Mimetic Presuppositions: On the Epitextual Responses to Two Poems in English by Marlene van Niekerk

Abstract

In this article, I consider two fairly recent English poems by Marlene van Niekerk: “Mud school” (2013) and “Fallist art (in memory of Bongani Mayosi)” (2018). Specifically, I explore the context surrounding the production of these poems, and what we can possibly glean from their limited (and not exclusively literary) reception in order to understand how this part of Van Niekerk’s (English) authorship has thus far been read in more limited ways by critics and scholars. By focusing on the epitextual responses surrounding these poems, I show how they are symptomatic of what Jahan Ramazani calls the “mimetic presuppositions” that often take shape in critical readings of postcolonial literature (2004). Considering the especially politically engaged nature of Van Niekerk’s novels in particular, I argue that the oversight of Van Niekerk’s poetry, both residing in the dearth of translation of her poetry and in the critical blind spot writ large in studies of her work in English, comes as a result of what Emma Bird (2018) calls poetry’s “distinctly peripheral position” in postcolonial literary studies, a critical lens that has in various ways directed readings of Van Niekerk’s English work.

 Opsomming

 In hierdie artikel word “Mud school” (2013) en “Fallist art (in memory of Bongani Mayosi)” (2018), twee onlangse Engelstalige gedigte deur Marlene van Niekerk, onder die loep geneem. Ek verken spesifiek die konteks rondom die skepping van die gedigte, en wat daar moontlik afgelei kan word van hul beperkte (en nie uitsluitlik literere) resepsie ten einde te verstaan hoe hierdie afdeling van Van Niekerk se (Engelstalige) oeuvre met ’n nouer aanslag deur kritici benader is. Deur te fokus op die epitekstuele response op hierdie gedigte toon ek aan hoe hulle kenmerkend is van wat Jahan Ramazani die “mimetic presuppositions”, oftewel mimetiese vooronderstellings, noem wat dikwels in ontledings van postkoloniale literatuur (2004) aangetref word. Met die besondere betrokke aard van Van Niekerk se romans in gedagte voer ek aan dat die afskeping van haar poesie, in terme van sowel die gebrek aan voldoende (Engelse) vertalings as die ooglopende kritiese blindekol in ondersoeke oor haar werk in Engels, te wyte is aan wat Emma Bird noem die “distinctly peripheral position” van poesie as ’n genre binne die kader van die postkoloniale literatuurstudie, wat ’n kritiese lens is waardeur Van Niekerk se werk dikwels gelees word.