are decently closed,
and not dead paper spaces. (179).44
His intense, almost microscopic reading of their facial features appears oddly
dismissive of the actual differences between the two men, distracting the
reader from the ethical ambiguity of appropriating the photographs in the novel.
There is, of course, nothing at all unusual about the existence of the post-
mortem photographs of Ibsen and Galton in and of themselves. Such portraits

41
Susan Bruce, “Sympathy for the Dead: (G)hosts, Hostilities and Mediums in
Alejandro Amenábar’s The Others and Post-Mortem Photography,” Discourse 27.2–3
(Spring–Fall 2005): 32.
42
Bruce, “Sympathy for the Dead,” 32.
43
“Sympathy for the Dead,” 32.
44
This is, as Bruce points out in relation to the images collected at thatanos.net, not
always the case. Many post-mortem photographs depict corpses with open eyes, and
some have irises painted on the lids to resemble a living face (“Sympathy for the
Dead,” 31–32).
176 ELLEN REES a

were a prominent and widespread Victorian-era expression of mourning.45

Post-mortem photographs were widely understood as giving comfort to sur-
viving family members; as Jay Ruby points out, Georg Brandes himself com-
missioned a photographer “to immortalize the very last sight of” his daughter
Astrid, who died of diphtheria in childhood.46 Mourning, as Elisabeth Bronfen
explains, generally “involves an identification between living mourners and
the newly deceased”:
both are situated “between the world of the living and the world of the
dead” (Van Gennep 147). The interest of the mourners is either to kill
the dead a second time as quickly as possible, so as to leave their
shared position of liminality, or to preserve the dead and prolong their
stay in the realm between.47
The use of photography in mourning further extends that sense of a shared
position of liminality, since it is the memory of the deceased in their dead
state (Brandes’ “very last sight” of his daughter, for example), rather than
images that attempt to capture how they were when alive: i.e. preserved. In
essence, the photographic image allows the mourner to dwell longer in the
border zone between death and life. The dead were frequently staged as being
asleep, a liminal condition often understood as analogous to death:
the metaphor [of sleep] effectively tames and domesticates the alien
and frightening aspects of death. The viewer’s mind is lured away
from distressing thoughts of decay and decomposition, and invited to
dwell instead on the more hopeful prospect of a new and better dawn.48
The photographs that Byatt reproduces thus arise out of a particular ethos, a
struggle to come to terms with the end of subjectivity. In The Biographer’s
Tale, however, Byatt disassociates these photographs entirely from this con-
text of mourning and reframes them as sources for understanding something
essential about the writer and his life. Phineas’ commentary about Ibsen’s ap-
pearance in death serves to define his personality based on his physical char-
acteristics. Noting that “both men had lipless mouths,” Phineas claims that

45
Linkman, Photography and Death, 8–10.
46
Ruby, Secure the Shadow, 45–46.
47
Elisabeth Bronfen, “Risky Resemblances: On Repetition, Mourning, and Repre-
sentation,” in Death and Representation, ed. Sarah Webster Goodwin & Elisabeth
Bronfen (Baltimore M D : Johns Hopkins U P , 1993): 106, italics in the original.
48
Linkman, Photography and Death, 21. Cf. also Burns, Sleeping Beauty.
a Body, Corpus, and Corpse 177

Ibsen “tightened his face perpetually in a rictus of bad temper” in life (180).
Commenting on their hair, Phineas notes: “Ibsen’s is a little tousled, which is
touching, and the ghost of his immense mutton-chop whiskers float above his
collar” (180). There is a claim to intimacy in these close examinations of (a
representation of) Ibsen’s corpse, an intimacy and familiarity never allowed
outsiders by the living Ibsen. It is as if, despite the strict formality of the
posed corpse, Phineas wants to make Ibsen out to be a more human figure in
death than he purportedly allowed himself to be in life. That the only trace of
his humanity is found in the tousled hair and ghostly whiskers indicates, per-
haps, a criticism by Byatt regarding Ibsen’s desire for strict control over his
public persona (presumably even in death).
Phineas also notes that in death both men have an expression “of complete
(completed) exhaustion, so that those who look at the photograph are glad that
it is all over, whatever it was. That is, those who look are glad that the dead
man is now dead” (180). This reading of the photographs functions on a num-
ber of levels, and belies strenuously the role played by post-mortem photo-
graphy in conventional Victorian-era mourning practice. I contend that the
phrase “complete (completed) exhaustion” refers as much to their intellectual,
scientific, and aesthetic endeavours as it does to the bodies of Ibsen and Gal-
ton. While the science of Galton (and Linnaeus) has been, in the main, dis-
credited or at least is now seen as early attempts that have long since been
surpassed, this is decidedly not the case for Ibsen’s dramatic writing. Ibsen is
one of the world’s most frequently staged dramatists, second only to Shake-
speare in terms of the number of productions each year around the world.
Ibsen and Galton are simply not of the same order (“Ibsen perhaps didn’t
quite fit,” 126) in terms of their contributions to the history of ideas. Ibsen’s
works, in particular the social critiques of his realist dramas, famously con-
tinue to be (re)discovered in new cultural contexts such as Africa, Asia, and
the Middle East, and interpreted in new ways in Europe and the Americas.
Byatt’s earlier ‘containment’ of Ibsen through the metadramatic move of
transforming his body into a character within a dramatic dialogue of her own
composition and severe abridgement of his literary corpus becomes, in a
sense, suspicious, suggesting as it does a ritual patricide. The photograph of
Ibsen’s corpse thus becomes not a necessary visual reminder to aid in the
process of mourning, but rather as evidence of the end of his (creative) life –
the kind of evidence demanded as proof in the overthrowing of dictators.
178 ELLEN REES a

Conclusion
Byatt’s narrator needs to make sense of Ibsen (and Linnaeus and Galton) as a
way of gaining knowledge about Destry–Scholes. Yet, pragmatically speak-
ing, the reader must know that Destry–Scholes is fictive, while his three ‘sub-
jects’ are in fact historical “personages” (a word that Byatt’s narrator himself
problematizes, 99). Thus, in what might be called the ‘meta-logic’ of the text,
on some level at least, Byatt, in writing about Ibsen, Linnaeus, and Galton, is
also trying to say something about them in and of themselves, independent of
both Destry–Scholes and Phineas. In other words, she is trying to influence
the way we as readers think about them.
All three of the biographical subjects, the composite histories that Byatt
constructs for each of them separately seem to suggest, have a certain touch-
ing obsolescence. Their ‘greatness’, so the story goes, is marred both by per-
sonal foibles and by a certain belief in truths about the world that Byatt and
her readers now know to be false, or at least contingent. But to make such a
case against Ibsen is to misrepresent the nature of his dramatic work, to write
it off as far more conventional than it in fact is. Byatt here repeats in fictional
form the same myth of the ‘masked genius’ perpetuated in all the major Ibsen
biographies. Why reiterate in a metafictional criticism of biographical writing
the same reductive narrative about the life of the biographical subject? And is
Byatt giving her readers the ‘short version’ of Ibsen’s life and works, so that
they do not have to read them themselves? Perhaps The Biographer’s Tale
raises more questions about the untidy boundaries between fact and fiction
than it resolves.

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(Bergen: Universitetsforlaget, 1975).
——. “Finnes det en sannhet om den fremmede passasjer?” Nytt norsk tidsskrift 5.2
(1988): 9–28.
Adams, Timothy Dow. “Photographs on the Walls of the House of Fiction,” Poetics
Today 29.1 (Spring 2008): 175–95.
Armstrong, Nancy. Fiction in the Age of Photography: The Legacy of British Realism
(Cambridge M A : Harvard U P , 1999).
Barthes, Roland. Camera Lucida, tr. Richard Howard (La Chambre Claire, 1980; New
York: Hill & Wang, 1981).
a Body, Corpus, and Corpse 179

Bronfen, Elisabeth. “Risky Resemblances: On Repetition, Mourning, and Repre-

sentation,” in Death and Representation, ed. Sarah Webster Goodwin & Elisabeth
Bronfen (Baltimore M D : Johns Hopkins U P , 1993): 103–29.
Bruce, Susan. “Sympathy for the Dead: (G)hosts, Hostilities and Mediums in
Alejandro Amenábar’s The Others and Post-Mortem Photography,” Discourse
27.2–3 (Spring–Fall 2005): 21–40.
Burke, Seán. The Death and Return of the Author: Criticism and Subjectivity in
Barthes, Foucault and Derrida (Edinburgh: Edinburgh U P , 2008).
Burns, Stanley B. Sleeping Beauty: Memorial Photography in America (Altadena C A :
Twelvetrees, 1990).
——. Sleeping Beauty I I : Grief, Bereavement and the Family in Memorial Photo-
graphy, American and European Traditions (New York: Burns Archive, 2002).
Byatt, A.S. The Biographer’s Tale (2000; London: Vintage, 2001).
Derrida, Jacques. Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression, tr. Eric Prenowitz (Mal
d’Archive: Une Impression Freudienne, 1995; Chicago: U of Chicago P , 1996).
Figueiredo, Ivo de. Henrik Ibsen: Masken (Oslo: Aschehoug, 2007).
Franklin, Ruth. “Inauthentic Fabrics,” New Republic (20 April 2001): 37–40.
Foucault, Michel. “What is an Author?” in The Foucault Reader, tr. Josué V. Harari,
ed. Paul Rabinow (New York: Pantheon, 1984): 101–20. First published as
“Qu’est-ce qu’un auteur?” in Bulletin de la Société française de philosophie 63.3
(July–September 1969): 73–104.
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grapher’s Tale,” English Studies 89.4 (August 2008): 447–60.
Gudmundsdóttir, Gunnthórunn. Borderlines: Autobiography and Fiction in Post-
modern Life Writing (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2003).
Haakonsen, Daniel. “Om den fremmede passasjer,” in Omkring Peer Gynt, ed. Otto
Hageberg (Oslo: Gyldendal Norsk Forlag, 1967): 190–94.
Haarder, Jon Helt. “Don’t try this at home – performativ biografisme i Rifbjergs
Nansen og Johansen,” Den blå port 61 (2003): 41–49.
Hafsteinsson, Sigurjón Baldur. “Post-Mortem and Funeral Photography in Iceland,”
History of Photography 23.1 (Spring 1999): 49–54.
Héran, Emmanuelle. Le Dernier Portrait (exh. cat., 5 March–26 May 2000, Musée
d’Orsay; Paris: Réunion des Musées Nationaux, 2002).
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Stevenson in Contemporary Biographical Fiction,” in “Hello, I Say, It’s Me”:
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Larsen, Peter. “Et liv i bilder: Den fotografiske Ibsen-biografi,” in Den biografiske
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a
Pronouncing it the Porder
Ascribing Aesthetic Values to External and Internal
National Borders in Frank A. Jenssen’s The Salt Bin

J OHAN S CHIMANSKI

F RANK A. J E N S S E N ’ S Saltbingen (The Salt Bin)1 is a novel addressing

indigenous issues in a border region of North Norway. Using specific
aesthetic values – especially the grotesque and the sublime – in con-
nection with national borders, it provides an opportunity to develop our
understanding of border aesthetics in a postcolonial context. How does a
novel such as Saltbingen connect specific aesthetic categories to different
kinds of border? Are such ascriptions purely contingent aesthetic judgments,
or do they say something about connections between aesthetics and borders
which may be applicable also in other contexts?
On publication in 1981, Saltbingen won the Vesaas Prize for the year’s best
literary debut in Norwegian. It sold well2 and was also the focus of heated
local debate in Tysfjord County, where it is set.3 It has been taught regularly

1
Frank A. Jenssen, Saltbingen (Oslo: Aschehoug, 1981). The Salt Bin: A Novel, tr.
R. Thorstensson ([Svolvær: Nord], 1988). Further references to both the original and
the translation are in the main text or with the original texts in the footnotes.
2
Geir Zakariassen, “Litteratur som etnopolitisk uttrykk: En analyse av to nord-
norske verk i lys av den samiske revitaliseringen” [literature as ethnopolitical expres-
sion: an analysis of two North Norwegian works in the light of Sámi revitalization]
(MA thesis, Tromsø University, 1994): 83.
3
Anon, “Med ‘Saltbingen’ i skyttergravene” [with Saltbingen in the trenches],
Nordnorsk magasin 5.3 (1982): 40; Finn Stenstad, Fram fra de hundrede mile: Nord-
norsk litteratur fra 1945 til 1992: Tendenser, temaer, portretter, tekster og bibliografi
[out of the hundred miles: North Norwegian literature from 1945 to 1992: tendencies,
182 JOHAN SCHIMANSKI a

as part of courses in North Norwegian literature but, with a few exceptions,

has not received much in the way of wider academic attention. There are
several possible reasons for this. First, Jenssen did not subsequently establish
a profile as a literary author. While he went on to publish several non-fiction
books, he was not to publish another novel until 2004. Secondly, the novel’s
naturalistic style and regional theme fitted the social realism of Norwegian
literature in the 1970s better than it did the postmodernism of the 1980s. Last-
ly, there may be misgivings about a non-indigenous author writing what in
many ways is a novel about Sámi indigenous experience.4 Indeed, the argu-
ment of two of the main previous readings of the novel is that, while revealing
in its anti-colonialist critique, the novel reproduces deterministic stereotypes
of the Sámi.5
This is a novel in which the author attempts to articulate the Sámi experi-
ence in the Tysfjord area and to expose the racism with which the Sámi were
met by Norwegians, including himself.6 At moments, the novel becomes a
pedagogical project, the author using the shock-tactics of a grotesque natural-
ism in order to bring the reader to a realization of the historical oppression of
the Sámi in Tysfjord. Saltbingen is a novel of exposure, of bringing forth his-
tories across generations; histories which have been hidden and find them-
selves uncannily repeated. Most of the classic elements of colonial and post-
colonial discourse may be found here, with the many characters representing
different allegorical positions in this historical narrative of assimilation, self-
alienation, mimicry, counter-discourse, and hybridity. Embedded stories also

themes, portraits, texts, and bibliography] (Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1992): 103–104;

Bjørg Evjen, Velferd og mangfold: Tysfjord kommune 1950–2000 [welfare and diver-
sity: Tysfjord County 1950–2000] ([Kjøpsvik]: Tysfjord kommune, 2001): 143.
4
See “Med ‘Saltbingen’ i skyttergravene,” 40.
5
Vivian C. Aira, “Å knuse et ørneegg…: Frank A. Jenssens roman Saltbingen sett
fra et ideologikritisk perspektiv” [breaking an eagle’s egg…: Frank A. Jenssen’s novel
Saltbingen in an ideology-critical perspective] (M A thesis, Tromsø University, 1999):
82. Troy Storfjell, “Colonial Palimpsest: Tracing Inscriptions of Sápmi and the Sámi”
(doctoral dissertation, University of Wisconsin–Madison, 2001): 421.
6
For documentation of Jenssen’s own statements on the novel, see Aira, “Å knuse
et ørneegg…,” 4. Jenssen has recently reconfirmed his anti-racist intentions in “Mitt
eget forfatterskap og gjenferdet Knut Hamsun” [my own authorship and the ghost of
Knut Hamsun] in Veier til Hamsun: 7 foredrag fra Hamsun-dagene på Hamarøy 2006
[roads to Hamsun: seven lectures from the Hamsun Festival on Hamarøy Island,
2006], ed. Even Arntzen (Hamarøy: Hamsun-selskapet, 2007): 80.
a Pronouncing It the Porder 183

tell of pre-colonial memories, and in the last chapter, the book looks forward
to its present, hinting at a possibility of ethnonationalist mobilization.7 Signi-
ficantly, while most of characters speak to each other in Sámi, in the novel the
dialogue is given to the reader in North Norwegian dialect, and it is only on
the last two pages that Sámi words are used at all. This book was published at
the height of the Alta demonstrations to protest against the building of a
hydroelectric power reservoir in a traditionally Sámi area. These protests are
often seen as having a decisive effect on identity-politics in the far north of
Scandinavia.
We read here of a young man, Agnar Amundsen, growing up in the 1950s,
and of the young woman Lisa who becomes his wife, and their attempts to
survive poverty and humiliation in the rugged Tysfjord environment. The
book goes on to follow another young man growing up in the 1960s, Lisa and
Agnar’s son Petter. Petter is sent to school to learn Norwegian, and we leave
him at the end of the book as a young adult deciding on his life ahead in the
modern world. Most of the characters display some kind of hybridity, but in
Petter at school we encounter a higher degree of interpellation as a national
subject. Symbolically, Petter is caught between his identification with the
eagle’s egg he has inherited from his father and the record-player on which he
plays songs by the Beatles. Some school friends break the eagle’s egg, and in
a school show (revy) a garbled reference is made to an episode recounted ear-
lier in the novel, now the stuff of folklore. In this episode, Petter’s great-aunt
Ragna takes her revenge on the all-powerful merchant in Kjøpsvik by telling
everybody in the shop that he once sexually abused her in the salt bin located
at the back of the shop. It is this salt bin that gives the novel its title.
The breaking of the egg and the episode in the salt bin are just two of the
many traumatic episodes described in this novel. Like fellow North Nor-
wegian Dag Skogheim’s ‘Sulis’ quartet (1980–86),8 set a little further to the
south, Jenssen’s Saltbingen is about trauma and memory, but trauma in the

7
Ethnopolitical activism came to Tysfjord after the 1960s, with the establishment of
a short-lived Sámi society in Tysfjord in 1971. Sven–Roald Nystø, “Om forholdet
mellom det samiske og det norske samfunn i Tysfjord” [on the relations between Sámi
and Norwegian society in Tysfjord], Årbok for Tysfjord 1 (1983): 42. More continuous
activities followed later.
8
Dag Skogheim, Sulis / Café Iris (Oslo: Tiden, 1998); November 44 / Sølvhals-
båndet: Merkedager [the silver necklace: anniversaries] (Oslo: Tiden, 1998). ‘Sulis’ is
a familiar name for the mining community of Sulitjelma.
184 JOHAN SCHIMANSKI a

face of ignorance and forgetting, as expressed by Petter’s school friend Ulf:

“So what, you feel better now, don’t you?”9 This statement, expressed within
the discourse of 1960s pop philosophy (“everything’s getting better all the
time”), encapsulates the main epistemological (and ideological) border which
this novel attempts to cross: the veil covering a hidden history of trauma. As
Troy Storfjell writes, the novel “exposes the wounds hidden or obscured by
the rhetoric of the progressive welfare state.”10 The main helper the book has
in realizing this project is its own purposefully shocking grotesque elements.

Mapping border planes

It should be clear from this brief description – and from earlier readings by
Aira and Storfjell – that this is in some sense a postcolonial novel, and could
be read by using terms such as identity, representation, and giving voice to the
subaltern (in a form of ventriloquism proper to the novel as a form, but much
problematized in postcolonialist debate). In approaching it from the perspec-
tive of the border, I wish, however, not only to contribute to the ongoing in-
vestigations into the aesthetics of borders in the North, but also to highlight
those specific aspects of the novel which nuance the categories of postcolonial
theory. This novel both represents and is part of a Northern borderscape, an
ethical and aesthetic negotiation with the borders of Northern Norway, along
with the other symbolic and topographical borders on which these are articu-
lated.11
The postcolonialist approach would base itself on a set of symbolic borders
or binary polarities creating barriers and conflict in the narrative, searching for
potential third, hybrid in-betweens and interstices. There are the ethnic boun-

9
“Ka gjær nu det, du e beire nu, ikkje sant?” (168, tr. 187).
10
Storfjell, “Colonial Palimpsest,” 404. For the radical integration into the social
state system undergone by Sámi living in the inner regions of Tysfjord between the
1950s and 1960s – and its underlying racist assumptions – see Nystø, “Om forholdet
mellom det samiske og det norske samfunn i Tysfjord,” 40–43.
11
For the concept of ‘borderscape’, see Prem Kumar Rajaram & Carl Grundy–Warr,
“Introduction” to Borderscapes: Hidden Geographies and Politics at Territory’s Edge,
ed. Rajaram & Grundy–Warr (Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P , 2007): x–xi, xxviii–
xxx; Anke Strüver, Stories of the “Boring Border”: The Dutch–German Borderscape
in People’s Minds (Berlin: L I T , 2009): 170; Chiara Brambilla, “ ‘ Pluriversal’ Citizen-
ship and Borderscapes,” in Transient Spaces: The Tourist Syndrome, ed. Marina Sor-
bello & Antje Weitzel (Berlin: Argobooks, 2010): 65.
a Pronouncing It the Porder 185

daries involved, the most important being that between the Sámi and the Nor-
wegians, though the book reminds us at one point that most of its ‘Norwe-
gian’ characters are probably of Sámi descent. It is this border that becomes
the basis of the racism the novel criticizes. The novel also mentions the diffe-
rence between the hunter-gatherer-fisher-farmer Sámi in Tysfjord (mostly
coastal Sámi and the cross-border Lule Sámi12) and the reindeer-herding Sámi
more typical of essentialist images of the Sámi in general.13 It thus helps make
visible a doubly marginalized group, though this is not emphasized in this
novel published in 1981, before this form of marginalization in the represen-
tation of the Sámi became a subject of vocal critique. The main polarity in
Saltbingen, between Norwegian and Sámi, is constantly driven home not only
by means of the motif of hierarchical social relations14 but also through badly
spoken Norwegian, as in when the Sámi talk of the border to Sweden and
“pronounce it the ‘Porder’.”15 There is no sense of empowerment in this

12
Lule Sámi was not used as an ethnic identifier at the time the novel was written
and the term is not used in the novel. For a discussion of the formation of a Lule Sámi
identity as a part of ethnopolitical mobilization in the 1970s, see Evjen, “ ‘ Jeg trodde
jeg var bare same, ikke lulesame’: Om ‘lulesame’ og ‘lulesamisk område’ som nye
politiske og identitetsskapende begrep” [“I thought I was just a Sámi, not a Lule
Sámi”: on “Lule Sámi” and the “Lule Sámi area” as new concepts in politics and
identity-construction], in Ett folk, ett land: Sápmi i historia och nutid [one people, one
country: historical and contemporary Sápmi (the Sámi nation)], ed. Per Axelsson &
Peter Sköld (Umeå: Centrum för Samisk Forskning, Umeå University, 2005): 193–
204. For interactions between coastal Sámi and Lule Sámi, see Finn Rønnebu,
“Befolkning og identitet i Tysfjord” [population and identity in Tysfjord], Årbok for
Tysfjord 26 (2008): 12–13.
13
By the 1950s, there were no local reindeer-herders in the inner Tysfjord district;
see Bård A. Berg, “Utviklingen av reindriften i nordre Nordland 1750–2000” [the
development of reindeer-herding in the northern Nordland region 1750–2000], in
Nordlands kulturelle mangfold: Etniske relasjoner i historisk perspektiv [the cultural
diversity of the Nordland region: ethnic relations in an historical perspective], ed.
Bjørg Evjen & Lars Ivar Hansen (Oslo: Pax, 2008): 185; Bjørg Evjen, Et sammen-
satt fellesskap: Tysfjord kommune 1869–1950 ([Kjøpsvik]: Tysfjord kommune,
1998): 125.
14
See Nystø, “Om forholdet mellom det samiske og det norske samfunn i Tysfjord,”
40. Another layer of cultural differentiation in Tysfjord, which gives an edge to motifs
such as alcoholism in the novel, is formed by religious beliefs and practices, not ad-
dressed here.
15
“uttaler det Krensen” (14, tr. 19). The original does not use quotation marks.
186 JOHAN SCHIMANSKI a

hybridity; linguistic code-switching as a form of tactical resistance takes place

only in the closing chapter.
The border between Norwegian and Sámi overlaps or intersects with bor-
ders between social classes, between periphery and centre, between rural and
industrial societies (industry being represented in the novel by the reservoir
works, the cement factory, and the Svolvær fisheries), and between a subsis-
tence economy and the welfare state (the latter state regime becoming more
present in the later part of the book).
All of these ethnic and social boundaries are clearly spatialized as topogra-
phical borders in Saltbingen. The novel opens with Agnar’s climb across vari-
ous material thresholds – stone stairs up the mountainside, the literal threshold
of a door – to the Norwegian sphere of the water-scheme works with its tun-
nellers’ barracks. Throughout the novel, the rowing-boat journey across the
fjord acts as a divide between Agnar’s home in Luokta and the local centre of
Kjøpsvik, location of the merchant’s shop, the cement factory, and, later, the
secondary school Petter attends as a boarder. Visits to the factory in Kjøpsvik
in search of work focus on ethnic encounters taking place in entrance halls
and on thresholds.16 The outer mouth of the fjord, also crossed in an effort to
make ends meet, marks a clear border between the world of the Tysfjord Sámi
and the Lofoten fisheries. All of these borders are part of the internal structure
of the nation, with Tysfjord, like other parts of Norway, functioning according
to the internal colonialism typical of many nation-states.
These internal borders are, however, connected in the novel with the exter-
nal borders of the nation: Krensen, the “Porder” (the novel uses aberrant
forms in order to highlight perceptions of Sámi handling of the Norwegian
language). The Tysfjord region, with the various arms of the fjord reaching
far inland through a mountainous landscape, contains Norway’s narrowest
point outside of the border region to Russia. At one point, the Swedish border
lies only 6.3 km from the sea. While this would imply an intimate relationship
with the national border for everybody living in the region, the novel clearly
figures it primarily as a place of circulation and as the domain of the indige-
nous Sámi, living as they do both in Sweden and in Norway. Only during the
Second World War, as recollected by an old storyteller in the novel, was the
border an important, if illicit, site of circulation for all, with Sámi people-

16
For a detailed reading of one of these scenes, see Storfjell, “Colonial Palimpsest,”
407–12.
a Pronouncing It the Porder 187

smugglers acting as guides for escapees to neutral Sweden from German oc-
cupation.17
In Saltbingen, the Krense or “Porder” is not only a site of circulation but
also an idyllic counterbalance to the grotesque traumas which otherwise
dominate the text. It is the place where Agnar and Lisa meet, while picking
cloudberries in the bogs of the Swedish borderlands, and where Petter is con-
ceived.

An aesthetic of the grotesque and the sublime

The aesthetic dimension of the novel is partly formed by the specific generic
or stylistic values written into the text. These genres or styles are aesthetic
categories – different modes of regulating the sensible. In novels, they speci-
fically regulate how the text as an aesthetic whole borders the world of its
readers, or how parts of the text carrying different aesthetics values border on
other parts. In her 1999 thesis on the novel, Vivian C. Aira considers Salt-
bingen to be a naturalistic text, its emphasis on pessimism, inheritance, and
determinism echoing elements of late-nineteenth-century literary naturalism;
but a naturalistic text combined with elements of Bakhtinian polyphony and
carnival. In line with these stylistic or generic identifications, the novel is built
around various grotesque episodes.18 Here I will be examining in more detail
the category of the grotesque and its connections with another aesthetic cate-
gory, the sublime, in order to examine how these in general and Saltbingen in
particular negotiate external and internal borders in a postcolonial context. In
the process, I will also be making reference to Julia Kristeva’s conceptual-
ization of the abject, a psychoanalytical category paralleling the aesthetic
category of the grotesque.19
In the opening chapter, Agnar is manipulated into eating the flycatcher, full
of dead flies, in the tunnellers’ barracks. We are told in chapters three and
four about Ragna’s encounters with the merchant in the salt bin and how her

17
Cf. Evjen, Et sammensatt fellesskap, 281–87.
18
Aira, “Å knuse et ørneegg…,” 33, 59–61. The word “grotesque” is also used in
passing by Storfjell, “Colonial Palimpsest,” 399, by Zakariassen, “Litteratur som etno-
politisk uttrykk,” 41, and by one of the novel’s reviewers, Øystein Rottem (quoted in
“Litteratur som etnopolitisk uttrykk,” 73).
19
Julia Kristeva, Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection tr. Leon S. Roudiez
(Pouvoirs de l’horreur, 1980; New York: Columbia U P , 1982).
188 JOHAN SCHIMANSKI a

husband Aron got a crooked nose in Svolvær. In addition to being, as Aira

points out, the novel’s Bakhtinian and postcolonial fool,20 Ivar from across the
fjord is a grotesque character in himself, drinking methylated spirits and
mimicking stereotypes of the Sámi as dangerous people who can ritually
curse their enemies through so-called ganning. Agnar, when given a tempo-
rary job at the reservoir works, is involved in the gruesome accidental death
of his Swedish fellow-worker Sigurd. When he himself dies suddenly,
through tripping up in a boat and drowning – almost laconically, without
warning for the reader – his corpse, resting in a makeshift coffin, is mistaken
for butchered meat as it stands by merchant’s buildings and is stolen by some
passing boatmen from Buvika. At secondary school, Petter’s friends scrape
him with a heated knife and at a later point break his eagle’s egg, both times
in a form of threatening play. More day-to-day occurrences, too, are figured
throughout the novel as grotesque bodies, spaces, and discourse: the pains and
wounds from back-breaking work, illness and retching, sexual abuse, social
injustice, dilapidated housing, the buying of a chamber pot, urination in a fish
catch and other inappropriate places, spitting of saliva or blood, killing of
caught game birds, and vulgar and insulting discourse in general.
The grotesque is a concept with a long history. In its discrete variants it
often appears as a “border figure”21 connected with the abnormal, fantastic,
and transgressive. The ‘grotesque’ is a term first used for a form of plant orna-
ment decorating architectural and artistic frames (or ‘grottoes’). In this mani-
festation it has been criticized in aesthetic terms for disturbing the tidy borders
of classical forms.22 It thus takes on the role of a dangerous supplement, an
outside which uncannily mixes with essential forms and threatens their iden-
tity. Its danger for the aesthetic lies in its potentially being taken as a master-
trope for the aesthetic, allowing critics of the latter to emphasize what they
perceive as its essentially additive and superfluous nature.

20
See Aira, “Å knuse et ørneegg…,” 45–46.
21
See Franco Moretti, Atlas of the European Novel 1800–1900 (Atlante del
romanzo europeo 1800–1900, 1997; London: Verso, 1998): 45; Johan Schimanski,
“Crossing and Reading: Notes towards a Theory and a Method,” Nordlit 19 (2006):
58–60.
22
Wolfgang Kayser, Das Groteske: Seine Gestaltung in Malerei und Dichtung [the
grotesque: its forms in art and literature] (Oldenburg: Stalling, 1957): 20–21; Mikhail
Bakhtin, Rabelais and his World, tr. Hélène Iswolsky (Tvorchestvo Fransua Rable,
1965; Bloomington: Indiana U P , 1984): 25.
a Pronouncing It the Porder 189

Meanwhile, the modern grotesque involves a more direct threat, that of a

repulsive imaginary. In literature, the grotesque is often seen as an attribute of
characters or situations in which an alienating bizarreness – a repulsed aes-
thesis – is combined with sympathetic identification, awakening an ethical
response which would not be present in the purely comic.23 For Bakhtin, the
grotesque is an historical concept, with an earlier capacity for regeneration in
the grotesque replaced in modern times by a “moral sententiousness.”24 In one
sense, the aesthetic of the modern grotesque functions as an ‘non-aesthetic’,
as it repels the senses. Geir Zakariassen talks of the “unaesthetic choice of
words” in the scene with the flycatcher, and partly rejects Jenssen’s descrip-
tions as too “extreme.”25 Aira describes in a personal aside how her aunt,
from Tysfjord, had to throw up after reading the flycatcher scene:26 it is as if
aesthesis, the process of incorporating senses into the body, ends in bodily
rejection, being forced out of the body again.
This grotesque repulsion must be balanced dialectally, much as the sub-
lime, in Burke’s definition, is a danger which is kept at a safe distance (in the
sublime’s case, so that its power can be enjoyed).27 The grotesque functions in
Saltbingen as part of its pedagogy; as Aira makes clear, this is a tragic novel
in which the negative is taken as a symptom of oppression and trauma, and
thus an invitation to sympathy and pity. The kernel of love between Agnar
and Lisa gives this dialectic an added poignancy. This ambivalent combina-
tion of alienation28 and sympathy in the modern grotesque makes it an essen-
tially hybrid form, hybridity being a figure of the border well-suited to the
identities of postcolonial or border subjects, whose selves are split by borders.
Zakariassen reads the ‘non-aesthetic’ elements in the novel as complicating

23
Kayser, Das Groteske, 128.
24
Bakhtin, Rabelais and his World, 53.
25
“Dette uestetiske ordvalget,” “outrert,” “Litteratur som etnopolitisk uttrykk,” 40–
41.
26
Aira, “Å knuse et ørneegg…,” 59.
27
Edmund Burke, “Of the Sublime” (1757), in On the Sublime and the Beautiful
(Bartleby.com 2001): http://www.bartleby.com/24/2/107.html (accessed 22 July
2012). For connections between the grotesque and the sublime, see Kayser, Das
Groteske, 60–61, 74.
28
Das Groteske, 198.
190 JOHAN SCHIMANSKI a

what he sees as its sometimes too simple oppositions between Sámi and Nor-
wegians.29
In Saltbingen, the grotesque is also connected with bodily borders in all
their manifestations, in line with Bakhtin’s conception of the “grotesque
body” – a body in transformation, an incomplete body, a body with openings
– as being central to the grotesque.30 In this and other respects, the Bakhtinian
grotesque shows strong affinities with Julia Kristeva’s concept of the abject,
the anxiety which the self feels about the borders of the self itself.31 The focus
on bodily borders and their transgression results in a confusion between the
internal and the external typical of the grotesque. When borders are seen as
internal, as an ‘Other’ inside the self, and as a reminder of the origin of the
self in something outside the self (for Kristeva, the mother),32 they become
repulsive. This applies not only to human bodies and identities but also to the
national ‘body’.33
However, it is by no means a given that the grotesque must be negative and
an object of repulsion. In his discussion of the positive context of the medi-
eval carnival, Bakhtin suggests that the degradation represented by the grotes-
que is not only a symbol of being devoured but also a symbol of regeneration
or rebirth.34 Bakhtin argues that the medieval grotesque has slowly changed
into an individualized form of alienation.35 Looking at Saltbingen with its
more modern version of the grotesque, one might surmise that Bakhtin is cor-
rect in this view. The positive can only be read dialectically as a future
utopian potential in the novel, with Petter, as Aira suggests, possibly pointing
towards Sámi regeneration. As a closer reading of its handling of topogra-
phical borders will suggest, this ambivalence beyond the novel’s ending –
across its textual border – is prepared for by a carefully orchestrated contrast
between Saltbingen’s brutally grotesque dominant and its brief moments of
idyll and the sublime.

29
Zakariassen, “Litteratur som etnopolitisk uttrykk,” 41.
30
Bakhtin, Rabelais and his World, 25–26, 315–19.
31
Kristeva, Powers of Horror, 3, 53–54.
32
Powers of Horror, e.g., 4, 53–54, 71–72, 114.
33
For a detailed discussion of borders and Kristeva’s concept of the abject, with
further references, see Adéle Nel’s contribution to this volume.
34
Bakhtin, Rabelais and his World, 21.
35
Rabelais and his World, 39.
a Pronouncing It the Porder 191

Border configurations
Having presented the novel in postcolonial terms, analysed its various border
planes, and examined its aesthetic borderings, I will now attend to the ways in
which topographical borders are configured and have aesthetic values
ascribed to them in the symbolic geography of Agnar in particular. The border
to Sweden is a distinctly positive feature in Agnar’s universe, being the place
of cloudberry-picking and his first contact with Lisa (who is from another part
of Tysfjord). As Storfjell points out, Agnar feels at ease in this natural land-
scape in a way in which he and other Sámi characters do not when relating to
more technological or cultural environments.36 Aira has noted how the second
chapter of the novel, in which Agnar falls in love with Lisa in the Swedish
borderlands, tends to evince a less realistic and more lyrical or romanticizing
prose.37 The borderlands are also associated with older links to Sweden within
the Lule Sámi cultural area, such as Agnar’s mother, Signe Valkeapæ, who is
from Jokkmokk, in Sweden.38 The unsettled and undeveloped border is
notably absent in the world his son Petter must inhabit, the world of the Nor-
wegian nation-state.
Symbolically, Agnar associates the border not only with a horizontal tra-
jectory going across the border but also with a vertical trajectory: the upwards
direction of the mountains, the eagle’s egg, and, in one case, a star – all typi-
cally sublime objects.
They are in Sweden now, and he sees a star above the mountains to the
East. He believes it’s a star, and that would mean that fall has come
[i.e. it is now dark enough at night to see stars]. And if it isn’t a star but
something else, what would it be? It must be a star, and if he had been
standing on [the glacier] Giccecokka or the Bear’s Peak, he would
have seen Kebnekaise, too. Aron says that Kebnekaise is Sweden’s
highest mountain, but it isn’t so easy to know if that’s true. It seems a
little strange that such a large mountain should be only a two-or three-
days’ walk from Tysfjord and Luokta. Now the star is almost gone.
Ivar talks in his sleep, muddled words and in a low voice. He doesn’t

36
Storfjell, “Colonial Palimpsest,” 416–17.
37
Aira, “Å knuse et ørneegg…,” 58.
38
Many of the Sámi in Tysfjord had ancestors from Jokkmokk or Gällivare in
Sweden (Evjen, Et sammensatt fellesskap, 47–48, 56).
192 JOHAN SCHIMANSKI a

speak Sami, it sounds more like Swedish. Perhaps it’s only sounds
without any meaning.39
Positive associations with mountains, particularly mountains in Sweden such
as Kebnekaise (Giebmegáisi/Giebnegáisi) and Akka (Áhkka), occur many
times through the novel. The love between Lisa and himself causes Agnar
twice to metaphorically place himself at the top of Kebnekaise. Right at the
beginning of the novel, he also surmises that the glacier Giccecokka is the
source of the water in a green-coloured lake, “with a glimmering reflection of
ice and sky [himmel, which also means ‘heaven’] in it.”40 These associations
are also prefigured by the myth which introduces the novel, in which a Tys-
fjord Sámi fools an eagle into thinking that he is a sheep, in order to get him-
self a free ride up the impossibly sublime – or perhaps grotesque – peak of
Stetind (Stádda). Agnar later sees the mountain world as liberating and as
borderless: “The open mountain area always fills him with a feeling of end-
lessness [grenseløshet, borderlessness], a childish desire to run away.”41
Crossing the border into the mountains – or into Sweden – is to cross into a
world without borders.
Movements along the vertical axis cross borders not only to an upper world
but also to a lower world. At one point, Agnar privately names a mountain he
sees after Lisa. However, in his infatuation with her, he sees himself diving
into a campfire: “Most of all he would have liked to throw himself [stupe,
dive] into the fire, with glowing coals around him, and yell that he had been to
the top of Kebnekaise.”42 This ambivalence of up and down is most clearly or

39
“De er i Sverige nå, og han ser ei stjerne over fjellene langt i øst. Han tror der er ei
stjerne, der betyr at det er høst. Og er det ikke ei stjerne, så må det være noe annet, men
hva skulle det være? Det er nok ei stjerne, og hadde han stått på toppen av Giccecokka
eller Bjørntoppen hadde han også sett Kebnekaise. Aron sier at Kebnekaise er Sveriges
høyeste fjell, men der er nå ikke så godt å vite om det er sant. Litt rart at et så stort fjell
skulle ligge bare et par tre dagsmarsjer fra Tysfjord og Luokta. Nå er stjerna neste
forsvunnet. Ivar snakker i søvne, lavt og utydelig. Han snakker ikke samisk, da ligner
det mer på svensk. Kanskje er det bare lyder uten mening” (18, tr. 23). The glacier
Giccecokka (Gihtsejiegƾa in Lule Sámi) reaches up to Bjørntoppen (the Bear’s Peak,
Biernatjåhkka in Lule Sámi). Giccecokka is the glacier’s North Sámi name.
40
“med et lysende skjær av is og himmel i seg” (7, tr. 11).
41
“Det åpne fjellet gir alltid en følelse av grenseløshet, en slags barnslig trang til å
løpe bort” (65, tr. 74).
42
“Aller helst skulle han stupe i varmen, omgi seg med glødende kullbiter og rope at
han har vært på toppen av Kebnekaise” (33, tr. 40).
a Pronouncing It the Porder 193

most confusingly seen in the figure of the already mentioned high mountain
glacier Giccecokka, which is directly placed on the national border. At one
point, when he succeeds in expressing his attraction to Lisa, he feels “as if the
glacier at Giccecokka had calved somewhere inside his body.”43 The sublime
image of large masses of glacier ice splitting away and falling downwards
from a height (‘calving’) is incorporated into the body as an affect. The sub-
lime in this imagery of height and natural power is mixed with a potentially
grotesque image of an inside splitting; to this is added an image of animal
birth in the direct, non-metaphorical sense of ‘calving’, which foretells the
human birth (of Petter) that is the result of Agnar’s meeting with Lisa. This
suggests a regenerative potential more in line with Bakhtin’s pre-modern
grotesque as detailed earlier.
More darkly, however, the sublimity of the beloved grotesquely also fore-
warns of Agnar’s death: “To see her naked is something much greater than
diving all the way down to the sandy bottom under Aron’s boat, and that’s
terribly deep.”44 Agnar dies several years later when he trips over the side of
Aron’s boat, having gone there to fetch a gift that he has bought for Lisa (now
his wife). His last thought is that the water is “greener than in the mountain
rivers.”45 His downward journey is then repeated as the Buvika boatmen at-
tempt to cover up their mistake in stealing his coffin by sinking his dead body
to the bottom of the fjord.
Similar ambiguity is invokes in the image of Giccecokka. Twice in the
novel, Agnar imagines the ice caves underneath the mountain glacier. While
over the border, these are associated with something dangerous and sublime
in Lisa’s eyes: “Those peculiar eyes, right now they remind him of the ice
caverns just under Giccecokka, the glacier he likes the best. He looks bravely
back […].”46 This is again the sublime we meet in the passion of falling in
love. For her part, Lisa is also attracted to Agnar’s mysterious eyes: “it’s like
looking into a cave.”47 Earlier, however, the ice caves are more clearly grotes-
que; the word ‘grotesque’, after all, comes from the word grotta, meaning

43
“som om Giccecokka hadde kalvet i et sted inne i kroppen hans” (31, tr. 38).
44
“Å se henne naken er mye større enn å dykke heilt ned til sandbotnen under
sjarken til Aron, og der er det forferdelig dypt” (20, tr. 26).
45
“grønnere enn i fjellkulpen” (132, tr. 148).
46
“De merkelige øynene, akkurat nå minner de om lyset i ishulene under Gicce-
cokka, den breen han er mest glad i. Han stirrer tappert tilbake” (25, tr. 31).
47
“det er som å stirre inn i ei hule” (28, tr. 34).
194 JOHAN SCHIMANSKI a

‘cave’.48 After Agnar eats the flycatcher, the quarrymen’s barracks becomes
strangely still: “It’s quiet in the barracks, frighteningly quiet, like in the ice
caves at Giccecokka. Why don’t they say anything, why don’t they pat him on
his shoulders?”49 This border ambivalence, this sublime which is more grotes-
que than ecstatic, presages Agnar’s death by water, which in turn is the cause
of his son’s Petter’s later fear of water, preventing Petter from looking for a
job on the coastal steamer. Regeneration is at most hinted at and left to the
reader to fulfil.

Ascribing values in the borderscape

My intention here is to draw a few connections between some of these ob-
servations on border configurations, aesthetic borderings, border planes, and
postcolonial identities. In many of these examples which invoke both the
Swedish Krense or Porder and the border to upper or lower worlds, themes of
mimicry and humiliation are played out in scenes in which the sublime is re-
placed by the grotesque. The border is first introduced as a positively valued
border to the east, in Swedish Lapland, a region which, according to the novel,
is known metonymically simply as ‘the border’:
rumors have it that there’s sunshine on the other side of the mountains
[grensen, the border]. People say just ‘the Border’ when they talk
about Swedish Lappland. The Sami pronounce it the ‘Porder’ when
they don’t use their own word.50

The external border of the nation becomes a positively valued transborder

region, an idyllic counterbalance to the injustice of the situation at home in
Tysfjord. The pronunciation ‘Porder’, however, hints at the continued grotes-
que handlings of Sámi mispronunciations elsewhere in the novel.
Notably, the text immediately calls attention to linguistic borders in a
humiliating mimicry. Similarly, after invoking the ice caves of Giccecokka
while in the barracks, Agnar reveals his motivation in eating the flycatcher

48
Kayser, Das Groteske, 20.
49
“Det er stille i brakka, uhyggelig stille, som i ishulene under Giccecokka. Hvorfor
sier de ingen ting, hvorfor klapper de han ikke på skuldrene?” (12, tr. 17).
50
“ryktene forteller om sol på den andre siden av grensen. Folk sier bare Grensen
når de snakker om Lappland. Samene uttaler det Krensen når de ikke bruker sitt eget
ord” (14, tr. 19). Thorstensson translates grensen (the border) as “the mountains,” since
the Norwegian–Swedish border follows the mountains at this point.
a Pronouncing It the Porder 195

precisely as a form of mimicry. He expects recognition from the quarrymen

for his performance in living up to external, racist imagery of the Sámi as
essentially grotesque figures. Even the evocation of the mountains in Agnar’s
contemplation of the star ends on a negative note, in linguistic mimicry or in
nonsense as Ivar, the alcoholic and enduring colonial mimic of the novel,
talks in his sleep, either Swedish or nonsense. This nonsense can be identified
with the colonial nonsense Homi Bhabha reads into “The horror! The horror!”
in Heart of Darkness or the “Boum oboum” in the cave in A Passage to India.
For Bhabha, such signifiers speak of a borderline condition of ambivalence
and confusion in the colonial subject.51 In the association of the colonial
subject with borderline conditions, it is only to be expected that postcolonial-
ist criticism has begun to focus on the abject52 – nor is Saltbingen alone in its
evocation of the grotesque, a category used extensively in postcolonial litera-
ture, especially in its more magical-realist inflections.53
My suggestion here is that a closer reading of the novel’s moments of idyll
and the sublime reveals a close connection between the grotesque and its
seeming opposites. Both the grotesque and the sublime are spatial pheno-
mena; in the novel, these aesthetic categories are always connected with a
metaphorical and psychological outer landscape with borders at its centre. For
Kristeva, sublimation is a way of keeping the abject under control, and, since
the sublime transgresses a border, it, like the abject, has no definable object.54
It is worth noting how neatly Kristeva’s description of the abject as an inter-
nalization of the border mirrors Manuel Aguirre’s description of the gothic
sublime as an externalization of the border, with Aguirre’s model invoking a
vertical axis at the external border in much the same way as Saltbingen
does.55

51
Homi K. Bhabha, The Location of Culture (London: Routledge, 1994): 123–24.
52
See Michael C. Frank, Kulturelle Einflussangst: Inszenierungen der Grenze in der
Reiseliteratur des 19. Jahrhunderts [the anxiety of cultural influence: border perfor-
mances in nineteenth-century travel writing] (Bielefeld: transcript, 2006): 79–81.
53
María Sofia Pimentel Biscaia, Postcolonial and Feminist Grotesque: Texts of
Contemporary Excess (Bern: Peter Lang, 2011): 14, 20, 30.
54
Kristeva, Powers of Horror, 11–12.
55
Manuel Aguirre, “Liminal Terror: The Poetics of Gothic Space,” in The Dynamics
of the Threshold: Essays on Liminal Negotiations, ed. Jesús Benito & Ana María
Manzanas (Madrid: Gateway, 2006): 16.
196 JOHAN SCHIMANSKI a

Saltbingen provides an example of how, in one regional borderscape popu-

lated partly by an originally transnational indigenous cultural grouping, the
internal and external borders of the nation-state are articulated onto one
another according to a logic of internal colonialism. When borders are inter-
nalized, they become grotesque divisions of the whole, putting the well-
defined body of the nation into question – just as the abject puts into question
the formation of the subject within an ordered discourse of identities. In many
present-day situations, of course, national borders have become internalized in
the sense that their externality to the nation-state is now seen as internal to
both a globalized world situation and to nation-states themselves, resulting in
many grotesque and abject situations involving ‘international’ migrants.56 In
Saltbingen, however, external borders are, paradoxically, mapped momen-
tarily and ambivalently onto the sublime: the liberating beauty of nature,
primordial identities, and love. External borders thus help create a sense of
sympathetic identification and dialectical possibility in the face of the grotes-
que, central to the naturalistic project of the novel. The grotesque is associated
with the internal borders of the nation, and both the grotesque and the internal
borders are only congealed in the supposed borderlessness of the welfare state
established in the transition from Agnar’s to Petter’s generations. The repul-
sive, ‘non-aesthetic’ or ‘unaesthetic’ in the novel exposes these borders and
paradoxically makes them sensible or ‘aesthetic’, with the intention of push-
ing the reader into new subject-positions. However, the ambivalent critical
reception of the novel suggests that this attempted giving of agency is not
necessarily successful.57

56
Nicholas De Genova, “Border, Scene and Obscene,” in A Companion to Border
Studies, ed. Hastings Donnan & Thomas M. Wilson (Chichester: Wiley–Blackwell,
2012): 494, 498.
57
This article is based on research within the Border Aesthetics Project, and has as
such benefited from financing by the Research Council of Norway and the University
of Tromsø. I would like to thank Vivian C. Aira for introducing me to Jenssen’s novel,
Ulrike Spring, Troy Storfjell, my anonymous referee, and participants at the D I N O
network conference 2010, at the Grensprojek [border project] videoseminar in Tromsø
and Potchefstroom 2010, at the K U L V E R seminar 2011, at the Grensprojek seminar
in Potchefstroom 2011, and at the postcolonial literature and theory course 2012 for
providing valuable input for this article.
a Pronouncing It the Porder 197

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& Lars Ivar Hansen (Oslo: Pax, 2008): 151–91.
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a
The Normal and the Carceral
Boundaries in Thomas Harris’s The Silence of the Lambs

T ONY U LLYATT

The madman is not the man who has lost his reason.
The madman is the man who has lost everything except his reason.1
We are born into a world where alienation awaits us.2

S OCIETY IS THE THRESHOLD AREA where conflicts between the normal

and the abnormal, the acceptable and the punishable, occur. As I have
noted elsewhere, it is where that society pursues a possibly delusional
fantasy of itself as a good, healthy, safe, stable, or sacred place where its
members can share their customary ‘normal’ realities.
To transform this fantasy into reality, society defines and enforces
norms of permissible and non-permissible behaviours. Against both
sets of norms – permissible and non-permissible alike – individual and
group behaviours are defined, measured, labelled, judged – and pun-
ished when infractions occur.3

Some infractions are easily defined because they are matters of fact; exceed-
ing the speed limit, for example. However, issues become more complex
when society attempts to define norms regarding states of mind, especially
non-normal ones. The very definition of permissible and impermissible forms
of behaviour is caught at overlapping, contradictory, inchoate definitional

1
G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy (1908; San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1995): 24.
2
R.D. Laing, Self and Others (London: Tavistock, 1961): 12.
3
Tony Ullyatt, “Contemplating Icarus: Towards an Understanding of the Myth and
its Meaning” (doctoral dissertation, University of the Free State, 2003): 221.
200 TONY ULLYATT a

boundaries. The words used to define such forms of social behaviour them-
selves represent a threshold area between non-verbal realities and the inade-
quate attempts to transmute the unspeakable into definitionally accurate dia-
gnoses of pathology. Such identification relies on accurate definitions of
transgressions, and therein lies a major problem, essentially because “the
abnormal is defined through the normal.”4 At times, our revulsion at behav-
ioural abominations either leaves us speechless because we lack an adequate
vocabulary or obliges us to resort to clichés and hyperbole such as ‘mon-
strous’ – and other words conveying non- or sub-human behaviour. (Dr
Frankenstein’s creation casts a long shadow here.)
Thomas Harris’s novel The Silence of the Lambs5 deals with two major
transgressors of social norms, Hannibal Lecter and Jame Gumb (known ini-
tially only as “Buffalo Bill”), whose mental aberrations have led them, deeply
and irrevocably, far beyond any understanding of normality, into the liminal
interspace of those mental realms that normal society defines, not always ac-
curately, as madness or insanity. Victor Turner explains:
Liminal entities are neither here nor there; they are betwixt and be-
tween the positions assigned and arrayed by law, custom, convention,
and ceremonial.6

Consequently, by virtue of their very intermediacy, such places may possess

“strong transformative powers.”7 In pursuit of their own unique forms of
transformation, Lecter and Gumb refuse to be “the well-conditioned, endless-
ly obedient citizen”8 pandering to societal norms; they perpetrate their deviant
behaviours instead.
Commonly perceived assumptions about what might be termed the ‘nor-
mal view’ that society has of itself (i.e. the fantasy) are shown in Figure 6.

4
Derek Hook, “Introduction: A ‘social psychology’ of psychopathology,” in
Psychopathology and Social Prejudice, ed. Derek Hook & Gillian Eagle (Cape Town:
U of Cape Town P , 2002): 5–6 (italics in original).
5
Thomas Harris, The Silence of the Lambs, with Red Dragon (1989; London:
Arrow, 2004). Further page references are in the main text.
6
Victor W. Turner, The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure (1969; New
York: Aldine de Gruyter, 1995): 95.
7
Hein Viljoen & Chris N. van der Merwe, “Introduction” to Beyond the Threshold:
Explorations of Liminality in Literature, ed. Viljoen & van der Merwe (New York:
Peter Lang, 2007): 3.
8
David Cooper, The Death of the Family (New York: Vintage, 1971): 11.
a The Normal and the Carceral 201

F I G U R E 6: David Cooper’s model (Psychiatry and Anti-Psychiatry) adapted

Madness (the impermissible) – however it may be defined or construed – con-

stitutes the almost diametrical opposite of normality and sanity (the permis-
sible) – however they may be defined or construed. The underlying presump-
tion of this model is that normality and sanity are preferable to any form of
madness. The model also implies that it is possible to grow beyond normality
towards sanity.
In every kind of group and societal institution, their particular norms are
underpinned by systems of authority that urge or compel expected behaviours
upon its members. For those who deviate from the accepted norms, rules and
laws provide for numerous forms and methods of punishment: censure, casti-
gation, expulsion, excommunication, compulsory institutional confinement,
physical damage, and /or disfigurement, torture, and even death in sometimes
bizarre ways. Ironically, some of these punitive social sanctions also charac-
terize the modus operandi of serial killers. In Harris’s novel, for example,
Jame Gumb flays his victims to acquire quite specific portions of skin. In
evoking the flaying of Marsyas, the Phrygian satyr of Greek myth, Gumb
serves as a transliminal intermediary between the violence of ancient myth
and the contemporary world’s brutality.
202 TONY ULLYATT a

Society prefers normal people, so going insane or being labelled as bad

and /or mad represents maleficence, not least because there are “great rewards
in being considered normal”;9 the normal individual is accepted (and accept-
able) as one of ‘Us’. The deviant is perceived as unaccepted (and unaccept-
able), as one of ‘Them’. Thus, boundaries between Us and Them can be
stringently enforced, even when they are not defined incontrovertibly.
However, this model is erroneous. David Cooper argues that Figure 7 is a
more accurate representation of social reality. Divorced from its possibly de-
lusional fantasy, reality compels the acknowledgement of its very delusion.

F I G U R E 7: David Cooper’s model (Psychiatry and Anti-Psychiatry)

While the components of the model remain the same as in the earlier diagram,
they have been reorganized with significant consequences. Now, “sanity ap-
proaches madness but an all-important gap, a difference always remains.”10
The almost diametrical opposite of both sanity and madness is normality,
which is not “only a statistical concept that most of us live by as a golden

9
Erving Goffman, Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity (Har-
mondsworth: Penguin, 1990): 95.
10
David Cooper, Psychiatry and Anti-Psychiatry (London: Tavistock, 1967): 16.
a The Normal and the Carceral 203

rule” but also a state of arrested development or eventual inertia brought

about by conformity to societal norms that, in turn, leads to individual invali-
dation. (Measured by socially acceptable norms, the individual becomes in-
valid, inva-lid, dis-eased, stigmatized.)
Both madness and sanity constitute a rejection of normality, together with
its systems of control, labelling, and conformity, as well as its hermeneutic
underpinning, its rules and metarules, a rejection of all the processes which
create “the well-conditioned, endlessly obedient citizen,” one
so estranged from every aspect of one’s own experience, from every
spontaneous impulse to action, from every bit of awareness of one’s
body for oneself (rather than one’s body as an object for inspection by
others in the world), from all the carefully refused possibilities of
awakening change, that one might truly, and without metaphorical
sleight of hand, regard this normal person as being out of his mind.11

David Bohm concurs with Cooper:

generally speaking, what we learn as children, from parents, teachers,
friends, and society in general, is to have a conformist, imitative,
mechanical state of mind that does not present the disturbing danger of
‘upsetting the apple cart.’12
Which may well lead one to believe, with Jeanette Hermes, that “anyone who
is adjusted to this society is mad and anyone who is not is sane.”13 However,
this deduction presumes accuracy and reliability in the definition and use of
terminology diagnosing mental states.
But even a brief foray into dictionary definitions is not particularly helpful.
For example, definitions of ‘madness’14 refer to a gamut of mental states in-
cluding ‘insanity’, ‘frenzy’, ‘mania’, ‘imprudence’, ‘excitement or enthu-
siasm’, ‘anger, rage, or fury’, to say nothing of ‘ecstasy’.
So, Rosenhan asks, “If sanity and insanity exist, how shall we know
them?” He continues:

11
Cooper, The Death of the Family, 11 ( italics in original).
12
David Bohm, On Creativity (Abingdon & New York: Routledge, 2004): 20.
13
Jeanette Hermes, “On Radical Therapy,” in Going Crazy: The Radical Therapy of
R.D. Laing and Others, ed. Hendrik M. Ruitenbeek (New York: Bantam, 1972): 29.
14
Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, C D - R O M (Oxford: Oxford U P , 6th ed.
2007).
204 TONY ULLYATT a

However much we may be personally convinced that we can tell the

normal from the abnormal, the evidence is simply not compelling. It is
commonplace, for example, to read about murder trials wherein
eminent psychiatrists for the defense are contradicted by equally
eminent psychiatrists for the prosecution on the matter of the
defendant’s sanity. More generally, there are a great deal of conflicting
data on the reliability, utility, and meaning of such terms as “sanity”,
“insanity”, “mental illness”, and “schizophrenia.”15

It is instructive to note that, when the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual,

known as the D S M , was first published in 1952 by the American Psychiatric
Association, it was just over 130 pages long. It has subsequently gone through
three further editions, growing steadily in length in the process: from 134
pages in 1968, to 494 pages in 1980, then to 568 pages in 1987, and to 884
pages by 1994. (The D S M – V is projected for 2013.) One wonders whether
humankind has become seven times more nuanced and diverse in its mental
illness or whether this sevenfold increase in bulk constitutes a sevenfold dis-
agreement about how to define various forms of mental illness. Might it be
that the human mind’s manifest diversity and complexity is beyond the pres-
ent capacity of either statistics or language?
Bentall explains the crux of the problem:
By the middle decades of the twentieth century, it was becoming
obvious to many psychiatrists that the achievement of a consensus
about the main features of each psychiatric disorder would not be
enough to ensure that diagnoses were reliable, let alone scientifically
reliable.16
Of course, in The Silence of the Lambs, it is, ironically, the psychiatrist him-
self who, having “squandered his own gifts as a therapist,”17 dwells in the
interspace between social revulsion and stigmatization at his cannibalism and
the forensic usefulness of his psychiatric brilliance: “ ‘ Look at me, Officer
Starling. Can you stand to say I’m evil? Am I evil, Officer Starling?’ ” (25).

15
David L. Rosenhan, “On Being Sane in Insane Places,” Science (American
Association for the Advancement of Science) 179/4070 (1973): 250.
16
Richard P. Bentall, Madness Explained: Psychosis and Human Nature Har-
mondsworth: Penguin, 2004): 47.
17
Philip L. Simpson, Making Murder: The Fiction of Thomas Harris (Santa Barbara
C A : Praeger, 2010): 159.
a The Normal and the Carceral 205

Whatever the causes of our inability to create unambiguous denotative de-

finitions, the immediate consequence is blurred or indistinct boundaries be-
tween mental states. In turn, these inchoate boundaries mean that identifying
thresholds between sanity and madness, as well as between different degrees
of each form of behaviour, becomes most problematic. For example, shooting
animals on a hunt may be construed as ‘normal’ (although some action groups
might question or disagree with that stance), while shooting your neighbour’s
pets in their garden would be regarded as ‘abnormal’. Context may, therefore,
have a notable impact on definitions of acceptable versus non-acceptable con-
duct. Indeed, Rosenhan asks most pertinently:
Do the salient characteristics that lead to diagnoses [of insanity] reside
in the patients themselves or in the environments and contexts in
which observers find them?18
Within the context of the asylum’s abnormality, how abnormal is Lecter with
his courteous behaviour?
Some thirty years later, Bentall stresses the issue’s paradoxicality:
Perhaps the line between sanity and madness must be drawn relative to
the place at which we stand. Perhaps it is possible to be, at the same
time, mad when viewed from one perspective and sane when viewed
from another.19
Taking the argument further, Long and Zietkiewicz note:
data from virtually every continent are suggesting that culture is not
simply incidental to mental health and therapy. Rather, it is a basic
variable that interacts with biological, psychological and environmen-
tal variables in determining the cause, manifestations and treatment of
the entire spectrum of mental disorders.20

With the sort of bravado that not only compensates for “a massive in-
security complex”21 but also provokes Lecter’s ridicule, Dr Frederick Chilton,
administrator of the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane, iden-
tifies his most exasperating inmate as “A pure sociopath, that’s obviously

18
Rosenhan, “On Being Sane in Insane Places,” 251.
19
Richard P. Bentall, Madness Explained, 117.
20
Carol Long & Estelle Zietkiewicz, “Unsettling meanings of madness: Competing
constructions of South African insanity,” in Psychopathology and Social Prejudice, ed.
Derek Hook & Gillian Eagle (Cape Town: U of Cape Town P , 2002): 152.
21
Philip L. Simpson, Making Murder, 167.
206 TONY ULLYATT a

what he is. But he’s impenetrable, much too sophisticated for the standard
tests” (13). In the film version (1991), the word “sociopath” has been replaced
by the term “psychopath.” Although this diagnostic alteration may be a result
of attempts to remain terminologically current or bring about clarity in the
murky waters of definition, denotative precision remains elusive:
psychopath A term with two uses, both of which are falling out of
favour. 1. A general label for a person with any severe mental disorder.
This usage is now absent from technical writings but still occurs in
popular literature. 2. An individual diagnosed as having a P S Y C H O -
P A T H I C P E R S O N A L I T Y . Note, however, that the term has been large-
ly superseded, first by S O C I O P A T H I C P E R S O N A L I T Y D I S O R D E R and
more recently by A N T I S O C I A L P E R S O N A L I T Y D I S O R D E R .22
The same authors, psychologists both, provide the following definition of a
sociopathic personality:
a “personality disorder characterized by disturbed, maladaptive social
relationships, particularly those that reflect clear antisocial behaviours.
The term itself was introduced some time ago as a replacement for
P S Y C H O P A T H I C P E R S O N A L I T Y because it more clearly noted the
social aspects of the disorder and because the base term P S Y C H O -
P A T H Y had suffered so much lexical abuse in other contexts. How-
ever, terminology keeps changing and the current term of choice is
23
A N T I S O C I A L P E R S O N A L I T Y D I S O R D E R .”

Yet, even as a psychopathic serial killer, Lecter belongs to a very select group.
Robert Hare estimates that, while there are two or three million psychopaths,
there are
fewer than one hundred serial killers in North America. Even if almost
all serial killers were psychopaths, this would mean that for every
psychopath who is a serial killer, there are 20,000 or 30,000 psycho-
paths who do not commit serial murder.24
Clearly, Hare’s comments dispel the “common assumption that all psycho-
paths are grisly serial killers who torture and maim for kicks”25 as well as
22
Arthur S. Reber & Emily Reber, The Penguin Dictionary of Psychology (Har-
mondsworth: Penguin, 3rd ed. 2001): 584.
23
Reber & Reber, The Penguin Dictionary of Psychology, 693.
24
Robert Hare, Without Conscience: This Disturbing World of the Psychopaths
Among Us (New York: Guilford, 1993): 74 (italics in original).
25
Hare, Without Conscience, 74.
a The Normal and the Carceral 207

their exaggeratedly gory depiction in novels and films. At the same time,
however, he points out that, “as portrayed,”
Lecter has many of the characteristics of the psychopath. He is ego-
centric, grandiose, callous, manipulative, and remorseless. But he also
seems more than a bit crazy. This is not surprising, given that both
Lecter and the serial killer in the movie, Buffalo Bill, a transvestite
who skins his female victims, bear some resemblance to a real-life
psychotic killer, Ed Gein.26
In passing, we note Hare’s use of the less-than-scientific word “crazy”, as
well as his not-quite-accurate assertion that Gumb is a transvestite.
Further, it is worth noting that when novelists incorporate the activities of
real-life serial killers into their work, the boundary between non-fiction and
fiction becomes somewhat nebulous. In The Silence of the Lambs, for ex-
ample, Harris draws on Ted Bundy’s use of a false plaster cast on his arm,
Gary Heidnik’s basement oubliette for imprisoning women, and Ed Gein’s
proclivity for skinning his victims and cannibalizing them.27 Gein also made
“an entire bodysuit” of skin and flesh as well as “a lovingly crafted mask” to
go with it.28
Of course, those incapable of living within the norms circumscribing the
boundaries of permissible societal behaviour, for whatever reasons, have pre-
sented a centuries-old dilemma. As we have seen, part of the problem resides
in how to define and label the actions typifying such deviants.
Another, no less practical, part of the dilemma lies in what to do with them,
since they cannot be allowed to roam free in society. They must be apprehen-
ded – thus providing law-enforcement agencies with their raison d’être – and
incarcerated or eradicated.
In the novel’s very first sentence, the trope of the threshold between the
earthly and the chthonic, between the normal and the carceral, is introduced:
“Behavioral Science, the F B I section that deals with serial murder, is on the
bottom floor of the Academy Building at Quantico, half-buried in the earth”
(1). Seven years later,
down in its basement offices, the air is cool and still. Decorators with
their colour wheels have tried in recent years to brighten the subter-

26
Without Conscience, 74.
27
Simpson, Making Murder, 167.
28
Daniel Diehl & Mark P. Donnelly, Eat Thy Neighbour: A History of Cannibalism
(Stroud, Gloucestershire: Sutton, rev. ed. 2008): 142.
208 TONY ULLYATT a

ranean space. The result is no more successful than funeral home

cosmetics.29
The motionless chilliness pervading the section’s offices evokes mortuaries,
cemeteries, and the bodies of victims whose deaths the Unit investigates.
In reality, the Behavioural Science Unit’s offices are tiny, cramped, the
building made of cinder blocks with no windows.30 Their freedom of move-
ment excepted, the officers share a similar environment to Lecter himself in
his subterranean cell: a genius loci of “buried madness, walled-in tragedy.”31
The Behavioural Science Unit’s half-buried location suggests its larger
social function as the mediator /custodian of the threshold area between soci-
etal goodness and chthonic evil, between the law and criminality. Serial kill-
ing is “on the bottom floor.” Here is Jung’s shadow epitomized:
The shadow is composed for the most part of repressed desires and
uncivilized impulses, morally inferior motives, childish fantasies and
resentments, etc.32
The shadow of society’s fantasy of itself is symbolized by the “half-buried”
nature of these incomprehensible crimes. Indeed, the very existence of the
Behavioural Science Unit affirms the societal need for it as a method of allay-
ing disruptive fears and anxieties:
The struggle with evil elevates the F B I to a community service [. . . ].
As fighters of evil, the F B I can assume the powers of a priesthood:
that is, the power of being both attached to the law and above it, the
power of the confessor, the power of possessing the right to regard an
individual as a battleground between Satanic and godly forces.33

However, Behavioral Science is not the only subterranean location in the

novel. Hannibal Lecter’s place of confinement in the Baltimore State Hospital

29
Thomas Harris, Hannibal (London: Arrow, 2000): 52.
30
“Inside the Labyrinth,” documentary in The Silence of the Lambs, definitive
edition, dir. Jonathan Demme (M G M Home Entertainment, [2007]): Disc 2, @18.13.
31
Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space, tr. Maria Jolas (La Poétique de l’espace,
1958; Boston M A : Beacon, 1994): 20.
32
Darryl Sharp, Jung Lexicon: A Primer of Terms & Concepts (Toronto: Inner City,
1991): 123.
33
Richard Tithecott, Of Men and Monsters: Jeffrey Dahmer and the Construction of
the Serial Killer (Madison: U of Wisconsin P , 1997): 22, quoted by Simpson, Making
Murder, 81.
a The Normal and the Carceral 209

for the Criminally Insane is subterranean, as is Catherine Martin’s in the

oubliette sunk into the cellar floor of Jame Gumb’s house: “He [Gumb] was
more of a trapdoor spider” (82).
The cellar “is first and foremost the dark entity of the house, the one that
partakes of subterranean forces.”34 Bachelard explains: “for the cellar, the im-
passioned inhabitant digs and re-digs, making its very depths active,” adding
that “the walls of the cellar are buried walls . .. they are walls with a single
casing, walls that have the entire earth behind them.”35 The “buried madness,
walled-in tragedy” mentioned earlier seems a singularly important aspect of
the dilemmas in which Catherine Martin and Jame Gumb find themselves,
albeit for different reasons. Gumb is ultimately confined by his own abnor-
mality, compelled to remain inside his house for much of the time, tending
meticulously to the well-being of Catherine’s skin while Catherine herself
remains symbolically buried in the oubliette, the control of her life /death
threshold totally in Gumb’s hands.
Gumb’s two-storey house is “an old building with its living quarters and
empty storefront and vast basement” (413); the basement is a “rambling,
multilevel” (157) affair:
Room into room, Jame Gumb’s basement rambles like a maze that
thwarts us in dreams. When he was still shy, lives and lives ago, Mr
Gumb took his pleasure in the rooms most hidden, far from the stairs.
There are rooms in the farthest corners [. . . ] that Gumb hasn’t opened
in years. [. . . .]
The levels of the floors vary from room to room by as much as a
foot [30 cms]. There are thresholds to step over, lintels to duck. [. . . ]
To march something ahead of you – it stumbling and crying, begging,
banging its dazed head – is difficult, dangerous even. (232)

In the novel’s denouement, Starling’s ability to manoeuvre her way through

that maze will be a matter of life or death for her and Gumb.
The skewedness of the floors epitomizes Gumb’s psychological instability,
its being out of alignment with normality. In passing, it is worth noting that,
while the word ‘psyche’ (ȌȣȤȒ) literally means ‘animus’, ‘life’, or ‘spirit’,36 it

34
Bachelard, The Poetics of Space, 18 (italics in original).
35
The Poetics of Space, 20.
36
I. Kykkotis, English–Greek and Greek–English Dictionary (London: Lund Hum-
phries, 1965): 12, 153, 287.
210 TONY ULLYATT a

also means “the soul as a butterfly”37 or moth, such as those whose pupae
Gumb inserts into his victims’ throats.
In a video made at Syon Park for his publisher’s sales staff, Harris speaks
of the moth and its significance:
He came out [of a suitcase Gumb had stolen from an employer],
spread his wings and they dried and Gumb, in that moment in his
room, had a terrible epiphany. He saw that he could change. He was
determined to change. He did not care what it cost anybody.38

Significantly, Psyche’s story appears in Apuleius’s The Golden Ass or The

Metamorphoses.39
Part of Gumb’s frustration lies in his inability to be accepted for a sex-
change operation. Wishing to shift across the male /female gender boundary,
he cannot gain entry into any of the three hospitals offering such surgery.
After being rejected by these institutions because of his criminal record (190),
Gumb decides to attempt his own form of metamorphosis. Lecter explains:
“ ‘ Billy’s not a transsexual, Clarice, but he thinks he is, he tries to be. He’s
tried a lot of things, I expect’ ” (189). Benjamin Raspail, “the fat flutist” (196)
“of the gluey flute” (67), and another of Lecter’s patients as well as Gumb’s
former lover explains that “ ‘Jame is not really gay, you know, it’s just some-
thing he picked up in jail. He’s not anything, really, just a sort of total lack
that he wants to fill, and so angry’ ” (197; italics in original). That Gumb is
not gay is confirmed by Dr Danielson, who tells Crawford: “he’s not a trans-
sexual” (357), a diagnosis which dramatically alters our understanding of why
he is making his bodysuit of female skin.
In another of their conversations, Lecter explains rather bluntly to Clarice
what Gumb’s purpose is: “ ‘ He wants a vest with tits on it’ ” (173). This will
be the nearest Gumb will come to metamorphosing into a woman: by making,
and wearing, a suit of female skin. He is “six feet, one inch, 205 pounds”
[1.825 m tall and just over 91 kgs] (154), hence his search for large women.
Gumb’s psychopathic origins are no less ‘monstrous’ than Lecter’s.
Gumb’s was a troubled childhood – “born out of wedlock to an alcoholic

37
John A. Coleman, The Dictionary of Mythology (Royston: Eagle, 2007): 848.
38
David Sexton, The Strange World of Thomas Harris (London: Short, 2001): 103.
39
Apuleius, The Golden Ass, tr., intro. & notes P.G. Walsh (1995; Oxford World’s
Classics; Oxford: Oxford U P , 1999): 75–79.
a The Normal and the Carceral 211

failed actress and sent to a Los Angeles foster home at the age of two.”40
Then, “Gumb’s grandparents retrieved him from an unsatisfactory foster
home when he was ten, and he killed them two years later” (412). By crossing
several societal boundaries, he metamorphoses into psychopathic adulthood.
Gumb lives out his life at and below ground level, in “the wonderful free-
dom of the basement” (414). Indulging his psychopathology – his belief that
he needs to change his gender – Gumb has most recently kidnapped Catherine
Martin, taken her to his house, and then deposited her in the unlit, subter-
ranean oubliette sunk “seventeen feet [a little more than five metres] below
the cellar floor” (174). Defined as “A secret dungeon accessible only through
a trapdoor” (S O E D 2007), and deriving its name from the French verb
oublier, ‘to forget’, the oubliette is a place of oblivion, of limbo, on the bor-
ders of hell. But Catherine is far from forgotten in Gumb’s mind.
In this claustrophobic confinement, Catherine Martin is literally and sym-
bolically beyond human reach, except for the various buckets that Gumb
lowers to her on a string. She is buried but not dead; she is alive but not living
in the normality of daylight at ground level. Psychologically, this subter-
ranean closet – in its meaning as “A private repository of valuables, curio-
sities, etc.” (S O E D 2007) – is a manifestation of the unconscious, the base-
ment and the oubliette serving as externalizations of Gumb’s psychosis, enab-
ling him to concretize his sociopathic fantasies in the ‘real’ world.
To dehumanize Catherine in order to make killing her easier, he seeks to
objectify her, to move her from the realm of the human to that of the sub-
human. This he achieves by referring to her as “it” (176, 232, 236), “some-
thing” (232), “the material” (235), and “the hide” (235). She is kept in soli-
tary confinement, in total darkness (177, 233, 302), and fed on scraps (157):
“Experience has taught him to wait from four days to a week before
harvesting the hide. Sudden weight loss makes the hide looser and easier to
remove” (235). In order to save herself, Catherine tries to de-objectify Gumb’s
view of her, by trying to get him to see her as a human being, not merely as a
suitable skin with disposable contents. When Catherine’s mother makes her
television appeal for her daughter’s safe return, repeating her daughter’s name
frequently, Starling observes:
“She’s trying to make Buffalo Bill see Catherine as a person. They’re
thinking he’ll have to depersonalize her, he’ll have to see her as an

40
Philip L. Simpson, Psycho Paths: Tracking the Serial Killer through Contempo-
rary American Film and Fiction (Carbondale: Southern Illinois U P , 2000): 92.
212 TONY ULLYATT a

object before he can tear her up. Serial murderers talk about that in
prison interviews, some of them.” (137)
For Catherine, the structure of the oubliette – a “sheer pit” (304), a sink-
hole devoid of steps, door or window whose “smooth cement walls sloped
gently inward as they rose” (175) – offers her no means of escape. Although
she is “a bright underachiever” (238), Catherine lacks both Lecter’s “criminal
versatility”41 and his psychological power that would enable her to manipulate
Gumb. Sheer terror impairs her capacity for clear, rational thinking. After
finding someone else’s fingernail in the oubliette, “she knew who had her
then” (178), and comprehends her fate.
Gumb does not possess Lecter’s abnormal intellect and audacious under-
handedness, either, although he “did well on the Wechsler Intelligence Scale
– bright normal” (358). Although somewhat smarter than Catherine, Gumb
eventually fails to elude the F B I . Clarice Starling tracks him down to his
labyrinthine house, where he tries to outmanoeuvre her and resist arrest by
switching off the electricity and bringing “absolute black” (398) to the
house’s lower levels, leaving Starling imprisoned in the darkness, on the
threshold of both solving the case and possibly losing her life. Her unfamil-
iarity with the house inhibits her movement still further. By contrast, Gumb’s
infra-red goggles provide him with complete mobility in the darkness: “The
lenses of his goggles on their small protruding barrels look like crab eyes on
stalks” (234). He is at home subterraneously in his sub-human form.
The goggles surmount the barriers of darkness, reversing the roles of hun-
ter and hunted. Gumb tracks Starling through the house quite readily until he
cocks his gun to kill her: “the sound of a revolver being cocked is like no
other” (399). She fires toward the sound and, in so doing, kills him.
Bachelard observes:
Sounds lend color to space, and confer a sort of sound body upon it.
But absence of sound leaves it quite pure and, in the silence, we are
seized with the sensation of something vast and deep and boundless.42

Gumb’s house is never without sound: the moths flutter, the dog yaps, Cathe-
rine screams, and Gumb himself is either ordering Catherine to do things or
creating his suit of human skin on his sewing machine. There is neither a

41
Hare, Without Conscience, 68.
42
Bachelard, The Poetics of Space, 43.
a The Normal and the Carceral 213

sense of silence nor of an accompanying purity of space here; only a claus-

trophobic sense of terror and death, of “buried madness, walled-in tragedy.”
After the shots, a gurgle and a rattle (400), “Buffalo Bill’s / defunct,” as
e.e. cummings puts it,43 committed, semper in aeternum, to the space that is
rather perfunctorily called “his final hole” (411). Gumb’s burial symbolizes
both his final transmogrification across the life /death boundary and his final
movement over the supraterranean /subterranean threshold. Ironically, Gumb’s
body is consigned to the permanence of entombment and the possibility of
oblivion with which he threatened Catherine Martin. The pupa dies before it
can transform into a butterfly: “ ‘How .. . does . .. it feel . .. to be . .. so beau-
tiful?’,” he asks Starling with his dying breath (400). The sociopath, who was
free at the beginning of the novel, is now dead, unable to transcend the boun-
daries of his own pathology.
Eventually, Catherine Martin is rescued, alive, from the oubliette on the
very day Gumb intended to murder her. Like Clarice, she, too, was on the
threshold of life and death. Her release depends on the external agencies of
the F B I and the fire brigade. They go into Gumb’s house, then down into the
basement, bringing Catherine up out of the oubliette (crossing vertical boun-
daries, rising out of what, we recall, Bachelard terms “the dark entity of the
house”), then out of, and away from, the house’s structural distortions and the
psychological abnormalities it held, over horizontal thresholds into the real
world of so-called normality, where the psychopaths still roam free. She tran-
scends her entombment in the place of oblivion and “buried madness” and is
symbolically resurrected; at the same time, she is reborn from the dark womb
of the oubliette. Ultimately, Catherine Martin’s release is essentially no more
than a by-product of Lecter’s manipulative control of the situation, a situation
whose resolution is delayed by Chilton’s crass and persistent meddling.
The subterranean /supraterranean trope initiated by the Behavioural Science
Unit at Quantico, and continued with Gumb’s oubliette, is sustained by Lec-
ter’s place of incarceration, the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally
Insane, a hospital typical of total institutions.
Expressions of bizarre behaviours, such as Gumb’s or Lecter’s, expose the
societal fantasy’s shadow side. To assuage the societal anxieties engendered
by these behaviours, the perpetrators are usually incarcerated; an eventuality

43
e.e.cummings, Complete Poems, vol. 1: 1913–1935 (London: MacGibbon & Kee,
1968): 60.
214 TONY ULLYATT a

that raises questions regarding the nature, function, and psychological impact
of the institutions in which such persons are housed. Erving Goffman explains:
A basic social arrangement in modern society is that the individual
tends to sleep, play, and work in different places, with different co-
participants, under different authorities, and without an overall rational
plan. The central feature of total institutions can be described as a
breakdown of the barriers ordinarily separating these three spheres of
life. First, all aspects are conducted in the same place and under the
same authority. Second, each phase of a member’s daily activity is
carried on in the immediate company of a large batch of others, all of
whom are treated alike and required to do the same thing together.
Third, all phases of the day’s activities are tightly scheduled, with one
activity leading at a prearranged time to the next, the whole sequence
of activities being imposed from above by a system of explicit formal
rulings and a body of officials. Finally, the various enforced activities
are brought together into a single rational plan purportedly designed to
fulfil the official aims of the institution.44
Total institutions are exemplified by boarding-schools, army camps, monas-
teries, convents, mental hospitals, and prisons; and oubliettes, too.
The term ‘total institutions’ has a number of liminal implications. Such in-
stitutions have clearly delineated, often insurmountable, perimeter boundaries
intended to detain their non-normal inhabitants within the institution while
preventing access to normal members of society. One example must suffice.
The only remaining panoptical prison in America, Stateville Penitentiary, near
Joliet, Illinois, was built on a site of more than 2,200 acres (8.9 km2), 64
acres (260,000 m2) of which are surrounded by a 33-foot (10 m) concrete
perimeter wall with ten towers.
Entering such places without appropriate preparation may prove traumatic
to those uninitiated in its practices and procedures. Heading towards her first
encounter with Hannibal Lecter, “Clarice Starling flinched as the first of the
heavy steel gates clashed and shut behind her and the bolt shot home” (12).
These peripheral boundaries possess a limited number of guarded portals
through which permissible transliminal movement occurs, much of it from the
outside into and out of the institutional property.

44
Erving Goffman, Asylums: Essays on the Social Situation of Mental Patients and
Other Inmates (1961; Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1984): 17.
a The Normal and the Carceral 215

Dr Chilton, the hospital’s vainglorious and sexist administrator,45 “with

fast, grabby eyes” (14), escorts Clarice Starling through some of the build-
ing’s internal barriers and over thresholds to Lecter’s cell:
They had passed through two more gates and left the natural light
behind. Now they were beyond the wards where inmates can mix
together, down in the region where there can be no windows and no
mixing. (13)
That there can be no interaction between the inmates in these depths conveys
the dangers inherent in their psychological/behavioural volatility.
While cells walls prevent visual and physical contact between inmates,
they can talk to one another, as Lecter does when he induces Miggs to choke
to death on his own tongue (45) after discourteously throwing semen at Star-
ling (28).
The absence of windows is symbolic, too. Referring to the drawings in his
cell, Clarice asks: “ ‘ Did you do it from memory, all the detail?’,” Lecter re-
plies, somewhat epigrammatically: “ ‘ Memory, Officer Starling, is what I
have instead of a view’ ” (21). Later, a cell with a view becomes part of Lec-
ter’s bargaining strategy (185). Because “windows sometimes symbolize
receptivity and openness to external influences,”46 the hospital authorities
prevent such influences from obtruding into Lecter’s cell. Mechanical think-
ing such as this underestimates his mind’s capacity to rove. For Lecter, incar-
ceration applies only to the body.
As Chilton and Starling descend towards Lecter’s cell, the “natural light”
gone, they enter the realm of the unnatural and the chthonic, where abnor-
mality is the norm. This carceral environment offers neither visible access to
the outside world nor any potential escape route to it. It is a form of entomb-
ment, of oblivion; “darkness prevails both day and night, and even when we
are carrying a lighted candle, we see shadows dancing on the dark walls.”47
The word “underground,” as a description of the cell’s location, engenders the
added possibility of subversive activity against the established order, of usurp-
ing their control, thus generating another kind of psychopathic behaviour.
Much to Chilton’s chagrin (14–15), Starling insists on approaching Lec-
ter’s cell alone:

45
Simpson, Making Murder, 164.
46
Ugo Becker, The Continuum Encyclopaedia of Symbols, tr. Lance W. Garmer
(Lexikon der Symbole, 1992; London: Continuum, 1994): 330.
47
Bachelard, The Poetics of Space, 19.
216 TONY ULLYATT a

The corridor was about thirty yards long, with cells on both sides.
Some were padded cells with an observation window, long and narrow
like an archery slit, in the center of the door. Others were like standard
prison cells, with a wall of bars opening on the corridor. [. . . .] the
lights were on in the last cell. (15–16)

Not only do the burning lights emblematize the cell’s subterranean location,
they also imply two forms of vigilance: the first, of the institution keeping
Lecter under typical panoptical surveillance in his transparent space; the
second, of “the distant light . .. of the man who keeps vigil,”48 suggesting
Lecter’s constant watchfulness. Bachelard proposes that “the lamp is the sym-
bol of prolonged waiting,”49 a particularly apposite observation vis-à-vis
Lecter’s patient scheming during the eight years he has already been incar-
cerated.
The “standard prison cells, with a wall of bars” recalls the panoptical ap-
proach of Monika Fludernik’s “new” prison, which draws on the English
philosopher and social theorist Jeremy Bentham’s Panopticon (1791) via
Foucault’s Discipline and Punish.50 Fludernik distinguishes between “old”
prison and “new” prison scenarios.51 In the former, criminals or victims were
rendered invisible, their physical body transfigured into a non-presence by
being hidden behind thick walls and solid doors or within dark spaces epi-
tomized by dungeons, basements, and oubliettes. They were often confined en
masse rather than in separate cells. They were dehumanized further through
the use of shackles, iron collars, and other forms of restraint. Prisoners were
thus made in-valid as humans, and consigned to oblivion. On the other side of
these impenetrable barriers, authority figures could disregard their anonymous

48
Bachelard, The Poetics of Space, 33.
49
The Poetics of Space, 34.
50
Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, tr. Alan Sheri-
dan (Surveiller et punir: naissance de la prison, 1975; Harmondsworth: Penguin,
1991). In the original French edition, Foucault’s book was entitled Surveiller et
punir. ‘Surveiller’ is defined at ‘to watch’, ‘to oversee, to supervise’, ‘to keep watch
on or over’, ‘to keep an eye on’, ‘to monitor’ (Larousse French–English / English–
French Dictionary [Paris: Larousse, 1993]: 878). These meanings are somewhat dif-
ferent from the English title, but convey the panoptical notion that part of a prison-
er’s punishment is his / her total visibility as object.
51
Monika Fludernik, “Carceral topography: spatiality, liminality and corporality in
the literary prison,” Textual Practice 13.1 (Spring 1999): 44–46.
a The Normal and the Carceral 217

charges with impunity, letting them wallow in filth and /or die. A lazaretto
was an isolation hospital for people with infectious diseases, especially those
with leprosy. It was also a building or ship for quarantine.
The “new” prison – one supposedly more humane and enlightened – em-
bodies the structural design and organization of the panopticon. Bentham’s
title-page52 offers an unequivocal idea of what particular institutions, and
what particular populations, he had in mind for his “inspection-house” design:

F I G U R E 8: Title-page of Bentham’s Panopticon

Foucault explains:
Each individual, in his place, is securely confined to a cell from which
he is seen from the front by the supervisor; but the side walls prevent
him from coming into contact with his companions. He is seen, but he

52
Jeremy Bentham, The Panopticon Writings, ed. Miran Božoviþ (London: Verso,
1995): 29 (italics in original).
218 TONY ULLYATT a

does not see; he is the object of information, never a subject in com-

munication.53
While Bentham calls the Panopticon “a simple idea in Architecture,”54 Fou-
cault argues that it is “a cruel and ingenious cage,”55 for reasons he has ex-
plained earlier:56
The panoptic mechanism arranges spatial unities that make it possible
to see constantly and to recognize immediately. In short, it reverses the
principle of the dungeon; or rather of its three functions – to enclose, to
deprive of light and to hide – it preserves only the first and eliminates
the other two. Full lighting and the eye of a supervisor capture better
than darkness, which ultimately protected. Visibility is a trap.
To begin with, this made it possible – as a negative effect – to
avoid those compact, swarming, howling masses that were to be found
in places of confinement, those painted by Goya or described by
Howard.
According to Janet Semple, “the man who most of all directed Bentham to a
penitentiary as a field for practical endeavour, and who also exerted the most
profound influence on other prison reformers and penal theorists was John
Howard” (1726–90).57
The omnipresent monitoring process serves as an integral part of the pun-
ishment because the prisoners’ non-subjectivity, which renders them in-valid,
is reinforced through their concurrent objectification. They are trapped in, and
by, their visibility: “The Panopticon is a machine for dissociating the see /
being seen dyad: in the peripheric ring, one is totally seen, without ever see-
ing; in the central tower, one sees everything without ever being seen.”58
Bentham’s design was meant to serve a more ominous repressive psycho-
logical regime, too, as he explains quite buoyantly:
I flatter myself there can now be little doubt of the plan's possessing
the fundamental advantages I have been attributing to it: I mean, the

53
Foucault, Discipline and Punish, 200.
54
Bentham, The Panopticon Writings, 31 (italics in original).
55
Foucault, Discipline and Punish, 205.
56
Discipline and Punish, 200.
57
Janet Semple, Bentham’s Prison: A Study of the Panopticon Penitentiary (Oxford:
Clarendon, 1993): 133.
58
Foucault, Discipline and Punish, 201–202.
a The Normal and the Carceral 219

apparent omnipresence of the inspector (if divines will allow me the

expression,) combined with the extreme facility of his real presence.59

Bentham’s very diction suggests the presence of a power and an authority that
is god-like, unbounded in its capacity to be “present in all places at the same
time” (S O E D 2007). Clearly, the implication is that inmates have no means
of eluding this omnipresence, being always at the mercy of its omnipotence.
In the Panopticon, the bars and barred doors constitute a paradoxical
threshold that is, simultaneously, visibly permeable and physically imper-
meable: “The front [of Lecter’s cell] is a wall of bars” (17). (In the film ver-
sion, the wall is made of Perspex, offering an even more uninterrupted ingres-
sive view devoid of the disruptive presence of bars.) Total surveillance of this
kind deprives inmates of all privacy. Their complete visibility also has an
impact on ways in which they view both the physical boundaries and the tran-
scendent possibilities of their cells. As Fludernik observes,
Confinement is no longer experienced as a restriction of (centrifugal)
physical movement but as an (ingressive) invasion of the private
sphere, an invasion which renders both the actual cell and the pris-
oner’s very body transparent to external forces.60

One consequence of this shift toward panoptical transparency has been the
sweeping-aside of the cell’s potential as a place of “security and protection”
or of “exile from the world.”61
The perception of the “old” prison cell as a space imbued with some sort of
monastic or spiritual potential,62 a sacred space even, has been replaced by the
idea of the “new” prison cell as an exhibition display case. Dr Chilton speaks
of Lecter with the acquisitive tone of a collector of objets d’art: “I keep him
in here” (14). Chilton’s is the voice of objectification. Significantly, the term
‘panopticon’ also means “a showroom for novelties” (S O E D 2007).
If the prison authorities’ task is to impose and enforce strict and unequi-
vocal boundaries, both of behaviour and of movement, on the prisoners in
their charge, then the prisoners’ primary task is to comply with these restric-
tions and controls. However, there are those inmates who interpret their task
as the subversion and /or surmounting of such barriers, wherever and when-

59
Bentham, The Panopticon Writings, 45 (emphases in original).
60
Fludernik, “Carceral topography,” 62.
61
“Carceral topography,” 62.
62
“Carceral topography,” 62
220 TONY ULLYATT a

ever possible. For this group, this threshold area may be construed as a zone
of conflict between organizational authority and individual ingenuity, even
though the buildings and internal structure of the prison and other institutions
of incarceration may appear to offer rigorous physical deterrents to such beha-
viour. Getting inmates inside is rather different from keeping them inside.
Inside the institution’s buildings, there are numerous thresholds and ob-
structive barriers, the purpose of which varies according to the institution’s
aims and its regime for managing inmates. Some threshold areas are guarded
with prison-like procedures for entry and exit. In other instances, internal
boundaries define places to which inmates are forbidden access:
Staff and patients are strictly segregated. Staff have their own living
space, including their dining facilities, bathrooms, and assembly
places. The glassed quarters that contain the professional staff [. . . ] sit
out in every dayroom. The staff emerge primarily for care-taking
purposes – to give medication, to conduct therapy or group meetings,
to instruct or reprimand a patient. Otherwise, staff keep themselves to
themselves, almost as if the disorder that afflicts their charges is
somehow catching.63
The ostensible function of these total institutions is the management of its
inhabitants through confinement and the use of internal and external boun-
daries – physical, temporal, and psychological – as means of controlling every
facet of their life. However, the de-facto realities of such establishments may
be still more draconian than their intended functions. As Loren Mosher states,
mental hospitals provide
master classes in the art of the ‘total institution’ [. . . ] ; authoritarianism,
the degradation ceremony, the induction and perpetuation of power-
lessness, unnecessary dependency, labelling, and the primacy of insti-
tutional needs over those of the persons it was ostensibly there to serve
– the patients.64
Corroborating Mosher’s observations, Oliver Sacks describes what he calls
the “insidious deterioration in atmosphere and care” (Sacks’s italics) that has
occurred in recent years at Beth Abraham Hospital, a mental hospital in the
Bronx, New York:

63
Rosenhan, “On Being Sane in Insane Places,” 254.
64
Loren Mosher, “Soteria and Other Alternatives to Acute Psychiatric Hospital-
ization,” Journal of Nervous and Mental Diseases 187.3 (March 1999): 142–49.
a The Normal and the Carceral 221

The hospital has assumed somewhat the aspect of a fortress or prison,

in its physical appearance and the way it is run. A strict administration
has come into being, rigidly committed to ‘efficiency’ and rules;
‘familiarity’ with patients is strongly discouraged. Law and order have
been ousting fellow-feeling and kinship; hierarchy separates the
inmates from staff; and patients tend to feel they are ‘inside,’ unreach-
ably distant from the real world outside.65

More than a decade later, Benthall would write that “the overwhelming im-
pression [of the patients] is one of inactivity and loneliness”:
The nurses [. . . ] spend most of their time in the nursing office, talking
only to those patients who are most obviously distressed. The
psychiatrists and psychologists are even less in evidence – patients on
many wards see their psychiatrists for only a few minutes every week
and the psychologists are almost entirely absent, confined by their own
choice to outpatient clinics. There seems to be a lack of therapeutic
contact between the patients and the staff. The patients are simply
“warehoused” in the hope that their medication will do the trick.”66

In an accompanying footnote, Sacks remarks, most insightfully, that “rigorous

institutions are [.. . ] coercive, being, in effect, external neuroses. The co-
ercions of institutions call forth and aggravate the coercions of their in-
mates.”67 One might wonder how normal the staff is and to what extent their
patients really matter.
As the hospital administrator, Chilton believes he has omnipotent power
over Lecter – “‘ He thinks I’m his nemesis’ ” (13) – but, in reality, Chilton can
do no more than keep Lecter incarcerated physically, and deprive him of his
privileges when punishment is necessary: “ ‘ I decide the punitive measures
here’.”68 The pettiness of his retaliation – “ ‘ I think you’d better take the seat
off Dr. Lecter’s toilet’ ” 69 – is typical of the man that Lecter ridicules in
academic journals for his professional ineptitude (6).
“Down where it is never dark” (195), Hannibal Lecter’s cell is situated
more subterraneanly than Quantico, its inmate always panoptically visible. As
a place of confinement for this singularly different human being – he is intel-

65
Oliver Sacks, Awakenings (London: Picador, rev. ed. 1991): 25.
66
Bentall, Madness Explained, 7.
67
Sacks, Awakenings, 25 (emphasis in original).
68
Thomas Harris, Red Dragon (London: Arrow, 1993): 221.
69
Harris, Red Dragon, 221.
222 TONY ULLYATT a

lectually brilliant (13), ambidextrous (166), polydactylous in its rarest mid-ray

form (25), remorselessly violent (14), and anthropophagic (27) – Lecter’s cell
is “unique in other ways”:
The front is a wall of bars, but within the bars, at a distance greater
than the human reach, is a second barrier, a stout nylon net stretched
from floor to ceiling and wall to wall. (17)
The iron bars and stout netting constitute a double layer of material impene-
trability70 without significantly diminishing visibility. That Lecter is beyond
“human reach” says as much about his psychopathic state of mind as it does
about his cell and how dangerous he can be to others. (We note there is no
mention of a door.) The bars and netting also constitute a double barrier
against escape and /or transcendence. Of course, Lecter is far too brilliant to
try surmounting these physical barriers; it would be an exercise in futility. His
challenge, therefore, is to use his astute “criminal versatility”71 and a profuse
amount of available time to plan how to manipulate external circumstances
and the people involved in them – the impending murder of Senator Martin’s
daughter, the F B I and the Buffalo Bill case, Clarice Starling, and Dr Chilton
– so that the authorities themselves will move him beyond his present institu-
tional boundaries, making them co-conspirators in his escape.
Because of what he knows about the elusive Buffalo Bill’s psychodyna-
mics and how he manipulates the information he divulges to those in positions
of power, Lecter is flown from Baltimore to Memphis – a journey beyond in-
stitutional and state boundaries. Although he manoeuvres the authorities into
taking him out of the hospital, he is still far from free, not least because of the
restraints that bind him – reminiscent of Fludernik’s “old” prison shackles –
and the mask he wears (212). These are removed when Lecter meets Senator
Martin, Catherine’s mother: “Chilton went behind Dr Lecter and, with a
glance at the camera, undid the straps and removed the mask with a flourish”
(227). Chilton likes to do things behind people’s back: he breaks professional
rules by secretly taping Starling’s conversations with Lecter (201).
In Memphis, Lecter is immured in another panoptical total institution, this
one the epitome of Foucault’s “cruel ingenious cage” mentioned earlier. It is
a tempered steel modular cage that turns any room into a cell. The
floor was sheet steel laid over bars, and the walls and ceiling of cold-

70
Fludernik, “Carceral topography,” 51.
71
Hare, Without Conscience, 68.
a The Normal and the Carceral 223

forged bars completely lined the room. There was no window. The cell
was spotlessly white and brightly lit. A flimsy paper screen stood in
front of the toilet. (257)
Much like the hospital cell, the cage is windowless and “brightly lit” so that
its incumbent is visible through 360°, except for the minimal privacy offered
by the translucent screen.
For additional security, this cage has been erected on “the top floor of the
tower” (255) of “the former courthouse and jail, a massive Gothic-style struc-
ture built of granite [. . . .] Today it looked like a medieval stronghold [echoing
Hannibal’s childhood in Lecter Castle72] surrounded by police” (253). When
Clarice Starling visits him in his Memphis cage, she finds it “strange to see
him outside the asylum” (256).
The hospital cell’s double barrier of bars and netting has been reinforced
several times over in Memphis. The authorities have constructed impene-
trable, insurmountable bulwarks invincible against human strength. Lecter’s
physical body may be interned inside this steel contrivance but he is too cal-
culating to attempt the impossible. Instead, he conspires to leave by the same
way that he was brought in – through the door. To effect this transliminal
movement, he will combine his boundless inventiveness with inexorable
brutality. Unencumbered by the conventional limitations of mechanical think-
ing, he concocts another murderous ploy.
In orchestrating his move from Baltimore to Memphis, Lecter has been
resurrected from the chthonic to a place of light well above, and detached
from, the ground floor’s groundedness. The symbolism of ascension cannot
be missed. Now he needs to take flight. However, with Lecter on the Mem-
phis building’s top floor, his possible escape seems yet further confounded by
his being well above street level. Instead of having to find a way up out of his
hospital cell, he now has to descend, traversing the several strata of this ver-
tical barrier before gaining access to the outside world.
The police appraise Lecter’s Memphis situation with their conformist, imi-
tative, mechanical state of mind (Bohm’s terms), assuming, because he is
wholly constrained physically, that he cannot escape. But, for Lecter, the cage
constitutes a problem to be solved, whether ingeniously, brutally, or, in this
instance, both. The authorities overlook both his criminal versatility (Hare’s
term) and the possibilities of escape inherent even in his present situation.
Consequently, they fail to prevent his brutally ingenious egress from the fort-

72
Thomas Harris, Hannibal Rising (London: William Heinemann, 2006): 5.
224 TONY ULLYATT a

ress-like building, which costs several lives in the process. He uses an ambu-
lance to travel to Memphis International Airport, where he disappears “down
the tunnel to the parking field beneath the ground” (287); he has re-entered
the underworld. At the airport, he kills Lloyd Wyman, stealing his car and his
identity, before driving to the comfort of the “the elegant Marcus Hotel in St
Louis” (418), where he recuperates from surgery to alter his facial features.
“The suite seemed enormous [. .. ] after his long confinement” (313); it has
“several windows” (313), too. Subsequently, he takes a plane to South Amer-
ica as part of “a ghastly sounding tour” (419). He has taken flight in more
ways than one. The psychopath, who was incarcerated at the beginning of the
novel, is now free to indulge in his pathologies again. He lives to eat another.
Meanwhile, Dr Frederick Chilton, Lecter’s thwarted nemesis, has “asked
for federal protective custody” (356) to ensure that he does not feature on
Lecter’s menu. In the film version, it seems most likely that he will. As Chil-
ton disembarks from a plane, Lecter says: “ ‘ I’m having an old friend for
dinner’.”
In The Silence of the Lambs, the normal (in the form of the law-enforce-
ment agencies) and the incarcerable (in the form of an anthropophagic serial-
killer psychiatrist) conspire and wrangle in defence of society’s fantasy of
itself. Earlier, in Red Dragon, Lecter argues that “we live in a primitive time
. .. neither savage nor wise. Half measures are the curse of it. Any rational
society would either kill me or give me my books.”73 But that presumes a
society where rationality prevails and there are no half-measures. Instead, we
live where normality, sanity, and madness coexist, albeit uneasily, where even
the institutions of incarceration are problematic by their very nature and exis-
tence:
Prisons raise dilemmas from which there is no easy escape. [. . . ] At the
heart of the matter is the innate evil of carceral institutions; perhaps
there can be no such thing as a humane prison and that the only
morally acceptable way to reform them is to raze them to the ground.
But no generation has found this possible.74

Society’s fantasy of itself is most unlikely to permit the destruction of those

institutions behind whose boundary walls the criminal and the insane are re-
strained. If carceral institutions are innately evil, part of that evil may be

73
Thomas Harris, Red Dragon (1981; London: Arrow, 1993): 414.
74
Semple, Bentham’s Prison, 133.
a The Normal and the Carceral 225

attributable to the manner in which its inmates are perceived, labelled, and
stigmatized by society itself. For normal society, however, some boundaries
must remain particularly resilient, and some transgressions, abnormal and
monstrous.
Consequently, assuming that Rosenhan’s finding – that “we now know that
we cannot distinguish sanity from insanity”75 – is correct, one troubling ques-
tion remains: What happens to our understanding of normality, sanity, and
madness – the criteria used to identify them and the individuals labelled con-
sequently – if society’s fantasy of itself and the norms it deploys to enforce
that fantasy are insane in the first place?

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a
The Aid of Rhetoric and the Rhetoric of AIDS
Eben Venter’s Ek stamel ek sterwe1

P HIL VAN S CHALKWYK

Introduction

I N THIS ESSAY, Eben Venter’s 1996 novel Ek stamel ek sterwe2 is ana-

lysed in terms of the rhetorical strategies employed in exploring its
protagonist’s journey out of the confines of a rural existence towards
death. The emphasis is on this novel’s rhetorical expediency in depicting gay
(sexual) identity and A I D S -related suffering in the South African and broadly
Western context of the 1990s, and in this regard it is briefly compared to the
English translation, My Beautiful Death, which appeared a decade after the
Afrikaans original. It will be shown that the English translation’s move away
from the original’s celebrated reticence reflects shifting perspectives in the
new millennium, but perhaps also sacrifices something in terms of rhetorical
expediency. I will focus on the employment in Ek stamel ek sterwe of a rheto-
ric of concealment, which includes the Trojan-horse strategy. This analysis
will be carried out with specific attention to the ways in which Ek stamel ek
sterwe functions rhetorically in the context of greater rhetorical paradigms,
both South African and international – for example, the Afrikaans prose sub-
genres depicting farm, small town, and city, respectively, and, more impor-
tantly, the subversive aesthetic of silence associated with the querying and
queering of established artistic modes and notions of masculinity that started

1
Based on a paper presented at the 2nd Biennial International Conference of the
African Association for Rhetoric, Innovation Centre, Howard College, Durban, South
Africa, 1–3 July 2009.
2
Lit. ‘I stammer, I die’.
230 PHIL VAN SCHALKWYK a

mid-twentieth century with artists such as Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper

Johns.3
In his book Dada’s Boys, David Hopkins argues that these artists’ critique
of the perceived domineering masculinity of Abstract Expressionism forms
part of “an uninterrupted transmission of male discourse during the twentieth
century.”4 They not only responded to, but also built on, Dada’s participatory
yet critical rhetoric of masculinity, which in both Dada and post-Dada is sus-
tained mainly by “a sequence of clandestine agreements and negotiations
between ‘men in crisis’.”5 In other words, this tradition tends to involve minor
works or clandestine aspects of works. It deliberately steers away from male
authoritativeness, depending, rather, for its rhetorical success, on a boyish
“trading of knowing allusions.”6 Hopkins elaborates:
The Duchamp of this book is not so much a fount of institutional criti-
que [. . . ] as a figure whose very lightness of touch and irreverence in-
spire processes of identification, projection and collusion in others.7

According to Hopkins, these artists

possess qualities that we admire in young boys, but worry about in
grown men: the urge to transgress, to snub decorum. They offer a
slightly dangerous, but compelling model of male redefinition, which
operates in a productive tension with the imperatives of “political cor-
rectness.”8
Rauschenberg and his peers (the so-called ‘anti-expressive’ artists) shared
with Dada a strong sense of homosociality, but their artistic ‘project’ was
homosexual as opposed to the largely heterosexual nature of Dada’s “ironic
masculinism.”9 Both ‘groups’ do, however, have in common a strong interest
in embodied male subjectivity; thus, their commitment towards the (clandes-
tine) breaching of borders also involves the male body.

3
It continued into the 1990s and beyond.
4
David Hopkins, Dada’s Boys: Masculinity after Duchamp (New Haven C T &
London: Yale U P , 2007): 9.
5
Hopkins, Dada’s Boys: Masculinity after Duchamp, 9.
6
Dada’s Boys: Masculinity after Duchamp, 113.
7
Dada’s Boys: Masculinity after Duchamp, 9.
8
Dada’s Boys: Masculinity after Duchamp, 10.
9
Dada’s Boys: Masculinity after Duchamp, 11.
a The Aid of Rhetoric and the Rhetoric of A I D S 231

Eben Venter is heir to this tradition. One of the great achievements of Ek

stamel ek sterwe, rhetorically speaking, is the concealed manner in which
Venter taps into this marginal ‘male discourse’.

Ek stamel ek sterwe and its English translation

My Beautiful Death, which appeared in 2006,10 is a translation by Luke
Stubbs of Eben Venter’s Ek stamel ek sterwe, originally published in 1996 in
Afrikaans.11 In 2005, Human & Rousseau republished the Afrikaans version
in their Classic series. In his review of this new Afrikaans edition, the leading
Afrikaans literary scholar Hennie van Coller claims that, should Afrikaans
critics be asked to compile a list of the best books in Afrikaans, many will
most certainly include in their top ten Venter’s Ek stamel ek sterwe.12 Indeed,
this novel not only received high praise back in 1996, but is also discussed in
very favourable terms by Afrikaans literary historians.13 In fact, this novel is
generally regarded as a milestone. Critics have focused on Venter’s sophisti-
cated style, and on the novel’s tight and functional construction. In 1996 Ek
stamel ek sterwe received acclaim for its engagement with A I D S and gay
identity.
As far as My Beautiful Death, the English version, is concerned, it is
noteworthy that, although its reception was largely very favourable indeed, it
was both less abundant and less unanimous compared with that enjoyed by
the Afrikaans original. On the extreme negative side, Arja Salafranca does not
find this novel convincing at all, and asks why it has been re-released.14 By
contrast, critics such as Michiel Heyns and Margot Pakendorf welcomed the
English version.15 Whereas Salafranca asserts that the novel lacks “internal

10
Eben Venter, My Beautiful Death, tr. Luke Stubbs (Ek stamel ek sterwe, 1996;
Cape Town: Tafelberg, 2006).
11
Eben Venter, Ek stamel ek sterwe (Cape Town: Queillerie, 1996).
12
H.P. van Coller, “Klassieke Afrikaanse prosa wys krag van taal” [classic Afri-
kaans prose shows the power of language], Volksblad (3 October 2005): 6.
13
See, for example, J.C. Kannemeyer, Die Afrikaanse literatuur: 1652–2004 (Cape
Town: Human & Rousseau, 2005): 667–69.
14
Arja Salafranca, “Journey towards death lacks internal substance,” Star (11 Jan-
uary 2007): 10.
15
Michiel Heyns, “Deeply moving novel successfully translated,” Sunday Indepen-
dent (31 December 2006): 18; Margot Pakendorf, “S A kan trots wees op dié
232 PHIL VAN SCHALKWYK a

substance,”16 Heyns finds it “deeply moving.”17 The praise that Heyns heaps
on My Beautiful Death might be attributed to his respect for Venter’s estab-
lished reputation as a novelist and, perhaps, his appreciation for the craft of
translation, being a translator himself. What this divergence of opinion sug-
gests, however, is that re-release and translation are by no means unproble-
matic. Times change, and translations change books. What had been convin-
cing and necessary – even striking – in 1996 in Afrikaans was perhaps no
longer so, in a slightly altered guise, in 2006 in English. On the one hand, the
changes introduced in the English version contributed to updating the text for
a society which, at the time, had already for a full decade lived with the pro-
gressive new Constitution; on the other, they may have disturbed the original
novel’s ingenious rhetorical integrity.
When considering Jean–Philippe Salazar’s contention that expediency lies
at the heart of rhetoric,18 it could be argued that what we are dealing with here
might indeed be a matter of rhetoric. James Phelan highlights two crucial
principles to consider when exploring narrative rhetoric: first, narrative is
rhetoric because narrative occurs when someone tells “a particular story to a
particular audience in a particular situation for, presumably, a particular
purpose”;19 and, second, the reading of a narrative is a multidimensional ac-
tivity, simultaneously engaging our intellects, emotions, ideologies, and
ethics. Further,
a pragmatist view of narrative as rhetoric would view narrative as in-
escapably bound up with its interpretation and its interpretation as end-
lessly malleable – according to the needs, interests, and values of the
interpreter on any given occasion.20

uitstekende vertalings” [S A can be proud of these excellent translations], Beeld (22

October 2007): 17.
16
Salafranca, “Journey towards death lacks internal substance,” 10.
17
Heyns, “Deeply moving novel successfully translated,” 18.
18
Rhetoric relates to strategies employed in a text to achieve something, to convince
the reader. See, for example, Jean–Phillipe Salazar, An African Athens: Rhetoric and
the Shaping of Democracy in South Africa (Mahwah N J : Lawrence Erlbaum Asso-
ciates, 2002): 9, 21–27, 171–72, and Cezar M. Ornatowski, “What’s Civic About
Technical Communication? Technical Communication and the Rhetoric of
‘Community’,” Technical Communication Quarterly 13.3 (July 2004): 255.
19
James Phelan, Narrative as Rhetoric: Technique, Audiences, Ethics, Ideology
(Columbus: Ohio State U P , 1996): 4 (italics in original).
20
Phelan, Narrative as Rhetoric, 11.
a The Aid of Rhetoric and the Rhetoric of A I D S 233

Phelan’s approach is helpful when considering the rhetorical strategies of Ek

stamel ek sterwe and those in My Beautiful Death, and the way in which these
have been experienced by (professional) readers.

The rhetoric of Ek stamel ek sterwe

Ek stamel ek sterwe tells the story of a young man, Konstant Wasserman, who
rebels against his farm and small-town upbringing, with the goal of emanci-
pating himself completely from the (latent) condemnation of his family and
the community with regard to patterns of behaviour he has already started
adopting. He moves to Johannesburg, a prelude to his later relocation to Aus-
tralia, just as his friendship with the colourful Deloris in Johannesburg fore-
shadows the passionate relationship which develops with the exotic and pro-
miscuous Jude, whom Konstant meets at a party in Johannesburg. The two of
them end up together in Sydney, where Konstant eventually contracts H I V
and dies. Konstant is the first-person narrator, and the only focalizer; every-
thing is experienced and recalled from and through his perspective. Stream of
consciousness is sustained with great elegance, from the first page till the last,
and the language employed coincides with and reflects the consecutive phases
of Konstant’s ‘journey’ – for example, the verbal swagger of the rebellious
young man heading out into the world, the subsequent (at times guilt-laden)
harking-back to his Afrikaans rural past after he falls ill, and his harrowing
physical and mental deterioration that ends in death.
Ek stamel ek sterwe is a non-confessional autobiographical novel, loosely
based on Venter’s own life. Owing to conflict with his family and the situa-
tion in the country, Venter in 1986 had left South Africa for Australia, where
he made a living in the restaurant and hospitality business. He turned his back
on his rural, meat-eating background, running a vegetarian restaurant but
actually remaining, though ‘closeted’, a die-hard lover of meat. After eighteen
years, he returned to South Africa. Personally, Venter knows suffering and
loss; indeed, he experienced the death of someone close to him who suffered
from A I D S , and he has said in interviews that it was as if he himself had
died.21

21
Kobus Burger, “Skryf van doodsroman was terapeuties” [writing novel about
death was therapeutic], Beeld (13 December 1996): 4; Herman Wasserman, “Venter
het ‘Sarie Marais’ in sy kop en die F A K in die laai” [Venter has ‘Sarie Marais’ in his
head and the F A K in his drawer], Die Burger (30 November 1996): 4.
234 PHIL VAN SCHALKWYK a

Seen as one of the most striking features of Ek stamel ek sterwe at the time
of publication was the veiling and unveiling strategy it employs with regard to
A I D S and gay identity. With the aid of the rhetorical device of concealment
Venter has, for the first time in Afrikaans, illuminated some hitherto hidden
chambers of human experience.
And far from being criticized for this, Venter received praise, as the con-
cealment of the main themes was at the time, given their nature, seen as func-
tional by some critics.22 H I V /A I D S is not named in the novel, not even once,
though the informed reader is able to recognize Konstant’s symptoms as
A I D S -related. Not naming A I D S can perhaps be linked to the tendency in
the Afrikaans community, at least until not so long ago, never to say the word
‘kanker’ (cancer). The fear of naming cancer is actually referred to in Ek
stamel ek sterwe, shortly after Konstant has discovered the first bruises on his
legs.23 Konstant has received a letter from his mother in which, among many
other things, she mentions that tannie (aunt) Trynie is dying in hospital. Kon-
stant notes the conspicuous absence of the word cancer, as it is “te erg .. . vir
woorde” (‘too terrible for words’, 143). This might be seen as an indirect
explanation, offered by the narrator, as to why H I V /A I D S , in its turn, is not
mentioned by name. In fact, the passage in which the contents of the letter are
discussed resembles, rhetorically, the jovial discursive gestures of a master of
ceremonies24 – in itself a concealing or diverting strategy. Owing to the con-
spicuousness of this strategy, concealment is actually (metatextually) fore-
grounded.
Furthermore, the enigmatic Jude remains ambiguous throughout the novel
in terms of gender, and in this regard Ek stamel ek sterwe clearly lends itself
to a study in terms of cognitive paradigms25 as far as gender expectations are

22
For example, Barend J. Toerien, “Roman van die jaar: Venter se Stamel / sterwe”
[novel of the year: Venter’s Stamel / sterwe], Beeld (5 March 1997): 3; Herman
Wasserman, “Pynlik eerlike roman pak ’n uiters aktuele tema” [painfully honest novel
tackles highly topical theme], Die Burger (15 January 1997): 5.
23
Eben Venter, Ek stamel ek sterwe, 143. Further page references are in the main
text.
24
This passage is reminiscent of the Afrikaans literary tradition of ‘gemoedelike
lokale realisme’ (genial / jovial local realism).
25
The reader’s frameworks and expectations with regard to gender are engaged
here. Cognitive narratology explores, among other things, the ways in which interpre-
tation is influenced by mental programming – cognitive frames and scripts. See David
a The Aid of Rhetoric and the Rhetoric of A I D S 235

concerned. On their first acquaintance, Jude is wearing a black monk’s habit,

many rings, and shoes with a rural, handmade appearance (33). On first lay-
ing eyes on Jude (33), the narrator describes him as “’n persoon” (a person),
and then “die persoon” (the person). In similar vein, after this introduction the
personal pronoun is, for several pages, carefully avoided when talking about
Jude. When pronouns first appear in connection with Jude, they are feminine,
but this may underline the ambiguity rather than settle the reader’s mind.26
Androgyny is further suggested by the name ‘Jude’, particularly when pre-
sented in the novel in its Afrikaans diminutive form, “Judietjie,” which con-
tains the woman’s name Judie /Judy. Through verbal play on “Jude,” this
name is also, via “djude,”27 connected with ‘dude’. Most likely, the reader
may in due course infer (as most critics have) that Jude is, in fact, a man.
Most revealing in this regard could be Jude’s reclining in his immaculately
white underwear – reminiscent of the typical 1990s Calvin Klein advertise-
ments.
It is precisely in terms of these striking features that the English translation
departs from the Afrikaans original. In the English version, the disease is not
mentioned by name, as in the Afrikaans edition, but now the masculine pro-
noun is used from the outset when talking about Jude. Jude is portrayed, un-
ambiguously and unabashedly, as a gay male. This may reflect the greater
openness of post-1996 South African society28 and the lessening impact of
homophobia, but is there indeed a marked difference in attitudes with regard,
respectively, to homosexuality and H I V /A I D S ? Why has the original novel’s
reticence been retained only partly? Has the objective been to separate A I D S
and gay identity in order to subvert a stereotype? Whatever the case may be,
by retaining the original novel’s strategy of concealment only halfway, the
English version may sacrifice something that could be seen as essential to this
novel in terms of rhetorical expediency.

Herman, “Cognitive narratology,” in Handbook of Narratology, ed. Peter Hühn, John

Pier, Wolf Schmid & Jörg Schönert (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2009): 161–73.
26
Some readers may be aware that gay men sometimes use feminine pronouns when
talking to / about other (gay) men.
27
“djy’s Djude, nè?” [you are Djude, aren’t you?]. See Venter, Ek stamel ek sterwe,
33.
28
1996 saw the acceptance of the new South African Constitution, which prohibits
discrimination on grounds of sexual orientation.
236 PHIL VAN SCHALKWYK a

The persistent reluctance to name the epidemic calls to mind Jonny Stein-
berg’s Three-Letter Plague, an investigative journalistic story which explores
possible reasons for the unwillingness of the population in the Lusikisiki Dis-
trict in the Eastern Cape to undergo H I V tests.29 Steinberg tries to get to the
heart of the matter by analysing the thinking of a single respondent, a young
man whom the reader gets to know as Sizwe Magadla, a fictitious name, how-
ever. This abstinence from naming is in itself indicative of fear and evasive-
ness. The shame that the disease still carries in the Lusikisiki District, as in
many places in South Africa, necessitates the protection of privacy.
Eben Venter, when asked in interviews about the background of Ek stamel
ek sterwe, has indicated that his book is based on detailed observations and
that the process of writing was his way of coming to terms with the loss to
H I V of someone very close to him, someone he got to know very well.30 He
generally referred to this someone as “a person,” but in an interview with
Johan van Zyl, Venter reveals that the writing of Ek stamel ek sterwe relates
(also) to the death of his brother.31 As to Venter’s own rationale behind the
reticence with regard to Jude’s gender and naming the disease, in the inter-
views already referred to he explains that he was aware that some readers
might not be able to get their heads around a number of things, most notably
the fact that Jude is a gay man, that he is in a homosexual relationship with
Konstant, and that the latter dies of A I D S . Venter explains that he did not
want this to prevent readers from identifying with Konstant as a human being,
and experiencing the universal side of his suffering. The matter, however, is
more complex than Venter himself seems to realize, or perhaps he is con-
sciously trying to keep a card or two up his sleeve.

Ek stamel ek sterwe and its rhetorical contexts

An important fact to keep in mind when reflecting on Venter’s approach in Ek
stamel ek sterwe is that gay identity has never been central to Venter’s writ-
ing, even though he is an openly gay man himself. Even in his 2003 novel

29
Jonny Steinberg, Three-Letter Plague: A Young Man’s Journey Through a Great
Epidemic (Johannesburg: Jonathan Ball, 2008).
30
Burger, “Skryf van doodsroman was terapeuties,” 4; Wasserman, “Venter het
‘Sarie Marais’ in sy kop en die F A K in die laai,” 4.
31
Johan van Zyl, “Eben wil nou vanuit ander se binnekamers skryf” [Eben now
wants to write from others’ closets], Die Burger (23 July 1999): 9.
a The Aid of Rhetoric and the Rhetoric of A I D S 237

Begeerte [desire],32 which explores sexual desire in particular, the desire is

not homosexual. The concealed concerns of Ek stamel ek sterwe can thus be
said to be ‘closeted’ within an oeuvre that seems more ‘mainstream’ than
work by Afrikaans writers like Johann de Lange, Hennie Aucamp, and Koos
Prinsloo, apart from a certain recognizable campness and suggestions of a
queer perspective on, for example, (the bodies of) men. In a recent novel by
Venter, Santa Gamka,33 the almost picaresque protagonist, Lucky Marais, is a
rent boy whose clients include both females and males, but real sexual enjoy-
ment he experiences only with a certain young female patron of his. From a
very young age, Lucky has shown strong determination, and he musters the
strength (and arousal) to carry out his professional duties, under all circum-
stances, by connecting with his innate “kordaatheid” (boldness) and by admir-
ing his own firm body. Outside his work he befriends an unconventional
(campy) gay couple who become his ‘guides’ in life. It is evident that Venter
is still writing a kind of prose that is not overtly or mainly gay-oriented, al-
though with Santa Gamka he has moved significantly in that direction.
Venter’s oeuvre has indeed, from the outset, exhibited an outward-looking
approach, even and especially when dealing with South African matters.
While strongly connecting with, and building on, various traditions in Afri-
kaans and South African literature,34 and continuing to explore South African
topics, Venter’s work is informed by perspectives derived from his identity as
a true citizen of the world. In this sense, Ek stamel ek sterwe, in its reticence
and implicit critique of sexual promiscuity, may reflect a certain period in
(gay) history in the West: namely, the cautious and health-conscious 1990s,
when the safe-sex campaign had already gained strong momentum. The fact
that Konstant turns vegetarian further underlines the fact that Venter is con-
necting up with the zeitgeist of the 1990s.
Felice Picano, in his award-winning 1995 novel Like People in History,35
portrays gay life of the early 1990s with reference to various moments in
personal and collective gay history over the previous forty years, showing,
among other things, just how ‘conservative’ the younger generation may ap-
pear to those who experienced the 1970s in places like San Francisco.

32
Eben Venter, Begeerte (Cape Town: Tafelberg, 2003).
33
Eben Venter, Santa Gamka (Cape Town: Tafelberg, 2009).
34
Phil van Schalkwyk, “ ‘ Against extremity’: Eben Venter’s Horrelpoot (2006) and
the Quest for Tolerance,” Critical Arts 23.1 (July 2009): 84–104.
35
Felice Picano, Like People in History (1995; London: Abacus, 2003).
238 PHIL VAN SCHALKWYK a

Times do indeed change, and this may entail moving from one extreme to
the other, and back again. In the past few years the industrialized world,
notably the U S A , has seen an increase in unprotected sex and new H I V in-
fections across the board,36 and this has been accompanied by a wave of
alarmist reactions in the media. Scholars like Tim Dean have attached a lot of
significance to this development. In his study Unlimited Intimacy,37 which
focuses mainly on unsafe sex in gay society, Dean reflects on the rising sub-
culture of ‘barebacking’.38 Men associated with this ‘scene’, he proposes,
deliberately put themselves at risk to contract H I V . 39 David Halperin, how-
ever, argues that Dean and commentators like him have been exaggerating the
importance of this phenomenon: it is only a very small minority of sexually
active gay men who participate in this.40 Also, only a fraction of unprotected
sex is of this sort. In the case of exclusive or monogamous gay couples, for
example, the level of risk involved in having unprotected sex is similar to that
in heterosexual monogamous relationships. The increase in condomless sex
could also be seen as relating to the rise of various forms of sexual self-
regulation within the gay community itself, – for example, by means of ‘sero-
sorting’.41 On the whole, as Halperin emphasizes, the safe-sex campaign has
been successful: although much remains to be achieved (for example, in terms
of instilling the realization that safe practice is a matter of life-long commit-
ment), A I D S prevention can be considered one of the largest mobilizations of
people in history, and perhaps the most far-reaching, as it involves reform of
conduct associated with very intimate and instinctive behaviour. One can con-
clude that the rhetoric of A I D S prevention has been relatively expedient in-
deed.

36
People of all sexual orientations are involved.
37
Tim Dean, Unlimited Intimacy: Reflections on the Subculture of Barebacking
(Chicago: U of Chicago P , 2009).
38
‘Barebacking’ refers to sexual penetration without using a condom.
39
Dean shows that these men engage in high-risk sexual activities to confirm their
resolution not to be ruled by fear (of death) any longer but, rather, to cultivate kinship
by wilfully receiving and passing the virus on.
40
David M. Halperin, What Do Gay Men Want? An Essay on Sex, Risk, and Subjec-
tivity (Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P , 2010).
41
Serosorting refers to unprotected sex with a person of the same H I V serostatus as
oneself. This is actually a method of containing the spread of H I V , but it is obviously
not without risk, as its success depends on the accuracy of mutual disclosure.
a The Aid of Rhetoric and the Rhetoric of A I D S 239

In a post-A I D S world, a Russian-roulette approach to sex, as discussed by

Dean, seems unimaginable and, indeed, Ek stamel ek sterwe propagates no
such extremism, although the behaviour of the main characters tends strongly
in this direction. Jude’s irresponsible sexual conduct is flagrantly out of step
in a time of A I D S consciousness, as is Konstant’s risky behaviour, which can
be seen as an outcome of his restricted and restrictive upbringing. However,
despite the fact that Ek stamel ek sterwe does, then, implicitly reflect some-
thing of A I D S -related rhetoric, its rhetorical expediency should not be mea-
sured in these terms. In other words: this novel is of little use to activists. Its
rhetoric is chiefly aimed at attaining literary objectives: in the first instance, to
produce a successful novel; secondly, to produce a novel that convincingly
explores topics such as personal quest, transgression, and suffering; and,
thirdly, to expand and enrich the Afrikaans literary tradition by producing a
novel which, through the inventive employment of rhetorical strategies, may
facilitate the admittance into this tradition of A I D S -related topics.

Ek stamel ek sterwe and the Afrikaans literary tradition

Ek stamel ek sterwe starts in a rural setting, with Konstant resolving, in the
very first sentence, to go far away to prepare himself for his life, the irony of
which the reader only later realizes. This beginning evokes the tradition of the
Afrikaans plaasroman (farm novel) as well as the dorpsroman (small-town
novel) and stadsroman (city novel). Van Coller provides a detailed literary-
historical overview of the development (both internal and consecutive) of
these prose subgenres in Afrikaans.42 The development in and between the
three, Van Coller shows, has coincided with and reflected the evolution of the
Afrikaner. Van Coller’s argument, however, makes evident that the represen-
tation of the city in Afrikaans literature has tended to be negative. Moreover,
the Afrikaner has been depicted as never fully embracing city life. Most
recently, one might add, the Afrikaner’s journey has taken him abroad, to
even larger cities than the ones he got to know in South Africa. Once again,
this development of the Afrikaner has been accompanied by new ways of
writing, and Eben Venter has become a foremost contributor to the Afrikaans
literature of diaspora, having lived abroad for many years.

42
H.P. van Coller, “Die representasie van plaas, dorp en stad in die Afrikaanse
prosa” [the representation of farm, town, and city in Afrikaans prose], Stilet 18.1
(March 2006): 90–121.
240 PHIL VAN SCHALKWYK a

Cognizant of the fact that in 1993 Venter had published Foxtrot van die
vleiseters,43 a postmodern parody of the farm novel, the reader in 1996 may
have approached Ek stamel ek sterwe with certain expectations. The Afri-
kaans farm novel, perhaps the most tenacious and adaptable prose subgenre in
that language, originated in the 1920s/1930s in response to the possible loss
(owing to industrialization, drought, and economic depression) of a deeply
entrenched way of life, as Ampie Coetzee has shown in his book on the his-
tory of the farm narrative in South Africa.44 Important in the Afrikaans farm
novel has always been generational conflict, especially between father and
son, and the contrast set up between the farm and the city, the latter believed
to exert a corrupting and evil influence on those who leave the farm. In C.M.
van den Heever’s prototypical farm novel Somer (1935),45 Wynand, who has
ventured to the city, now hides deep within himself a story of unspeakable
shame. Something comparable applies to Venter’s own Foxtrot van die vleis-
eters, in which the protagonist’s brother in the city commits an indecent act,
which brings shame to the family, although this offence is a rather comical,
relativizing parody of transgression as depicted in the traditional farm novel.
These are some of the things that may play in the mind of the informed
reader when reading the first few pages of Ek stamel ek sterwe. The reader
may therefore actually expect to be confronted with the hidden: some kind of
secret or shame. These expectations are fed in the course of the novel as Kon-
stant first moves to Johannesburg (where he gets involved with strange in-
dividuals) and then to Sydney. The contamination that Konstant, the farm
boy, falls victim to in Sydney is much more severe than that feared (and
sometimes experienced) in the traditional farm novel.
In another important farm novel by C.M. van den Heever, Laat vrugte,46
the last part of the story sees the tyrannical patriarch, Oom Sybrand, on his
deathbed. In the end he makes some kind of peace with himself and his

43
Eben Venter, Foxtrot van die vleiseters [foxtrot of the meat eaters] (Cape Town:
Tafelberg, 1993).
44
Ampie Coetzee, ’n Hele os vir ’n ou broodmes: Grond en die plaasnarratief
sedert 1595 [a whole ox for an old bread-knife: land and the farm narrative since 1595]
(Pretoria: Van Schaik, 2000).
45
C.M. van den Heever, Somer [summer] (Pretoria: Van Schaik, 1935).
46
C.M. van den Heever, Laat vrugte [late fruit] (Bloemfontein: Nasionale Pers,
1939).
a The Aid of Rhetoric and the Rhetoric of A I D S 241

estranged son. Ek stamel ek sterwe towards the end contains a comparable

(attempt at) reconciliation between father and son.
Laat vrugte is van den Heever’s greatest literary achievement. It is quite
striking that some of the best Afrikaans novels have at their centre a dying or
bedridden person or persons – for example, Karel Schoeman’s Hierdie lewe,47
Marlene van Niekerk’s Memorandum,48 and, of course, her Agaat,49 a prime
candidate for the accolade of the greatest Afrikaans novel to date. Agaat is
also, significantly, a farm novel.
Illness and death are evidently not shied away from in Afrikaans prose.
However, as far as A I D S is concerned, in-depth fictional exploration is still
lacking, with the exception of minor works, such as Marzanne Leroux–van
der Boon’s Klaprose teen die wind50 and Barrie Hough’s youth novel Vlerk-
dans.51
An important matter to consider with regard to the strategy of concealment
in Ek stamel ek sterwe is the tendency of Afrikaans literature, at least until
fairly recently, to underplay thorny issues, such as those pertaining to race,
class, and gender, in favour of an aesthetic ideal and thematic ‘universality’ –
the idea of continuous technical renewal, and the objective to produce work of
significance that could contribute to a grand Afrikaans literary tradition, as
Ampie Coetzee has argued.52 Coetzee’s analysis makes it clear that, although
this emphasis on technical achievement and the ‘universal’ applies more to
Afrikaans poetry, especially since the 1930s and the rise of Van Wyk Louw,
even the most politically engaged novels written since the 1960s, such as
André Brink’s, have remained preoccupied, to a greater or lesser extent, with
‘literariness’. Etienne Leroux, though subversive and highly critical of the
status quo, produced dazzlingly idealist formal experiments.

47
Karel Schoeman, Hierdie lewe [this life] (Cape Town: Human & Rousseau,
1993).
48
Marlene van Niekerk, Memorandum: ’n Verhaal met skilderye [memorandum: a
narrative with paintings] (Cape Town: Human & Rousseau, 2006).
49
Marlene van Niekerk, Agaat (Cape Town: Tafelberg, 2004).
50
Marzanne Leroux–van der Boon, Klaprose teen die wind [poppies against the
wind] (Cape Town: Tafelberg, 1992).
51
Barrie Hough, Vlerkdans [wing-dance] (Cape Town: Tafelberg, 1992).
52
Ampie Coetzee, “Literature and Crisis: One Hundred Years of Afrikaans Litera-
ture and Afrikaner Nationalism,” in Rendering Things Visible: Essays on South Afri-
can Literary Culture, ed. Martin Trump (Johannesburg: Ravan, 1990): 322–66.
242 PHIL VAN SCHALKWYK a

This emphasis on the development of a proud aesthetic tradition is a fea-

ture not only of Afrikaans literary texts but also of Afrikaans scholarly writing
on these texts, which might at least partly explain the broad appreciation that
Venter’s Ek stamel ek sterwe received for its technical achievement, particu-
larly the virtuoso and seamless handling of the stream-of-consciousness tech-
nique, and the fact that Venter was not criticized for dealing with controver-
sial issues in the way he did. As I indicated at the start of this essay, Ek stamel
ek sterwe has been thoroughly canonized.
Before and under the apartheid regime, the respect in the Afrikaans estab-
lishment for literary aesthetics had become thoroughly entrenched, and this
could be, and was indeed, exploited by writers of a more ‘subversive’ inclina-
tion, as Coetzee’s essay makes evident. ‘Afrikaans literature’ had come to be
seen as sovereign, almost untouchable: “there is a ‘textual’ protection, the
‘literary’, against which the hegemony will not act.”53 For this reason, several
works that, logically speaking, should have been banned under the apartheid
regime did survive publication. Moreover, some highly controversial books
were awarded the prestigious Hertzog Prize on the grounds of literary achieve-
ment, thereby contributing to their canonization.54 This situation has often left
the door slightly ajar for the Trojan-horse strategy.

The Trojan-horse strategy and the aesthetic of ‘silence’

Tom Henthorne has argued that Joseph Conrad’s postcoloniality has been
overlooked, “since his work is most often discussed in terms of aesthetics
rather than politics.”55 The image of Conrad as a writer and as a man has to a
large extent been informed by the ‘silences’ of his readers. Henthorne shows
how Conrad in his Heart of Darkness has, in fact, concealed a radical critique
of imperialism under a deceptive, compliant-seeming surface.56 As Andrea

53
Coetzee, “Literature and Crisis,” 353.
54
A good example is Etienne Leroux’s novel Sewe dae by die Silbersteins [seven
days at the Silbersteins’] (1962), a groundbreaking ‘modernist’ re-take on the Afri-
kaans farm novel.
55
Tom Henthorne, Conrad’s Trojan Horses: Imperialism, Hybridity, and the Post-
colonial Aesthetic (Lubbock: Texas Tech U P , 2008): 5.
56
One could add here that Conrad’s ‘impressionistic’ style complicates, even ob-
fuscates, matters, particularly with regard to determining what is actually being ‘ex-
pressed’.
a The Aid of Rhetoric and the Rhetoric of A I D S 243

White observes in her foreword to Henthorne’s book, “Conrad’s prose con-

ceals as it reveals.”57
A compelling recent example of the employment of Trojan-horse rhetorical
strategies in expressing something about A I D S in particular is offered in the
field of South African visual arts. Jane Solomon’s “Positive Power” fabric,
which celebrates the way in which anti-retroviral treatment nowadays enables
many South Africans who are H I V -positive to live tolerable lives, consists of
metres of fabric with a decorative design based on medical diagrams of the
H I virus. These appealing circular patterns may remind one of crochet-work,
of doilies, perhaps mandalas. Trojan-horse rhetoric is clearly at work here:
When looking at the print without knowing the content, a viewer may
be heard to express: “What a wonderful design – I love it.” It is then
difficult for the same viewer to express distaste (when reading or hear-
ing that the image is the H I virus) without observing their own preju-
dice towards H I V .58
In similar vein, as we have seen, Ek stamel ek sterwe was praised chiefly for
the merits of its literary composition, which facilitated appreciation also for
what Venter attempts to achieve with this novel in terms of subject-matter.
Eben Venter’s utilization of veiling strategies recalls not only Conrad, on
whose Heart of Darkness he would later draw for his 2006 novel Horrel-
poot,59 but also, and even more so, the ‘anti-expressive’ arts of the third quar-
ter of the twentieth century, which queried and in some instances, and in com-
plex ways, queered the Abstract Expressionist movement whose exponents,
most notably Jackson Pollock, were known for their bold canvases on which
the traces of self-assured masculine gestures were clearly visible. Pollock,
according to Lewis MacAdams, was one of the early progenitors and symbols
of ‘cool’.60 MacAdams’s study shows how ‘cool’ during the twentieth century
had come to define (heterosexual) masculinity.

57
Andrea White, “Foreword,” in Henthorne, Conrad’s Trojan Horses, vii.
58
Jane Solomon, comment on her screen-printed pattern “Positive Power,” in Spier
Contemporary, 2010: Exhibition, ed. Jay Pather (Stellenbosch: Africa Centre, 2010):
194.
59
Eben Venter, Horrelpoot (Cape Town: Tafelberg, 2006). Tr. by Luke Stubbs as
Trencherman (Cape Town: Tafelberg, 2008).
60
Lewis MacAdams, Birth of the Cool: Beat, Behop, and the American Avant-
Garde (2001; London: Scribner, 2002): 76–82.
244 PHIL VAN SCHALKWYK a

The 1950s, however, saw the rise also of an artistic counter-movement

which set out to question masculine subjectivity (from within). Gay artists
like Robert Rauschenberg in his ‘white paintings’ and John Cage in his Zen
Buddhist-inspired compositions engaged in avant-garde experiments of self-
erasure which foregrounded the silencing of gay subjectivity while decon-
structing monolithic masculine ‘presence’, thereby constituting what Gavin
Butt has described as an aesthetic of ‘silence’,61 In the history of masculinity,
the ‘project’ of these artists, as gay men but also as men, constitutes a moment
of almost sublime self-critique and, indeed, self-erasure. It is evident that a re-
examination of masculine subjectivity as such should form part of any reflec-
tion on gay male subjectivity.
To my mind, this is also what occurs in Ek stamel ek sterwe, though the
media employed obviously differ. In the visual arts, the ‘silencing’ is sym-
bolized through a defamiliarizing use of plastic media – for example, Rauschen-
berg’s canvases on which white paint had been evenly applied with a roller,
leaving hardly a trace of the painter’s hand. In Venter’s novel, erasure of self
is suggested by means of language, which towards the end of Konstant’s once
virile and eloquent life falls apart and fades out to sheer white. The English
translation of the novel’s closing words reads: “white light is white I see
around .. . it’s around, it surrounds me everywhere pure white.”62 Ek stamel
ek sterwe could, then, be considered as, perhaps more than anything else, a
metatextual novel which, by means of deliberate aesthetic foregrounding,
draws attention to (its rhetoric of) self-erasure and silence.
Another visual artist with whom Venter in his Ek stamel ek sterwe shows a
strong affinity is Jasper Johns, whose work can also be linked to the aesthetic
of silence. Johns’ art shows a strong drive toward subversion and revelation,
most notably his famous “Target with Plaster Casts” (1955). Butt draws atten-
tion to some more recent views of this work which, in my opinion, underline
the rhetorical expediency of the artistic choices it reflects.63 He shows that the
target and the masculine body-fragments (toes, ear, nose, and mouth, pectoral
and nipple, genitals, etc.) could be regarded as a latter-day version of the

61
Gavin Butt, “How New York Queered the idea of Modern Art,” in Varieties of
Modernism, ed. Paul Wood (New Haven C T : Yale U P , 2004): 323.
62
Venter, My Beautiful Death, 271. The Afrikaans original: “is wit lig wit ek sien
om . . . dis om dis om my oral suiwer wit.” See Venter, Ek stamel ek sterwe, 219.
63
Butt, “How New York Queered the idea of Modern Art,” 327.
a The Aid of Rhetoric and the Rhetoric of A I D S 245

martyrdom of St Sebastian.64 This patron saint of athletes, soldiers, and

archers, with arrows all over his (half-)naked body, has very frequently been
depicted in Western art, often in a (thinly disguised) homoerotic manner. In
“Target with Plaster Casts,” the (gay) male body, every part of it, is depicted
as potential target – target of violence and /or a desiring gaze. The plaster
casts in their separate little boxes or ‘pigeon-holes’ (with doors), then, suggest
something hidden, closeted, at which the viewer is offered a peek. From a
meta-perspective, this work draws attention to the very act of closeting, of
concealment and revelation.
It may be argued that Johns’ “Target with Plaster Casts” is (re-)enacted or
‘staged’ in Ek stamel ek sterwe when Konstant first discovers bruises on his
body.65 Different parts of his body are inspected, one at a time. With mount-
ing trepidation, Konstant carries out this inspection, privately, with the reader
as voyeur, of course, but then the scene changes as Konstant’s self-examina-
tion is suddenly overlaid with an imagined medical examination in the army
(with some suggestions, too, of a medical examination in school). Konstant is
ordered to take off all his clothes, thereby presenting for examination also
those body parts usually concealed. The language adapts to this scenario, for
example,66 in the English translation:

64
Another, strongly related, interpretative route to pursue here is to link Johns’
“Target with Plaster Casts” (and the relevant passages in Venter’s novel) with the dis-
memberment of Orpheus by a band of women, following his rejection of women, also
sexually, due to the tragic loss of his beloved Eurydice. Kaja Silverman, in her book
Flesh of My Flesh (Stanford C A : Stanford U P , 2009), has explored this event with
reference to the lesser-known redemptive coda added by Ovid, in which gender rela-
tions are restored.
The myth of Osiris, specifically his dismemberment and scattering over Egypt, is
also highly relevant, the more so because of its presence in the Afrikaans literary tradi-
tion thanks to Etienne Leroux’s novel Isis Isis Isis: ’n Storie van dertien vrouens en ’n
reisbeskrywing na binne [Isis Isis Isis: a story of thirteen women and an inner travel-
ogue] (Cape Town: Human & Rousseau, 1969). In this novel, the attempt at recon-
necting the parts of Osiris’ body relates to the Jungian transformation and individua-
tion of the disintegrated, broken self. The story of Osiris is, in essence, a vegetation
myth, as the death and revival of Osiris is linked to the flooding of the Nile, the cycle
of nature – the miraculous return of life each year anew. Notably, Osiris is also known
as the God of Death, and the God of Silence and Secrecy.
65
See Venter, Ek stamel ek sterwe, 124; My Beautiful Death, 157.
66
Venter, My Beautiful Death, 158.
246 PHIL VAN SCHALKWYK a

Ah, here’s a nice big one, right below the bottom.

Present, Sir, blue spot number one.
There’s also a tiny one here.
Blue spot number two, Sir, standing to attention, Sir.67

This examination carries a homoerotic undertone, not only in the description

of the various body parts, but also when the ‘doctor’ who orders Konstant to
undress adds: “we’re all men here.”68 Konstant’s shyness, which suggests the
fear of having the private, the concealed /closeted exposed, is underlined
when he wonders if the others (Shane and Jude) will notice his spots. The way
in which this is phrased69 suggests, to my mind, a connection with the martyr-
dom of St Sebastian and /or “Target with Plaster Casts”: “Maybe one of them
will notice my arrows.”70 Indeed, almost every part of Konstant’s body has
become a target, turning him into a latter-day martyr – specifically an A I D S
martyr. Venter has ingeniously ‘smuggled’ this subtext into his text.
When Konstant first notices the bruises, he tries to find some logical ex-
planation for their origin – for example:
The one below my bottom could have been from a rock. Surely I’d
have felt it? Maybe it was in the water. Or maybe a river eel’s rubber
nose gave me a slight electric shock. It’s so bloody cold in that water
that you go dead numb.71

He recalls that Jude, in fact, noticed one of those bruises earlier on: “you must
have knocked yourself somewhere, Konstant, you’ve got a blue spot here.”72
Reading this reported conversation is an unsettling experience, especially in
view of Jude’s remark “It’s nothing Konstant, absolutely nothing,”73 because

67
In the Afrikaans:
“Aaa, hier’s sommer ’n ou grote, reg onder die boud.
Aanwesig, Meneer, Bloukol Nommer Een.
En dan hierso ook ou enetjie.
Bloukol Nommer Twee, Meneer, op aandag, Meneer.” (125)
68
Venter, My Beautiful Death, 158.
69
My Beautiful Death, 158.
70
Afrikaans: “Miskien sien een van hulle my pyle.” See Venter, Ek stamel ek
sterwe, 125.
71
Venter, My Beautiful Death, 157–58.
72
My Beautiful Death, 159.
73
My Beautiful Death, 159.
a The Aid of Rhetoric and the Rhetoric of A I D S 247

the reader knows that the harm has come from the likes of Jude himself, who
is consistently promiscuous. Also, Konstant’s rough military past, the life-
style that has taken hold of him in those years, has broken down his defences
and rendered him a prime target for this ultimate violation /brutalization, to
which the reader becomes witness.
The idea of the gay male (body) as target does carry a political undertone,
but I believe that Venter is here more concerned with gay subjectivity. This
dimension of Ek stamel ek sterwe can be seen as surprisingly forward-look-
ing, as reflections on gay subjectivity up until quite recently have been very
sparse. David Halperin argues that exploration of gay subjectivity has been
eschewed by gays themselves because of its connection with psychology.74
Fearing a resurfacing of associations of homosexuality with mental disease,
gays even in recent years have focused, rather, on gay identity, which is a
matter of politics: the struggle for gay rights has been seen as a cause that all
reasonable members of society could be persuaded to support. Halperin, in his
book, attempts to initiate debate on (the constituents of) gay subjectivity. In
search of a route toward gay subjectivity which circumvents the pitfalls of
psychology, he indeed sets off from risk, because the current alarm about a
(perceived) rise in sexual risk-taking among gay men according to him
actually provides a unique opportunity to arrive at a fuller understanding of
the interior life of gay men – beyond risk, bracketing, closeting.
To my mind, Ek stamel ek sterwe embarks on a similar journey. It explores
the route of risk, and although it does not arrive at a full elaboration of gay
subjectivity, it ends in a final affirmation of subjectivity as such. I have al-
ready quoted the novel’s concluding words, describing the all-surrounding
white of oblivion. However, these words are not the last say. The very last
utterance, with which the stream of consciousness then also comes to a close,
is “I,” typographically separated, and surrounded, by the white of the page.
Indeed, the undermining of subjectivity which I described above is not de-
structive but, rather, aimed at being deconstructive. The concluding “I” repre-
sents a beginning – not an end. It crosses a (textual) border or threshold. This
transitioning “I” constitutes the subject of a new yet incomplete sentence. The
reader’s last glimpse of the “I” coincides with the very moment of crossing,
which may suggest a kind of ‘liminal zone’. The liminal by definition carries
the promise of rebirth, renewed acceptance, and re-integration.

74
Halperin, What Do Gay Men Want?.
248 PHIL VAN SCHALKWYK a

Conclusion
My analysis of Eben Venter’s Ek stamel ek sterwe has shown that although
this novel, with regard to what it says about topics such as A I D S and gay
identity, is firmly situated in its immediate context (South Africa and the
world of the 1990s), it also goes beyond this, in that it connects with rhetori-
cal frameworks that are not immediately obvious, and this enables Venter to
raise his novel onto a higher plane of exploration, not least in terms of its en-
gagement with gay (embodied) subjectivity and masculinity in general. Its
perspective is, perhaps ultimately, a metatextual one, as it reveals while con-
cealing its rhetoric of self-erasure and ‘silence’.
The novel’s achievement in terms of rhetorical expediency resides in its
clandestine yet convincing participation in the post-Dada discourse on mascu-
linity and gay subjectivity, and in the way in which, by engaging some of the
most central aspects of the Afrikaans literary tradition, it has facilitated the
admittance of taboo topics, notably A I D S and the gay body, into that very
tradition.

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1595 (Pretoria: Van Schaik, 2000).
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U of Chicago P , 2009).
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(Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P , 2010).
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(31 December 2006): 18.
a The Aid of Rhetoric and the Rhetoric of A I D S 249

Hopkins, David. Dada’s Boys: Masculinity After Duchamp (New Haven C T & Lon-
don: Yale U P , 2007).
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binne (Cape Town: Human & Rousseau, 1969).
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1992).
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(2001; London: Scribner, 2002).
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October 2007): 17.
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2010).
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bus: Ohio State U P , 1996).
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demic (Johannesburg: Jonathan Ball, 2008).
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1997): 3.
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(March 2006): 90–121.
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250 PHIL VAN SCHALKWYK a

Van Schalkwyk, Phil. “ ‘ Against extremity’: Eben Venter’s Horrelpoot (2006) and the
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a
Navigating the Interstitial
Boundaries in Lady Anne by Antjie Krog

H EIN V ILJOEN

Framing the collection

T HE FIRST POEM in the collection entitled Lady Anne1 by Antjie Krog

provides an apt frame for discussing borders and boundaries and how
they can be understood and used to open up complex texts and rela-
tionships. This opening poem sets the tone and lays down the semiotic frame-
work (or codes) for the collection. It already thematizes a number of symbolic
and topographical boundaries. Going south is explicitly presented as going
down or as really sinking towards foreign grounds or bottoms; maybe even
descending into hell. The first stanza further builds up an implied contrast
between the Scottish highlands and their “intimacy of waters” that dissolves
the boundaries between water and green and the Cape – maybe presumed to
be dry and arid. The highlands also mark a social boundary – the class divide
between those “purified for castles” and ordinary people. ‘Going down’ might
thus also mean going down the social ladder – but this is not by choice: some-
one is sending the speaker on a mission.
Wie is dit wat my bleddiewil afwaarts stuur
na vreemde bodems? Veral waarom? Gemaak
uit volop met vlekke en knobbeltjies
traak die hooglandse herkoms
my altyd – klipperige kamaste en mis,
’n intimiteit waar water al weerkaatsing is,
weeïge groen en dendriete wat tonglangs raak –
soos jy is ek vir kastele gepuur

1
Antjie Krog, Lady Anne (Bramley, Johannesburg: Taurus, 1989): 9.
252 HEIN VILJOEN a

Stekelig van sintuie op dek onder my kombers

hang ek ’n grimmige prik in die takelwerk
van klank en soutsproei; my vingers
bly liefkosend oor blokke omber,
’n nuwe vermiljoen, karmyn, sowaar
’n hele lewe lamlendig gedyn en myn
in versneë vers en verf (afgemerk
by Newmans) tot waardigheid te pers.

Who is it that is bloody well sending me downwards

to foreign ground? Above all, why? Made
from abundance with freckles and nodules
the highland descent always
concerns me – stony puttees and mist,
an intimacy where water already is reflection,
teary green and dendrites that touch like tongues –
like you I was purified for castles
Spiny of senses on deck under my blanket
I hang a grim prickle in the rigging
of sound and salty spray; my fingers
keep caressing blocks of umber,
a new vermilion, carmine, to be sure
a whole life miserably thou’ed and mine’d
in blended verse and paint (marked-down
at Newmans) to press into dignity.
(my tr.)

The second stanza builds up a contrast between the realities of the sea journey
(salty spray, the creaking of the rigging) and the speaker (presumably then
Lady Anne) relishing the colours and textures of her paints. This is part of
another cardinal set of oppositions: namely, between reality and ways to
capture or represent it. But the paints and their brilliant colours are also signs
that Lady Anne has had to struggle to survive with little money her whole life
long, sweet-talking those with money and power like Lord Henry Dundas, to
whom this letter is addressed. Her whole life was spent miserably thou’ing
and mine’ing. This already articulates the strong contrast between abundance
and scarcity that runs through the collection – between tables groaning under
loads of comestibles and a scarcity of food (and power and love, maybe, in
the case of both Antjie Krog and Lady Anne).
a Navigating the Interstitial 253

More dramatically, in this poem going down south is, in the last stanza (not
given above), also quite explicitly described as an inversion. Lady Anne’s
husband, Andrew Barnard, shoots at “a parasol that glints crystals over skin”
– at a whale, in other words – and this raises the possibility that it might over-
turn the ship. But in the historical context of the Napoleonic Wars and in
Lady Anne’s material circumstances the possibility is strong that her whole
life might be turned upside down – that she and her husband might literally
sink and also sink socially in the poor and far-off colony of the Cape and that
the power of history might cause a revolution. They are being sent into bar-
barity, uncivilization; not into the heart of darkness but, rather, under water –
and the water might even be all the darker far below the Equator. South is
below, on the underside. Sinking slowly to the bottom in a ring o’roses, as the
speaker imagines it, might also transform her into an animal – her tresses of
hair will turn into an uncombed dishevelled fern or a fish’s fin. Her hair will
no longer be a sign of nobility and civilization, typical of the eighteenth
century, but will signify the opposite. The word used for tresses is literally
vagte, ‘fleeces’: i.e. it is like wool in its natural state, unwashed and uncarded.
The word also prefigures another important set of metaphors in the collection
– spinning the fleece into wool, weaving it eventually into garments. Meta-
phors of female domestic activities like sewing and embroidery and of diffe-
rent kinds of fabric are also central metaphors for the activities of the poet in
this collection.
This idea of going under, of sinking below the surface of the water, is also
a cardinal metaphor for threatening circumstances that Antjie Krog, the poetic
persona, experiences in the states of emergency of South Africa in the 1980s.
This metaphor surfaces in the collection as the motif of the fish, represented
by the Atlantic halibut (Hippoglossus hippoglossus, ‘heilbot’ in Dutch) and
the common or Dover sole (Solea solea); both live on the sea bottom.2 The
motif of the sole figures very prominently in the final section of the collection
in the poem “transparency of the sole.”3

2
Rainier Froese & Daniel Pauly, ed. FishBase (August 2011), www.fishbase.org
(accessed 17 February 2012). Incidentally, according to FishBase, the Afrikaans com-
mon name tongvis (lit. ‘tongue fish’) is not used for Solea solea but for seven other
species that occur in Cape waters.
3
“transparant van die tongvis,” Lady Anne, 92. Tr. by Denis Hirson in Antjie Krog,
Down to My Last Skin: Poems (Johannesburg: Random House, 2000): 40–41.
254 HEIN VILJOEN a

Borders and boundaries separate and demarcate, mark out and define; but
they also constitute zones of communication and interaction – spaces, per-
haps, where, in Bhabha’s terms, the new can begin its presencing, can create a
third space where new forms of expression can be born.4 This third space
seems to be necessarily liminal and interstitial. In this essay I therefore want
to establish how borders structure the discourse in Krog’s collection and how
boundaries and borders are configured and represented in terms of language,
discourse, imagery, and relationships.

Borders, boundaries, and cognitive

frameworks (frames) in Lady Anne
Apart from the great historical distance between Antjie Krog and Lady Anne,
and between us as readers and the late-eighteenth century, both conceptual
and topographical boundaries are central elements of in the framework of
Lady Anne. Topographical boundaries are often represented as concrete bor-
ders or lines (e.g., the Equator). The social distance between the Lady and the
poet, the farmers, ordinary people, and slaves is also an important conceptual
framework – but the total and bloody inversion of class and social privilege in
a revolution is equally important, and the possibility of liberty for slaves per-
haps equally threatening. The central contrast between the Cape and England
(or London), the north–south axis, marks the boundary between metropolitan
centre and colonial periphery, between civilization and barbarity (an opposi-
tion that is echoed in that between Cape Town with its imitation of civiliza-
tion and the seemingly uncouth people of the interior). In turbulent times, the
protective boundaries around the self and the family are threatened (e.g., in
the first weekend under the State of Emergency).5 Transformation is therefore
a necessity, and transformation is often figured in the collection as going
under water, into a liminal state, metamorphosing into a fish, notably in “trans-
parency of the sole,” just as a strong sense of above and below the surface of
the water permeates the collection. Lastly, a very important liminal zone is the
boundary of language and its power of expression – freedom of expression
often encountering barriers of social convention and social acceptability, but

4
Homi K. Bhabha, The Location of Culture (London & New York: Routledge,
1994): 5.
5
“eerste kersnaweek onder die noodtoestand,” Krog, Lady Anne, 31.
a Navigating the Interstitial 255

also the discursive violence ingrained in language, captured in the phrase

“violence that circumscribes my whitest retort.”6
To answer these questions, I want to focus on four boundary aspects of the
collection: the idea of the interstitial as central to the poetic of the collection;
the dialogue between Lady Anne and Antjie Krog across the historical divide;
the boundary between reality and art (the framing of the new land and land-
scape: i.e. the politics of representation); and boundaries in configuring the
power-games between men and women (the politics of sex).

Sailing through reified interstitial space

With Lady Anne’s description of their sea journey, the collection starts the
story in medias res: the first poem seems to be a letter that Lady Anne (born
Lindsay from the Scottish nobility, 1750–1825) wrote to Lord Henry Dundas7
on 23 February 1797 while she and Andrew Barnard, her husband, were sail-
ing to Cape Town, where he would take up the position as colonial secretary
to the new governor of the Cape Colony, Lord Macartney.8

6
“geweld wat my witste wederwoord omgrens,” Lady Anne, 32.
7
Henry Dundas, 1st Viscount Melville (1742–1811), was a Scottish lawyer and pro-
minent politician. He was a close friend of Lady Anne’s, and many expected them to
marry. Dundas became solicitorǦgeneral in 1766 and Lord Advocate in 1775. He served
as the Secretary of State for War under Pitt from 1794 to 1801, planning the war
against Napoleon. During this time he appointed Lady Anne Barnard’s husband,
Andrew Barnard, as Colonial Secretary of the Cape of Good Hope, following a request
from Lady Anne. He resigned with Pitt in 1801 but in 1804 returned to public service
as First Lord of the Admiralty and, by prompt reforms, restored Britsh naval supre-
macy. Dundas was suspected of misappropriating public money and was formally
impeached in 1806, but acquitted. See The Cape Journals of Lady Anne Barnard
1797–1798, ed. A.M. Lewin Robinson with Margaret Lenta & Dorothy Driver (Cape
Town: Van Riebeeck Society, 1994 for 1993): x–xi, and Michael Fry, “Dundas,
Henry,” in The Oxford Companion to Scottish History, ed. Michael Lynch (Oxford:
Oxford U P , 2007), Oxford Reference Online, http://www.oxfordreference.com/views
/E N T R Y .html?subview=Main&entry=t246.e89 (accessed 28 February 2012).
8
A.M. Lewin Robinson, “Barnard, Lady Anne,” in Suid-Afrikaanse Biografiese
Woordeboek [South African biographical dictionary], ed. W.J. De Kock & D.W.
Kruger (Cape Town: Tafelberg / R G N , 1968), vol. 1: 56–58 (bl 57).
256 HEIN VILJOEN a

There is, however, no such letter among the thirty-four that Lady Anne
wrote to Dundas;9 the poem is, rather, an Afrikaans rewriting of an entry in
Lady Anne’s journal.10 By having Lady Anne address Dundas here, Krog
foregrounds the power of one of the prominent males in Lady Anne’s life but
also the power of history: facing the poem there is a series of quotations from
such figures as Bram Fischer, Joseph Brodsky, and Breyten Breytenbach, all
of which emphasize the need for revolution in South Africa.
Why Lady Anne and her husband were on this ship is the part of the story
that has to be filled in as the text develops. Even more puzzling is why an
Afrikaans poet would try to transcend the boundaries of history by entering
into the persona of Lady Anne and speaking with her voice. By doing so,
Krog questions the boundaries between reality and poetry and between his-
tory and its metafictional rewriting.
André Brink likened Krog’s collection to a novel – a comprehensive story
told in many different ways and by different voices with many lacunae.11 One
story-line can be roughly summarized as the account of Lady Anne’s negotia-
tions with the powers that be to find a position for her husband and to over-
come her straitened circumstances, of which her encounters in the time that
she spent at the Cape during the first British occupation at the end of the eigh-
teenth century form a part. This story is told in parallel with Antjie Krog’s
own circumstances in the interregnum of the 1980s in South Africa. Juxta-
posing the two lives highlights the similarities between them and highlights
many similar questions, such as what use art has in politically turbulent times
or what the life of an individual woman without money and power means in
the broader scheme of things.
Bernard Odendaal and Hennie van Coller regard transformation and
africanization as the main plot-line of Lady Anne and postulate the return to
the castle at the end of section three (actually numbered V) as the real ending

9
Published as The Letters of Lady Anne Barnard to Henry Dundas, from the Cape
and Elsewhere, 1793–1803, Together with Her Journal of a Tour into the Interior, and
Certain Other Letters, ed. A.M. Lewin Robinson (Cape Town: A.A. Balkema, 1973).
10
Entry for 23–24 February 1797 in The Cape Journals of Lady Anne Barnard
1797–1798, 58–60.
11
André P. Brink, “Antjie Krog se Lady Anne: ’n Roman van ’n bundel” [Antjie
Krog’s Lady Anne: a novel of verse], Vrye weekblad (18 August 1989): 13.
a Navigating the Interstitial 257

of the collection.12 They interpret it as a turning point in the plot and also as
the point where the relationship between Lady Anne and Antjie Krog breaks
down irremediably. They think the collection wants to persuade its readers
that a fourfold transformation is needed – transformation of the Afrikaner, of
women, of Christians, and of poets (artists) – but that this attempt fails. In
their view, Lady Anne is an illuminating metaphor for the poetic subject,
Antjie Krog’s, own struggles towards transformation in these four thematic
realms. In their reading, they adhere too closely to the contention that the col-
lection is motivated by liberation theology13 and also construe the relationship
between Lady Anne and the speaker somewhat simplistically.
By focusing on a marginal figure in history, the poet places Lady Anne
centre-stage in history, but also enters into a dialogue with Lady Anne’s life
and thinking. The poems thus explore the highly complex relationship that
develops between the poetic persona Antjie Krog and Lady Anne. It is an
identification across time, language, and class, even a kind of love affair, that
ends in a dramatic farewell.
The key to Krog’s poetic here is the poem “Liewe S.” (Dear S.),14 which
spells out, in intricate fabric metaphors, the intention behind the collection.
Key ideas that emerge from the poem are the following:
Writing poetry is cording tresses, ornamental borders, of or with
words; it is, as it were, from the essence of the poet herself (“die sy,”
‘the she’ – also a pun in Afrikaans for silk) that poetry is created.
The effect of poetry is, in an intertextual reference to Ezra Pound,
apparently to create a new wind as an embodiment of freedom (“the
wind thereof is my body”15).
The poet is one of those strange people who fear the stripped (or al-
ready harvested, “berooide”), blank (or bland) page.

12
Bernard Odendaal & Hennie van Coller, “Die liriese intrige in Antjie Krog se
Lady Anne” [the lyrical plot in Antjie Krog’s Lady Anne], Stilet 22.2 (2010): 63–88.
13
A view proposed by Marian Brink–de Wind, “Lady Anne deur die oog van die vis”
[Lady Anne through the eye of the fish], Tydskrif vir Letterkunde 30.2 (1992): 99–112.
14
Krog, Lady Anne, 15.
15
“I, even I, am he who knoweth the roads / Through the sky, and the wind
thereof is my body”; “Aegupton” (A Lume Spento, 1908), in Ezra Pound, Poems and
Translations, ed. Richard Sieburth (New York: Library of America, 2003): 47.
258 HEIN VILJOEN a

The poet sails among (or in) fleeces of in-between light and endlessly
spins gauze or netting out of words from her spool-like pencil. She is
in an interstitial state. The underlying image is that the poet spins
poetry as a woman spins yarn at her spinning wheel.
The poet is looking for an articulate, enlightened woman with transparent
depths who can clean and heal concretely on paper (“kan droogdok op
papier”). She would function as an objective correlative or a masking alter
ego for the poet in her attempt to find a new creative impulse and to make
sense of her own life. Krog is here following the practice of D.J. Opperman in
taking historical figures and transposing them to South Africa and into Afri-
kaans as part of what is called “redemption by identification.”16 As a
modernist the poet can then withdraw behind the figure and let her speak,
preventing her from nakedly expressing her own thoughts and emotions.
Antjie Krog (like Opperman in his later collection, Komas uit ‘n bamboes-
stok17) does this differently. In a postmodern vein she allows the poet herself
to emerge explicitly from behind the alter ego and enter into dialogue with the
historical figure as a kind of metaphor. The two collections are often com-
pared, but they differ in a number of cardinal aspects.18 Opperman takes
Marco Polo as his travelling companion and parts from him on good terms,
whereas Krog rejects hers. Krog’s discourse is feministic, Opperman’s andro-
centric. Both have to learn a new alphabet, but Opperman’s collection leads to
new poetic insights whereas Krog “remains trapped in her struggle to create
politically relevant texts.”19 Krog is rewriting history in a postmodern way
that thematizes and foregrounds the crossing of the boundary between fact

16
See Gerrit Dekker, “ ‘ Verlossing’ deur vereenselwiging: Iets oor die stylaard en
kunstenaarsroeping by D.J. Opperman” [redemption by identification: on D.J. Opper-
man’s style and poetic calling], in Oordeel en besinning: studies, beskouinge en
kritieke [judgement and reflection: studies, views, and criticisms] (Cape Town: Human
& Rousseau, 1964): 13–14.
17
Komas uit ‘n bamboesstok [comas from a bamboo shoot] Cape Town: Human &
Rousseau, 1979).
18
Marius Crous, “Anne en Antjie: Die wisselwerking tussen diskoerse in Antjie
Krog se Lady Anne” [Anne and Antjie: the interaction between discourses in Antjie
Krog’s Lady Anne], Stilet 15.2 (2003): 149–71.
19
“vasgevang bly in haar stryd om politiek-relevante tekste te kan skep,” Crous,
“Wisselwerking,” 167.
a Navigating the Interstitial 259

and fiction, and undermines the factual status of historical documents.20 The
collection thus becomes a kind of historiographic metafiction.
One of the cardinal ideas in “Liewe S.” is the in-between light (“tussenlig”)
through which the poet sails like a ship. This interstitial space, a space be-
tween boundaries, might, in the light of Bhabha’s views on the liminal and the
third space,21 prove to be very creative. The poem suggests that such an inter-
stitial space lies between a complex set of boundaries: between the public and
the private where women live and work; between writing and experience (the
in-between space of creativity); between reality and the work of art; between
the body, words, and work. The wind or the ice thereof is, in the words of
Pound in “Aegupton,” her body.
Lady Anne Lindsay (Barnard) is one of the possible alter egos that Krog
discovered in history – or, rather, in the Dictionary of South African Biogra-
phy – whom she can use to construct a unified collection of poems. How the
relationship between Antjie Krog and Lady Anne, however, changes in the
course of the collection is a fascinating crossing of boundaries.

Antjie Krog and Lady Anne in dialogue

across the historical divide
At first the relationship between the poetic persona of Antjie Krog and Lady
Anne is one of near-feudal respect (“Wees gegroet Lady Anne Barnard”).22
The speaker greets Lady Anne ceremoniously and wants to celebrate (“be-
sing”) her life. She also wants to strike chords for the song of Africa from
Lady Anne’s life. This already indicates a disparity and invokes the opposi-
tion between the ‘civilized’ north and the ‘barbaric’ south. She pays Lady
Anne homage, genuflecting before her, kissing her hand, and formally asking
her to be her guide. The speaker acknowledges the class boundary between
her and Lady Anne, but by punning with benoude bard (“fearful bard”) on
Barnard and by her rather extravagant homage (“ek knieval, buig en soen u
hand”), she also ironizes the class distance in a modern spirit.

20
Louise Viljoen, “Die verwerking van die geskiedenis” [the rewriting of history],
in Ons ongehoorde soort: Beskouings oor die werk van Antjie Krog [our unheard-of
kind: studies on the work of Antjie Krog] (Stellenbosch: S U N Press, 2009): 44–55.
21
Bhabha, The Location of Culture, 9.
22
Krog, Lady Anne, 16.
260 HEIN VILJOEN a

By the end of the second section Lady Anne has been presented to us in
her own uncertainties in the new colony and with its people, longing for her
husband, but we also learn that she has little money and perhaps for that
reason considered marrying a rich old man. She chose, instead, to marry An-
drew Barnard – eleven years her junior and without means – as insurance
against grief, emotional vicissitudes, and instability. Antjie Krog’s own cir-
cumstances under the State of Emergency and her sense of increasing aliena-
tion from her language and the people around her are juxtaposed with Lady
Anne’s existential crises. Yet, as Antjie becomes more obsessed (“berserk”)
with her, she also realizes the uselessness of Lady Anne for her purposes, de-
scribing her as “frivolous fool, pen in sly ink, snob, naive liberal.”23 At the
end of the poem she rejects Lady Anne as a metaphor (“fôkol werd,” lit.
‘worth fuck-all’). Her desire to live a second life through Lady Anne,24 which
would show that it is possible simply to record daily life in an age of revolu-
tion, or, on the other hand, for a language that would free slaves and redress
injustices, thus fails. The tension between aesthetics and politics, one of the
central forcefields in the collection,25 thus reaches a climax:
I wanted to live a second life through you
Lady Anne Barnard – to show it is possible
to hone the truth by pen
to live an honourable life in an era of horror26
but from your letters you emerge
hand on the hip, talented but a frivolous fool, pen
in sly ink, snob, naive liberal
being spoilt from your principles by your useless husband
you never had real pluck
now that your whole frivolous life has arrived
on my desk, I go berserk: as a metaphor, my Lady,
you’re not worth a fuck
(Down to My Last Skin, 73)

23
Krog, Down to My Last Skin, 73; Lady Anne, 40.
24
“ek wou ’n tweede lewe deur jou leef,” Lady Anne, 40.
25
See, among others, Helize van Vuuren, “Spanning tussen estetiek en politiek” [the
tension between aesthetics and politics], Die Suid-Afrikaan 24.4 (1989): 45–46.
26
The two lines “to hone [. . . ] horror” depart radically in sense here from the Afri-
kaans. A closer English version would read “a mere recorder of one’s daily bread [=
the everyday struggle for survival and meaning] / in an age that changed everything.”
a Navigating the Interstitial 261

Ek wou ’n tweede lewe deur jou leef

Lady Anne Barnard, wys jy is moontlik:
blote optekenaar van die daaglikse brood
in ’n era wat alles verander
[…]
maar uit jou briewe kom jy voor my staan:
hand in die sy as ligsinnige dwaas pen
in ink geslepe snob naïewe liberal
deur die nikswerd van jou sy van standpunt verwen
gearriveer met jou hele frivole lewe sit ek nou berserk
met jou op my lessenaar: as metafoor is jy fôkol werd
(Lady Anne, 40)

The section ends, however, with the poem “I think I am the first – Lady Anne
on Table Mountain,”27 where the poetic persona imagines climbing Table
Mountain with Lady Anne, both engaged in a struggle to represent the moun-
tain with its mists and ravines. The climb erases the distance between the
speaker and her “fellow poet of beauty” (“mede-pragpoëet”). Yet writing
seems to destroy their intimate imagined togetherness in rain and mist.
This ambivalent attitude towards Lady Anne also emerges clearly at the
end of the collection, after the brutal power-games between men and women
have been revealed in section I V . In the last section we read of Lady Anne’s
departure from Cape Town and of the speaker’s desire for a new alphabet, a
new discourse in which self and other would be able to move closer. Yet the
mother still desires to protect her children by teaching them how to undergo
transformation in order to survive the incoming (revolutionary) tide (“trans-
parency of the sole”).28 It is in this context that Antjie Krog enacts a final
showdown with Lady Anne in the poem “you are being remembered for your
parties Lady Anne” (“jy word onthou vanweë jou partye,”). She calls Lady
Anne a “heroine with a thousand faces” but also “woman for whom I’ve
sharpened my blade for so many years.” She stares brutally at Lady Anne
naked next to her pool,29 stripped of everything, describing her aging body,

27
Krog, Lady Anne, 41–42; Down to My Last Skin, 66–67.
28
Down to My Last Skin, 40.
29
Or bath – a pool in the Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens in Cape Town near the
spring of the Liesbeeck River where Lady Anne is said to have bathed naked while on
a picnic. It is in the shape of a bird and is also called the Bird Bath, after a Colonel Bird
who is supposed to have built it in 1811 (unlikely, as it is built of Batavian stone).
262 HEIN VILJOEN a

assaulting her, as it were; but this assault (in Afrikaans “te lyf (gaan)”) turns
into an intimate caress across the historical divide. The poem, in other words,
enacts a very close but ambivalent identification with Lady Anne. It is a total
assault, yet she writes that Lady Anne has “become beautiful to [her] and
movingly brave.”30 At the end they are “not opposite but together in this
verse,” as she imagines Lady Anne stepping into the water and, as it were,
melting back into history. The poetic persona is left to mourn her as “beloved
friend” and her “complete radiant uselessness.”31
The double ending of the collection further complicates the relationship be-
tween poet and epic protagonist. The first ending (Lady Anne, 107) echoes
views expressed by Lady Anne in Lives of the Lindsays32 and also partly
spells out the poet’s method here (again an echo of Lady Anne): ‘I had to lop
and abridge a lot’.33 The images of roses, myrtles, and cypresses are also
derived from Lady Anne.
In the second ending, the poetic persona reclaims the voice in a more final
taking leave of Lady Anne. While caressing Lady Anne’s neck up under her
hair, the speaker distances herself paradoxically from recording and charting
the narrow space between Lady Anne’s arrival and her departure, her transfor-
mation and her historical guilt. Instead, the voice links “bard” with “groot
van-kant-maker”: i.e. claims to be the big destroyer of titles and constraints or
harnesses (or of low characters: “tuig”). The speaker seems to ponder liberat-
ing both herself and the Lady but also wringing the Lady’s neck until she
shouts “Viva sole” (“Viva tongvis”): i.e. celebrates one of the dominant meta-
phors of adaptation and transformation in the collection, which is swimming
with the stream,. Referring back to the idea of sending downwards and re-
membering that “the epic hero’s destiny is directly linked with his bard’s,” the

Anon., “The Cape’s Strange Nature Reserve” (March 2002), http://www.vanhunks

.com/cape1/reserve1.html (accessed 27 October 2010).
30
Krog, Down to My Last Skin, 76; “dat jy vir my mooi / geword het en ontroerend
dapper,” Lady Anne, 95.
31
Down to My Last Skin, 77; “ontstem beween ek jou vriendin liefste // jou totale
stralende nutteloosheid,” Lady Anne, 96.
32
Alexander William Crawford, Earl of Lindsay, Lives of the Lindsays or, A
Memoir of the Houses of Crawford and Balcarres (London: John Murray, 1849): Part
II, p. 385; cf. J.C. Kannemeyer, “Die horries van A E Samuel, gebore Krog” [the
horrors of A.E. Samuel, born Krog], Tydskrif vir Letterkunde 27.3 (1989): 33–42.
33
“ek moes baie jok en verkort.”
a Navigating the Interstitial 263

speaker seems to doubt her ability to bend boundaries (“grense buig”), as

people tend to think only in slogans.
In the third stanza, the relation between the bard and the epic protagonist
gains threefold in complexity. The speaker both reaches out towards a new
song (or a new insight, “in-sing”) and acknowledges that she and Lady Anne
misrecognized themselves in each other while serving as each other’s con-
science. So close has the relationship become. The poem ends with a strongly
foregrounded threefold leavetaking from Lady Anne, her kind, and the lan-
guage of her kind, expressed in an ungrammatical double genitive: “jou se
soort se taal.”
The final image of the poem is a complex one that combines language and
the body: under my thumb lies the delicate syntax of your throat.34 The collec-
tion thus ends with the killing-off the alter ego, both as mask, lover, represen-
tative of the self, and textual construct. Yet, in the rewriting of this collection,
the alter ego and her struggles will live on. The stories of both Antjie Krog
and Lady Anne will transcend the doubly marked textual boundary.
Marius Crous has closely examined the way in which Krog rewrote the
documents of Lady Anne published by Lewin Robinson, Fairbridge, and
Lenta and Le Cordeur.35 He argues that Krog carefully selected the historical
material that would fit in with her project, in order to shape a modern dis-
course on the position of women in South Africa. He also argues that Krog’s
discourse is sometimes more poetic than Lady Anne’s, and sometimes less so
but much more vicious. Krog emphasizes the overabundance of, for example,
the Van Reenens in the interior and plays down Lady Anne’s references to
Europe in favour of concentrating on South African history and local condi-
tions. Crous also shows how Krog maintains the silences in Lady Anne’s
letters after the death of her husband in the last section of the collection. On
the whole, he makes it clear that Krog rewrote the historical documents freely,
mixing different voices yet managing to maintain a sense of authenticity. The

34
“onder my duim lê die fyn sintaksis van jou strot.”
35
Crous, “Wisselwerking,” 151–61, on: The Letters of Lady Anne Barnard to Henry
Dundas, ed. Lewin Robinson; The Cape Journals of Lady Anne Barnard 1797–1798,
ed. Lewin Robinson et al.; Dorothea Fairbridge, Lady Anne Barnard at the Cape of
Good Hope, 1797–1802 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1924); The Cape Diaries of Lady Anne
Barnard, 1799–1800, ed. Margaret Lenta & Basil Alexander le Cordeur, 2 vols. (Cape
Town: Van Riebeeck Society, 1999).
264 HEIN VILJOEN a

text is a weave of many different voices; a palimpsest of different layers of

voice and of history.
The poetic voice in the collection is thus marvellously hybrid. The speaker
absorbs the language of the erstwhile colonial oppressor into her own voice,
translating or miming it in her own language. Writing back to the centre, she
emulates the colonial figure in a minority and maybe even a subaltern lan-
guage. But as a colonial figure Lady Anne herself is equally colonized, op-
pressed, subaltern, and irrelevant. The changes in the speaker’s views of Lady
Anne mimic the colonial condition and the postcolonial resistance to that
position, pitting the solidarity of women against a haughty oppressor. This is
ironical coming from the position of a different colonial (or pseudo-colonial)
oppressor. Both figures are colonizers as well as colonized persons; both
privileged as well as subaltern (white, from the fallen elite, powerless). Both
occupy liminal, in-between positions; both, in the language of “Dear S.,” are
sailing through in-between light as thick as fleece. Their “radiant uselessness”
(“totale stralende nutteloosheid”) again raises the important issue of the value
of art in politically turbulent times; the issue of aesthetics versus politics.
By juxtaposing her own life with Lady Anne’s across the historical divide,
the poet thus created highly resonant parallels, making the historical distance
a prerequisite for a moving exploration of in-between, interstitial spaces in
different senses of the word.

Art and reality: The politics of representation

Like any traveller encountering a new country, Lady Anne is conscious of the
gap between her language and the new experiences, people, geographical fea-
tures, fauna and flora that she has to name. Explorers have been mapping and
naming the Cape since the fifteenth century – a process that reached a peak in
the eighteenth century, with many travellers and scientific observers coming
to the Cape to describe its unique flora and exotic people and fauna.36 In seve-
ral poems, we find Lady Anne, a woman “with language and transparent sea”
– knowledgeable about paint, water, words, and light (as I would gloss it) – at
work as painter and also as writer, trying to describe or represent a country
she does not know but also, of course, subjecting the country to her colonial

36
See Siegfried Huigen, Verkenningen van Zuid-Afrika: Achttiende-eeuwse reizi-
gers aan de Kaap [explorations of South Africa: eighteenth-century travellers at the
Cape] (Zutphen: Walburg, 2007).
a Navigating the Interstitial 265

gaze, taking possession of it, conquering it linguistically and aesthetically. In

this process, Lady Anne had, of course, to rely on her existing vocabulary,
adapting it to the people and circumstances of the new colony, describing the
unknown in terms of the known – thus, also using the conceptual framework
that she acquired in England. This finds a parallel in Antjie Krog, who has to
discover a fresh language to name and express the new that is being born as
the old passes away, the new language of “humanity and compassion,” as she
calls it in Kleur kom nooit alleen nie.37
The first section ends with Lady Anne’s account of their arrival at the
Cape, in which the land is described as gradually revealing itself from behind
the mist; despite the massiveness of the spectacle, it is rendered in womanly
and domestic metaphors (embossed as on a pewter plate, for example). Leeu-
kop unbuttons from around its throat the necklace of clouds, which draw apart
like a curtain to reveal Table Mountain, hulking, but hiding its dourness be-
hind the smart pleat of a damask table cloth.38 These images come from Lady
Anne’s journals, and the image of “the Lion’s rump whisk[ing] off the
vapours with its tail” and “its erect throat” are translations from her eleventh
letter to Dundas.39 In contrast to Lady Anne’s broad-faced, smiling Table
Mountain, Krog’s is sullen and wine-coloured. These domestic metaphors
serve to reduce the scale and strangeness of the scene, to bring it into ordinary
parameters so to get a grip on what is foreign and perhaps terrifying. Sublime
Table Mountain is reduced to a coy lady hiding behind her fan, as it were, or
displaying her table settings to advantage as she perhaps would in London
high society. Lady Anne seems to be misrecognizing herself in the spectacle
of sea and mountain.
and Lion’s Tail switches the mist from his rump
Lion’s Head unties and lets fall guilelessly
the necklace of clouds around outstretched throat –
up across a bare, swollen stone foot stealthily plays

37
Antjie Krog, Kleur kom nooit alleen nie [colour never comes on its own] (Cape
Town: Kwela, 2000).
38
Krog, Lady Anne, 17.
39
A.M. Lewin Robinson et al., The Cape Journals of Lady Anne Barnard, 140–54.
And not Krog’s “delicate poetic rewritings,” as Crous supposes (“Wisselwerking,”
152). See letter 11, dated 10 July 1797 in A.M. Lewin Robinson, The Letters of Lady
Anne Barnard to Henry Dundas, 37.
266 HEIN VILJOEN a

the curtain and there’s the mountain – sheer

sullen and wine-coloured. Massive. His dourness
hidden under the smart pleat of a
tablecloth of damask. . .
(my tr.)

en Leeuwstaart piets die wasem van sy kruis;

knoop los en laat val argeloos Leeuwkop
die halssnoer van wolke om gestrekte keel –
óp oor ‘n kaal geswolle klipvoet steels speel
die gordyn en dáár is die berg – loodreg
dikbek en wynkleurig. Massief. Sy stugheid
verskuil onder die netjiese tafeldoekplooi
van damask…
(Lady Anne, 17)
The relationship between art and reality is in one poem figured explicitly as a
boundary, but then, in one of the poems based on Lady Anne’s description of
her visit to the mission station at Genadendal, as the transparent boundary of a
piece of window-glass. She wants to achieve balance in her watercolour by
using a lot of green, to catch the whole landscape in a frame and outlive her
emotional reaction to the valley before her; to put it into perspective. But the
sun thwarts her efforts and she realizes that she is unable to scale the scene
properly; her work remains at a distance from the reality and she longs to
break through that distance, the elusive window-glass. As a boundary, the
window-glass holds at bay, removes from immediate reality, sanitizes, frames
in, traps in a grid: It again reduces the sublime landscape to domestic meta-
phors, wrapping it in pretty pictures and poems, as Lady Anne herself (or the
cynical alter ego of the poet) realizes.
I don’t get it on paper. It doesn’t fit,
the scale is wrong. I aim. I start afresh.
I stare until it dawns on me:
my pages will always spell window, spell distance,
the angle of incidence is always passive
and this is the way Madame wants to live
in this country; safely through glass,
wrapped in pretty pictures and rhymes.
but I could
do
differently.
a Navigating the Interstitial 267

I could slowly pull back my hand and pick up a stone

I could throw it,
shatter the glass
to gasp, to thaw retchingly in this hip-high landscape
at last.
(Down to My Last Skin, 71)

Ek kry dit nie geteken nie, nie ingepas geskaal

ek vee uit korrel tuur tot dit my oorval die weet
die besef: my bladsye bly altyd ruit, spel altyd afstand,
die invalshoek bly passief. En so wil Madame dié land
deur glas bly waarneem in prentjies en poësietjies strik.
Stadig sou my hand kon terugtrek ’n klip vasvat en góói
snakkend deur die gestrekte ruit kon gooi
om in die heuphoog landskap kokhalsend te ontdooi
(Lady Anne, 57)

The aesthetic framing is inescapable, however: the speaker herself calls it a

landscape – an already aesthetically framed and experienced section of the en-
vironment. The glass of acquired seeing and understanding is not easily shat-
tered. Reality seems to resist being reduced to the conventions of northern
landscape painting. In a landscape that totally lacks green, the green of bal-
ance cannot be achieved. The valley cannot be pulled into a framed perspec-
tive and the harsh sun hides the mission station behind a heat-haze. Even ex-
clusion as a rule of watercolour painting is ineffective. Becoming a living part
of the landscape is equally difficult: “The angle of incidence remains passive.”
The desire to shatter the glass is a desire to experience the landscape bodily
and as nauseating in its living existence, like Roquentin in Sartre’s Nausea;40
to become part of it; to thaw static views and aesthetic reductions and to be-
come immersed in the real landscape as in hip-high grass. The glass as
framing boundary is transparent, but it interposes a static frame between ob-
server, the poet–artist, and lived reality. Lady Anne, perhaps without realizing
it, desires to shatter the colonial way of looking and to experience the South
African reality in its concrete otherness. The poetic persona shares this desire.
This aesthetic experience is, however, framed emphatically by Lady Anne’s
guilty feelings about her privileged life in contrast to the poor congregation of

40
Jean–Paul Sartre, Nausea, tr. Robert Baldick (La Nausée, 1938; Harmondsworth:
Penguin, 1965).
268 HEIN VILJOEN a

Genadendal and their simple faith, but also their pain. She speaks of “this
exclusive stain” and wonders whether she is only after cheap thrills. More ex-
plicitly than in the Afrikaans version, she asks: “Shouldn’t every settler carry
his bundle of gold and decompose in regret and guilt?”41 Krog projects her
colonial guilt, as articulated in her poem on guilt,42 onto Lady Anne. This
theme runs through the whole collection, and serves here to heighten the con-
trasts between the intractability of the Cape as new, unexplored country and
of South Africa in the interregnum of the 1980s.
Discussing the issue of writing and reality in Lady Anne, Louise Viljoen
finds that the collection itself is a kind of transparency that withal does not
provide a window onto reality or tries to capture reality in language.43 She
sees it, rather, as in itself a transparency that leads the reader to other texts in a
web of texts that are never absolute in themselves but form part of an unend-
ing dialogue between texts. This also requires a poet who has learned to listen
to, and is willing to enter fearlessly into dialogue with, other texts, even if
they might contradict her own texts mercilessly.
The desire to encounter the country in all its intractability thus remains in
tension with the intertextual dialogue that the collection foregrounds.

The politics of sex: Power-games between men and women

Just like guilt, the power-games between men and women and the need for
women to negotiate their positions are of central concern in Lady Anne. These
negotiations are often figured in boundary metaphors. Section I I I ends with
the publication of Antjie Krog’s menstruation chart,44 which provocatively
transgresses the boundary of the private and the public. Here the poet herself
enters the collection as a body and tries to erase the distance between bio-
logical person and poetic persona. It is not only a proclamation of her essen-
tial femininity but also a device for controlling her fertility. She is, as it were,
asserting her own existence, still in flesh and blood, against the life and jour-
neys of Lady Anne that assume prominence in section I I I .

41
Krog, Down to My Last Skin, 70. “Moet elk nie as sondebok sy geërfde goud-
gebinde bene as drag uitspeel en met waardige berou galvrek?” Lady Anne, 56.
42
“’n Gedig oor skuld,” Lady Anne, 98–100.
43
“Die teks as transparant,” Ons ongehoorde soort, 56–71.
44
Lady Anne, 60.
a Navigating the Interstitial 269

Lady Anne was sent south – and, though of the nobility, she had little
money and less power. She had to keep negotiating her position – and her
husband’s – with the powerful male figures in her life; old flames who rejec-
ted her or whom she rejected. In a sense, the letters form part of this negotia-
tion – where, for example, she exchanges information about the colony for the
sake of old commitments or maybe to bolster her husband’s position. She was
at the mercy of male power, and how merciless that could be emerges in par-
ticular in section I V of the collection. As she and her husband fell out of
favour of the new governor, the uncertainties of her past were also revealed:
her love for William Windham45 and her desperate attempt, amidst the French
Revolution, to use Lord Henry Dundas’s marriage proposal as a lever to force
Windham to marry her (65–66).
Male power is explored in a number of poems in this section. In a sonnet,
“given line: macho-men give me the creeps,” the poet tries to look up the
meaning of the word ‘macho’ but does not find it the standard concise dic-
tionary of Afrikaans, the H A T .46 (It still isn’t there.) This leads her to the de-
finitions of ‘manly’, ‘feminine’ (“vroulik”), ‘chauvinist’, and ‘penis’ as male
rod, and so on, to ‘stick’, ‘cane’ (lat means ‘young man’ but also ‘penis’ in
Afrikaans vernacular), and ‘corporal punishment’.
“Ballad of the power game” (“ballade van die magspel”) enacts a no-holds-
barred quarrel between a man and his wife, both of whom feel powerless and
blame this on each other. This could be Lady Anne and Andrew Barnard quar-
relling, but it is a universal kind of power-game. The last two stanzas read:

45
William Windham (1750–1810) was a close friend and former suitor of Lady
Anne. He was educated at Eton and Oxford and was a close friend of Edmund Burke
and Dr Johnson. He became M P for Norwich in 1784 and fiercely supported the
royalist cause in France after the revolution. He served as Secretary at War under Pitt
from 1794 to 1801. With Cobbett, he founded the Political Register. Returning to
public service at the War and Colonial Office in Grenville‘s ‘Ministry of All the
Talents’ (1806–1807), he introduced measures to improve the condition of the military
forces by increasing pay and reducing terms of service. He died of a tumour in 1810.
His diary was published in 1866. Lenta & Le Cordeur, The Cape Diaries of Lady Anne
Barnard, 1799–1800, I: 1 note 4; Richard A. Smith, “Windham, William,” in The
Oxford Companion to British History, ed. John Cannon (Oxford U P , 2009), Oxford
Reference Online (Oxford U P ), http://www.oxfordreference.com/views/E N T R Y .html
?subview=Main&entry=t110.e4549 (accessed 28 February 2012).
46
H A T : Verklarende handwoordeboek van die Afrikaanse taal, ed. F.F. Odendaal &
R.H. Gouws (Cape Town: Pearson Education South Africa, 5th ed. 2005).
270 HEIN VILJOEN a

“omdat ek onbemiddeld trou!”

die woorde steek grense oor en kan nooit weer
terug – ‘n trust sal die mongool selfs nadoods onderhou –
here maar wat is die verweer?
– die donnerse lewe géé my soveel meer!
ter wille van jou klein terrein skat jou omheinde domein
proklameer ek jou elegante bates jou sinisme stateer
tot jou eer man sonder mag wat mateloos ondermyn
l’envoi
so gemeen as wat woede durf formuleer
kragtens poësie die onderdaan – ek voel nie
beter my polse palms wild begeer
woorde te buite woorde eindelik te lyf wil gaan.
(Lady Anne, 76)

“because I marry without means!”

the words cross boundaries and can never
return – a trust will support the Downs child even after death –
god but what can I say in defence?
– this deuced life gives me so much more!
for the sake of your small terrain darling your enclosed domain
I proclaim your elegant assets your cynicism asserts
in your honour man without power who undermines without mercy
l’envoi
as mean as wrath dares to formulate
by force of poetry the subordinate – I don’t feel
better my wrists palms wildly desire
words beyond words finally the body to assault.
(My tr.)

In the first stanza, the speaker quotes the husband expressing his disappoint-
ment with his wife, his subordinates, and his superiors. He rails against his
lack of power, which constantly undermines his position. As the quarrel es-
calates, the wife, in the second stanza, contemplates the end of their marriage,
feeling hemmed in by her household obligations as well as her husband’s
viciousness; feeling equally undermined (or, rather, corrupted) by her lack of
power. In the third stanza the forbidden words about her lack of means
surface, crossing a boundary irremediably, leaving her wondering what she
can say in her own defence. The answer seems to be that life has given her
much more and to proclaim her husband’s sway over his small fenced-in
a Navigating the Interstitial 271

domain. In Afrikaans, ‘domein’, ‘omhein’, and ‘ondermyn’ rhyme, suggesting

that boundaries and the corruption that power brings go hand in hand; that to
hold sway over even the small terrain of a household and a marriage can be a
corrupting influence.
The envoi enacts the limits of what can be said: going beyond words,
losing self-control, going over to bodily assault. ‘Te buite gaan’ means ‘to
lose self-control’ and ‘te lyf gaan’ means ‘to assault’ or, in other words, to
move beyond words to encounter the body of the other physically. At the end,
the syntax breaks down, expressing both the speaker’s frustration and her
desire. Demarcating or drawing boundaries in this contemplation seem to be
intimately tied to power and its corruptive effects.
The speaker elsewhere also exploits the rhyming capacity of Afrikaans to
subvert male power. In another sonnet, she describes her husband’s authority,
but when he slides her monthly check across the nightstand she realizes how
close money is to power.47 Yet, in “slaughtering cattle for the church bazaar”48
the poet uses female discourse for a wholly different purpose – to proclaim
female power in the way in which the women cut, chop, pull away, notch,
saw, mince, and eventually pack, price, and freeze the overabundance of meat.
The ending is ambivalent: the speaker asks whether the process is in hon-
our of God or in His dishonour, and draws a parallel between preserving and
catching in ink: i.e. writing, which also comes down to freezing, reducing to
lifelessness, trying to prevent death and decay.
One striking negotiation or enaction of female power is the poem “ma will
be late” (“ma sal laat wees”). When ma (mother) returns home late at night,
she has to overcome a whole series of obstacles: her own tiredness, the
kitchen door, the family’s distressed dreams, their abandoned language, the
requirements of hygiene and birth control. She has to slip past her daughter’s
room – an image of control – and the room where the boys sleep restlessly.
Slipping into the dark slit behind her husband’s back, at the end she dies “into
woman.” ‘Sneuwel’ in Afrikaans has the specific sense of ‘dying on the
battlefield’. She has to lay down a series of public and personal attributes –
from her suitcases to her humanity and her poetic persona – to become
woman (though she is called ma, ‘Mum’, only in the title). Does the essence
of woman, then, reside in setting all these things aside? The English translator
uses “woman” (not ‘wife’). ‘Vrou’ in Afrikaans can mean both ‘woman’ and

47
“hoe skerp die woord geld trek op die woord geweld,” Krog, Lady Anne, 74.
48
“beesslag vir die kerkbasaar,” Lady Anne, 70.
272 HEIN VILJOEN a

‘wife’. At the close, she moves into an ambush – an in-between space for kill-
ing an enemy. In Afrikaans this is, significantly, a ‘doodsakker’ – a space for
dying, the ‘field of death’. Entering this in-between space, she succumbs to the
requirements of being wife and mother.
ma will be late
that I come back to you
tired and without memory
that the kitchen door is open I

shuffle in with suitcases hurriedly bought presents

my family’s distressed dreams
slink down the corridor the windows stained

with their abandoned language in the hard

bathroom light I brush my teeth
put a pill on my tongue: Thur.

that I walk past where my daughter sleeps

the sheet neatly folded beneath her chin
on the dressing table silkworms rear in gold

that I can pass my sons

frowning like fists against their pillows
their restless undertones bruise the room

that I can rummage a nightie from the drawer

slip into the dark slit behind your back
that the warmth flows across to me

makes me neither poet nor human

in the ambush of breath
I die into woman
(Down to My Last Skin, 45)

ma sal laat wees

dat ek na julle toe terugkom
moeg en sonder herinnering
dat die kombuisdeur oop is ek

inskuifel met tasse haastige persente

in die gange sluip rond my gesin
se verdrietige drome ruite aangepak
a Navigating the Interstitial 273

van hulle verlate taal in die harde

badkamerlig borsel ek my tande
druk ‘n pilletjie op my tong: Do.

dat ek verbyloop waar my dogter slaap

haar lakens netjies geplat onder haar ken
op die spieëltafel steier sywurms in goud getoom

dat ek my seuns verby kan kom

fronsend teen kussings aangevuis
hul onrustige ondertone kneus deur die kamer

dat ek ‘n naghemp vroetel uit die laai

inglip in die donker skreef agter jou rug
dat die warmte na my oorvloei

maak my nog digter nog mens

in die hinderlaag van asem
sneuwel ek tot vrou
(Lady Anne, 73)

In this poem, the boundaries are mostly not physical ones but, rather, the cir-
cumscriptions of duties and obligations; externalizations (internal images) of
maternal guilt-feelings.
Just like privilege in the previous section, power seems to thrive on boun-
daries and demarcation. Both reality itself and the desire to go beyond words,
to grasp the body itself, are figured as going beyond borders, as breaking out
of hemmed-in positions. The idea of adroitly navigating the in-between seems
ultimately to be an illusion. The inscription on the inside cover of Lady
Anne’s original diary of the journey into the interior seems to echo through
this section as well: “Every page is a page of struggle. I write to destroy the
border of unbearable pain.”49

Conclusion: Transparency and in-between light

What becomes clear in Krog’s poem-sequence is that real, physical boun-
daries and distances are used as metaphors (or cognitive frameworks) in a
variety of ways to try and make sense of the world and the Other. The poems
are also a reflection on (and critique of) symbolic distinctions between people,
whether of race, class, or material circumstance, that are turned into social

49
Krog, Lady Anne, 51.
274 HEIN VILJOEN a

boundaries and lead to physical separation. In a sense, this is the ‘story of

apartheid’. As Lady Anne reports on a far-away uncivilized colony, her civil-
ized language is crossed with the language of the colony (in this case, literally
Antjie Krog’s Afrikaans), and this makes of the collection a form of writing
back to the centre that explores and pushes at the boundaries of language,
particularly those associated with violence and power. Antjie Krog also tries
to dissolve the boundaries of rank and privilege, encountering Lady Anne as
an equal.
The poet counters the language bounded by violence (“omgrens met ge-
weld”) with female discourse – a discourse that, in the service of God or
country, can also degenerate into violence. But central to Krog’s poetic here is
the idea of sailing through interstitial space, interstitial light, conceived as
some kind of materiality associated with women (“fleeces”). Cording this
kind of tresses creates, as it were, the wind, the body (in the words of Pound):
the poem itself.
On the other hand, writing poetry is closely connected with the boundaries
of the body, conceived of as an organic process – a vein or bodily cavity
opening up, creating silence, breath, light (cf. 13–14). The body is understood
as an organic boundary (or wall) and writing as an organic process akin to
breathing.50
The images of water, air, and light in the sequence should be understood
in this sense. The bounded self and the discourse of violence surrounding
every word are enclosures that become broken down in confrontation with
fluid, liminal, in-between states such as being on the beach, at the boundary
between land and sea, just on or just beneath the surface of water, at the
interfaces between the known and the unknown, the civilized and the
uncouth. Lady Anne is throughout the collection closely associated with sea
and water, be it the water and mist of Scotland and Table Mountain, the
southern seas and the beaches at the Cape, or her pool at Kirstenbosch. Her
proud, constrained highland self seems to dissolve or drown in water. Two
of the central words in the collection are “transpire” and “transparency,” ex-
pressing, as it were, a state of being on the surface of water, diffused with
light. “Transpire” in this sense does not only mean to breathe or “to give off

50
In other words, I disagree with Marius Crous’ contention that the poem connects
writing and masturbation. See Crous, “Die tekstualisering van die liggaam in Lady
Anne” [textualizing the body in Lady Anne], Tydskrif vir literatuurwetenskap 19.1
(2003): 3.
a Navigating the Interstitial 275

watery vapour,”51 but also to make known, to happen, to make light, to

create insight. By making boundaries fluid and transparent, Krog does in-
deed create, in Bhabha’s terms, a third space of enunciation in a variety of
in-between states.
Through the rewriting of historical documents – in language, in other
words – topographical boundaries, such as the distance between the Cape
and London, the Cape and the interior, and the difference between the eigh-
teenth and the twentieth century, become permeable and open to the com-
plex negotiations between the poetic persona and her alter ego Lady Anne.
These transactions deal with beauty, love, uselessness, guilt, and privilege.
The relationship develops from veneration, via rejection and selfish ex-
ploitation, to ambivalent acceptance. It is through Lady Anne, and by taking
the lady’s words into her own mouth, that the poet can speak to her readers
and transcend the ideological limits (of power, class, race, and sex) of the
language itself in order to start articulating a new alphabet. Essential to that
process is developing sensitivity to human suffering in any form as exem-
plified by slavery as well as by Lady Anne’s mourning of her husband. It
seems, finally, that it is only once boundaries start dissolving, in the inter-
stitial space figured mostly as between water and light, surface and depth,
that such a prefiguration of a new language and a new humanity becomes
possible. The process of cutting and sectioning represented by the fragments
from other texts in the collection, cuttings from the letters and journals and
everyday occurrences, is repeated in the two cuts of the collection’s double
ending, which is also a cutting-loose of the alter ego and the collection
itself. The only way to close the tightly imbricated history of Antjie Krog
and Lady Anne permanently is, in a manner of speaking, to cut her throat.

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51
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a
Notes on the Contributors

I L E A N A D I M I T R I U is a professor of English at the University of KwaZulu–

Natal, Durban. Since obtaining her PhD in English literature at the University
of Natal, she has published widely on South African and postcolonial lite-
rature, as well as on intercultural studies. Her publications include book chap-
ters, novels in translation, a special journal issue on ‘translation, diversity and
power’, as well as the monograph Art of Conscience: Rereading Nadine Gor-
dimer after Apartheid (2000).
H E I L N A D U P L O O Y is Professor of Afrikaans and Dutch literature and literary
theory at North-West University (Potchefstroom campus), South Africa. She
was educated at the Potchefstroom University for Christian Higher Education
and the University of Pretoria. She obtained a D.Litt. at the Potchefstroom
University in 1985 with a dissertation on twentieth-century narrative theories.
She has published more than sixty articles in accredited journals and twenty
chapters in books in South African and international publications, as well as a
book on narrative theory (Verhaalteorie in die twintigste eeu, 1986). She
specializes in narrative theory and is currently working on a project focusing
on narrative structure and technique in lyric poetry within the theoretical
framework of post-classical narratology. She also has published two volumes
of poetry.
J O H N G O U W S was educated at Rhodes University and the University of Ox-
ford. After twenty-eight years of teaching English, he retired from Rhodes
University, where he is Professor Emeritus. At present he is Professor Extra-
ordinary at North-West University, Potchefstroom. His publications include
The Prose Works of Fulke Greville, Lord Brooke (1986) and the poems of
Nicholas Oldisworth for the Renaissance English Text Society (2009).
A N N E H E I T H is an associate professor in comparative literature in the Depart-
ment of Culture and Media Studies, Umeå University, Sweden. After obtain-
280 CROSSING BORDERS, DISSOLVING BOUNDARIES a

ing a Dr.art. from the University of Bergen in 1997, she was a postdoctoral re-
searcher at the University of Tromsø, Norway, and guest researcher at
Uppsala University. She participates in a number of networks researching
borders and Nordic identities, and is a member of the steering committee of
the research network Diversity in Nordic Literature and coordinator of the
Nordic Critical Race and Whiteness Studies research network. Her research
interests include contemporary Nordic literatures, national identity, ethnic
literary studies, postcolonialism, and indigenous studies. She has published
extensively in Nordic and international journals. Her latest book (in Swedish)
is Texter, medier, kontexter (2006). The essay in this volume was written as
part of the Border Aesthetics Project.
L I D A K R Ü G E R is a research assistant at the University of South Africa, Pre-
toria, where she is also enrolled for her doctorate in theory of literature. The
focus of her doctoral study is the resonance of the concepts of deceit, authen-
ticity, and metatheatre in Harold Pinter’s Betrayal, Tom Stoppard’s The Real
Thing, and Patrick Marber’s Closer. In 2009 she completed her M A in Eng-
lish literature at North-West University, Potchefstroom. Her thesis was a com-
parative study of the cultural contexts of Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard and
Janet Suzman’s The Free State, on which the essay in the present volume is
based.
S U S A N M E Y E R is a senior lecturer in the Faculty of Education of North-West
University, Potchefstroom, South Africa. She obtained the D.Litt. et Phil.
degree in Afrikaans literature at the University of South Africa. Her research
is focused on ecocriticism and its manifestation in contemporary Afrikaans
prose. She has published several articles in I S I -accredited journals, of which
the most recent ones appeared in the Journal of Humanities (June 2012) and
in Tydskrif vir Letterkunde (September 2012).
A D É L E N E L is an associate professor in the School of Languages on the Vaal
Triangle Campus of North-West University, where she teaches Afrikaans and
Dutch literature and film studies. She has contributed chapters to books on
Afrikaans literature and publishes regularly in academic journals on Afrikaans
and Dutch literature, film, and literature and its relation to visual arts. Her
current research interests include visual culture, the city as a spatial form in
literature and film, and relationality.
E L L E N R E E S , currently a research fellow at the University of Oslo, has pre-
viously held positions as an associate professor of Scandinavian Studies at the
a Notes on the Contributors 281

University of Oregon and Arizona State University. She received her PhD in
Scandinavian languages and literature from the University of Washington in
1995. She is the author of two books, On the Margins: Nordic Women Mod-
ernists of the 1930s (2005) and Figurative Space in the Novels of Cora
Sandel (2010), in addition to over thirty scholarly articles on various aspects
of Nordic literature and cinema.
J O H A N S C H I M A N S K I is an associate professor of comparative literature at the
University of Tromsø. He obtained a Dr.art. degree (1997) from the Univer-
sity of Oslo after studies in mathematics, astronomy, linguistics, Welsh, and
general/comparative literature. He was visiting professor of borders studies at
the University of Glamorgan in 2006 and visiting researcher at the Amster-
dam School of Cultural Analysis in 2011. His research interests include lite-
rature in Welsh, science fiction, national identity/postcolonialism, arctic dis-
courses, and border poetics. His publications include “Reading Gender in
Border-Crossing Narratives” (2010), Border Poetics De-Limited (ed. with
Stephen Wolfe, 2007), and Arctic Discourses (ed. with Anka Ryall & Hen-
ning Howlid Wærp, 2010). He is co-leader of the Border Poetics Research
Group and its associated projects.
T O N Y U L L Y A T T completed an M A in English at the University of Auckland
and a D.Litt. et Phil. at the University of South Africa, before he began lec-
turing there in 1975. In 1983, he was appointed Professor of English at the
University of the Free State, where he taught English and American Literature
until his retirement in 2003. Since 2010, he has been a Research Fellow at
North-West University’s Potchefstroom campus. He also has M A degrees in
applied language studies, myth studies, and psychology as well as a PhD in
myth studies. He has authored or edited several books, chapters, and nume-
rous scholarly articles, and has won prizes for poetry, radio drama, poetry
translation, and his weekly newspaper column. His present research interests
are the problematics of defining madness and its depiction in literary texts,
and exploring several contemporary retellings of Homer’s epic poems.
P H I L V A N S C H A L K W Y K studied at North-West University (formerly the Pot-
chefstroom University for Christian Higher Education) and completed a PhD
in general literary studies in 2004. Currently, he is an associate professor in
the School of Languages, Potchefstroom campus, where he teaches Afrikaans
and Dutch literature. He previously taught at Adam Mickiewicz University,
PoznaĔ, Poland (2001–2006), and was guest lecturer at Antwerp University
282 CROSSING BORDERS, DISSOLVING BOUNDARIES a

(2009 and 2011). He has published nationally and internationally in a number

of accredited journals and contributed chapters to Beyond the Threshold
(2007), Volwassen worden: Cultuurverschijnsel en literair motief (2007),
Over grenzen: Een vergelijkende studie van Nederlandse, Vlaamse en Afri-
kaanse poëzie (2009), and ‘Shifting the Compass: Pluricontinental Connec-
tions in Dutch Colonial and Postcolonial Literature’ (forthcoming). He
specializes in comparative literature, with a specific emphasis on relationality
and rhetorical constructions in Afrikaans, Dutch, and South African English
literature.
H E I N V I L J O E N is Professor of Afrikaans and Dutch literature and literary
theory at North-West University (Potchefstroom campus). He studied in
Potchefstroom and Pretoria and also at the University of Utrecht. His PhD
(1985) was a comparative study of the system of the South African novel
around the year 1981. His present research interests include Afrikaans poetry,
literary theory, and literary and cultural creolization. He has published widely
on Afrikaans literature and literary theory. With Chris N. van der Merwe he
edited Storyscapes (2004) and Beyond the Threshold (2007). He is the cur-
rent editor-in-chief of the literary journal Literator.