“One Does Not Do That to a Human Being”: Reading A Man of Good Hope (2015) as a Testimonio of Human Rights
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.25159/2663-6565/13796Keywords:
human rights , refugees , autobiography, testimonio, A Man of Good Hope , (in)justiceAbstract
Human rights are central to South Africa’s nationalist struggle and imaginings of a democratic dispensation. Amongst other institutions, the Human Rights Commission, the South African Constitution, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the Freedom Charter have historically been tasked with enshrining human rights in processes, relationships and moralities defining South African democracy. However, over the years, conceptions of who is entitled to human rights and protection have continued to shift, especially in the wake of increasing numbers of migrants seeking different forms of refuge in South Africa. This article turns to literature as a site to encounter contemporary discourse on migrant human rights in the country. Using Jonny Steinberg’s biography A Man of Good Hope (2015), the article explores how the biography’s styling as a testimonio allows it to critically engage the question of human rights and (in)justice in relation to migrants. Focusing on the protagonist’s witnessing of migrants’ violated lives and themes of victimhood, suffering and dehumanisation, the article examines the ethics of human rights and justice in A Man of Good Hope.
Metrics
References
Abodunrin, Femi. 2018. “‘Why Are You Here?’: Multiculturalism and Migration—A Study of Migrant Poetry from South Africa.” In “African Street Literature,” edited by Ashleigh Harris, special issue, English Studies in Africa 61 (2): 63–79. https://doi.org/10.1080/00138398.2018.1539303 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/00138398.2018.1539303
Achebe, Chinua. 2012. Hopes and Impediments: Selected Essays. New York: Penguin.
Amitabh, Mitra, and Naomi Nkealah, eds. 2014. Splinters of a Mirage Dawn: An Anthology of Migrant Poetry from South Africa. East London: The Poets Printery.
Amnesty International UK. 2018. “Literature and Human Rights.” June 27, 2018. Accessed November 28, 2023. https://www.amnesty.org.uk/literature-and-human-rights#:~:text=Through%20empathy%20we%20overcome%20prejudice,'&text=Reading%20fiction%20develops%20our%20empathy%20and%20social%20understanding
Attridge, Derek. 1995. Poetic Rhythm: An Introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Banda, Fareda. 2020. African Migration, Human Rights and Literature. New York: Bloomsbury Publishing. https://doi.org/10.5040/9781509938377 DOI: https://doi.org/10.5040/9781509938377
Biko, Steve. 1978. I Write What I Like. London: Bowerdean Press.
Breithaupt, Fritz A. 2015. “Empathic Sadism: How Readers Get Implicated.” In The Oxford Handbook of Cognitive Literary Studies, edited by Lisa Zunshine, 440–462. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Caminero-Santangelo, Marta. 2009. “At the Intersection of Trauma and Testimonio: Edwidge Danticat’s The Farming of Bones.” Antípodas: Journal of Hispanic and Galician Studies 20 (1): 5–26.
Cikara, Mina, and Susan T. Fiske. 2012. “Stereotypes and Schadenfreude: Affective and Physiological Markers of Pleasure at Outgroup Misfortunes.” Social Psychological and Personality Science 3 (1): 63–71. https://doi.org/10.1177/1948550611409245 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/1948550611409245
Dawes, James. 2009. “Human Rights in Literary Studies.” Human Rights Quarterly 31 (2): 394–409. https://doi.org/10.1353/hrq.0.0071 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/hrq.0.0071
Detue, Frédérik, and Charlotte Lacoste. 2020 “What Testimony Does to Literature.” Synthesis: An Anglophone Journal of Comparative Literary Studies 13: 22–36. https://doi.org/10.12681/syn.27559 DOI: https://doi.org/10.12681/syn.27559
Douzinas, Costas. 2000. The End of Human Rights: Critical Thought at the Turn of the Century. London: Bloomsbury Publishing. https://doi.org/10.5040/9781509955527 DOI: https://doi.org/10.5040/9781509955527
Eastmond, Marita. 2007. “Stories as Lived Experience: Narratives in Forced Migration Research.” Journal of Refugee Studies 20 (2): 248–264. https://doi.org/10.1093/jrs/fem007 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/jrs/fem007
Eze, Chielozona. 2014. “Feminism with a Big ‘F’: Ethics and the Rebirth of African Feminism in Chika Unigwe’s On Black Sisters’ Street.” Research in African Literatures 45 (4): 89–103. https://doi.org/10.2979/reseafrilite.45.4.89 DOI: https://doi.org/10.2979/reseafrilite.45.4.89
Eze, Chielozona. 2016. Ethics and Human Rights in Anglophone African Women’s Literature: Feminist Empathy. Cham: Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-40922-1 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-40922-1
Eze, Chielozona. 2021. Justice and Human Rights in the African Imagination: We, Too, Are Humans. London: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003148272 DOI: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003148272
Garvis, Susanne. 2015. Narrative Constellations: Exploring Lived Experience in Education. New York: Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-6300-151-9 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-6300-151-9
Gastrow, Vanya, and Roni Amit. 2012. “Elusive Justice: Somali Traders’ Access to Formal and Informal Justice Mechanisms in the Western Cape.” African Centre for Migration and Society Report, University of the Witwatersrand. Accessed November 22, 2023. https://www.academia.edu/8904251/Elusive_Justice_Somali_Traders_Access_to_Formal_and_Informal_Justice_Mechanisms_in_the_Western_Cape
Goldberg, Elizabeth Swanson, and Alexandra Schultheis Moore, eds. 2013. Theoretical Perspectives on Human Rights and Literature. Routledge Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Literature. New York: Routledge.
Handmaker, Jeff, and Jennifer Parsley. 2001. “Migration, Refugees, and Racism in South Africa.” In “Refugee Reception and Integration,” edited by Marzia Ali, special issue, Refuge 20 (10): 40–51. https://doi.org/10.25071/1920-7336.21246 DOI: https://doi.org/10.25071/1920-7336.21246
Hunt, Lynn. 2007. Inventing Human Rights: A History. New York: W.W. Norton and Co.
Jensen, Meg. 2018. “The Legible Face of Human Rights in Autobiographically Based Fiction.” In The Routledge Companion to Literature and Human Rights, edited by Sophia A. McClennen and Alexandra Schultheis Moore, 184–192. London: Routledge. DOI: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315778372-19
Kikamba, Simão. 2005. Going Home. Cape Town: Kwela Books.
Kopf, Martina. 2019. “Locating the Rwandan Genocide in Transnational Witnessing.” In The Routledge Handbook of African Literature, edited by Moradewun Adejunmobi and Carli Coetzee, 354–368. New York: Routledge.
Landau, Loren B., and Tanya Pampalone. 2019. I Want to Go Home Forever: Stories of Becoming and Belonging in South Africa’s Great Metropolis. Johannesburg: Wits University Press. https://doi.org/10.18772/22018082217 DOI: https://doi.org/10.18772/22018082217
Levenson, Zachary. 2017. “Living on the Fringe in Post-Apartheid Cape Town.” Contexts 16 (1): 24–29. https://doi.org/10.1177/1536504217696060 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/1536504217696060
Limbu, Bishupal. 2018. “The Permissible Narratives of Human Rights; Or, How to Be a Refugee.” Criticism 60 (1): 75–98. https://doi.org/10.13110/criticism.60.1.0075 DOI: https://doi.org/10.13110/criticism.60.1.0075
MacDonald, Michael T. 2015. “Emissaries of Literacy: Representations of Sponsorship and Refugee Experience in the Stories of the Lost Boys of Sudan.” College English 77 (5): 408–428. DOI: https://doi.org/10.58680/ce201527174
Malkki, Liisa. 1992. “National Geographic: The Rooting of Peoples and the Territorialization of National Identity among Scholars and Refugees.” Cultural Anthropology 7 (1): 24–44. https://doi.org/10.1525/can.1992.7.1.02a00030 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1525/can.1992.7.1.02a00030
Mamdani, Mahmood. 1996. Citizen and Subject. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Mberu, Blessing U., and Estelle M. Sidze. 2017. “The Hidden Side of the Story: Intra-African Migration.” In Out of Africa Why People Migrate, edited by Giovanni Carbone, 73–94. Milan: Ledizioni LediPublishing. https://www.ispionline.it/sites/default/files/pubblicazioni/out_of_africa_web.pdf
Nance, Kimberly A. 2006. Can Literature Promote Justice? Trauma Narrative and Social Action in Latin American Testimonio. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv1622n39 DOI: https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv1622n39
Nawyn, Stephanie J. 2016. “New Directions for Research on Migration in the Global South.” International Journal of Sociology 46 (3): 163–168. https://doi.org/10.1080/00207659.2016.1197719 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/00207659.2016.1197719
Nayar, Pramod K. 2016. Human Rights and Literature: Writing Rights. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-50432-6 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-50432-6
Nayar, Pramod K. 2020. The Human Rights Graphic Novel: Drawing it Just Right. New York: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003110255 DOI: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003110255
Ndlovu, Thabisani. 2019. “Putting the Human at the Centre: Human Rights and Literary Studies in South Africa.” South African Journal of Higher Education 33 (2): 107–122. https://doi.org/10.20853/33-2-2801 DOI: https://doi.org/10.20853/33-2-2801
Noxolo, Patricia. 2014. “Towards an Embodied Securityscape: Brian Chikwava’s Harare North and the Asylum Seeking Body as Site of Articulation.” Social and Cultural Geography 15 (3): 291–312. https://doi.org/10.1080/14649365.2014.882397 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/14649365.2014.882397
Nyamnjoh, Francis B. 2006. Insiders and Outsiders: Citizenship and Xenophobia in Contemporary Southern Africa. London: Zed Books. https://doi.org/10.5040/9781350220775 DOI: https://doi.org/10.5040/9781350220775
Oliver, Sophie. 2011. “Dehumanization: Perceiving the Body as (In)Human.” In Humiliation, Degradation, Dehumanization: Human Dignity Violated, edited by Paulus Kaufmann, Hannes Kuch, Christian Neuhaeuser and Elaine Webster, 85–97. Dordrecht: Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-9661-6_7 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-9661-6_7
Potter, Rachel, and Lyndsey Stonebridge. 2014. “Writing and Rights.” Critical Quarterly 56 (4): 1–16. https://doi.org/10.1111/criq.12157 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/criq.12157
Rai, Tage S., Piercarlo Valdesolo, and Jesse Graham. 2017. “Dehumanization Increases Instrumental Violence, But Not Moral Violence.” PNAS: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 114 (32): 8511–8516. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1705238114 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1705238114
RSA (Republic of South Africa). 1998. Refugees Act, No. 130 of 1998. Government Gazette, Vol. 402, No. 19544. Cape Town: Government Printers. Accessed November 22, 2023. https://www.gov.za/sites/default/files/gcis_document/201409/a130-980.pdf
Slaughter, Joseph. 2012. “Rights on Paper.” In Theoretical Perspectives on Human Rights and Literature, edited by Elizabeth Swanson Goldberg and Alexandra Schultheis Moore, xi–xiv. London: Routledge.
Steinberg, Jonny. 2015. A Man of Good Hope. New York: Vintage.
Taruvinga, Tafadzwa Zimunhu. 2019. The Educated Waiter: Memoir of an African Immigrant. Johannesburg: Jacana.
Tlali, Miriam. 1980. Amandla: A Novel. Johannesburg: Raven Press.
(UN) United Nations. 1984. “Universal Declaration of Human Rights.” Accessed November 11, 2023. https://www.un.org/en/about-us/universal-declaration-of-human-rights
Vambe, Maurice Taonezvi. 2019. “Stories of Milk, Honey and Bile: Representing Diasporic African Foreigner’s Identities in South African Fiction.” In Indigenous, Aboriginal, Fugitive and Ethnic Groups around the Globe, edited by Liat Klain-Gabbay, 25–44. IntechOpen. https://doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.78898 DOI: https://doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.78898
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
Accepted 2023-11-14
Published 2024-03-04