Half ’n Half: Mytho-Historical and Spatial Entanglements in Charlie Human’s Apocalypse Now Now and Kill Baxter

Abstract

Since 2011, the genre of South African speculative fiction has seen a significant surfacing of new writers working within the genre. One of them is Charlie Human, the author of Apocalypse Now Now (2013) and Kill Baxter (2014). Our article analyses Human’s two novels in terms of overlapping mythological and historical lineages as well as spatial confluences and their influence on the conception and (re-)definition of South African whiteness. Using Sarah Nuttall’s concept of entanglement (a state of being intertwined or engaged with) in connection with Melissa Steyn’s observations of South African whiteness and its idiosyncratic position in relation to other postcolonial countries, we illustrate how Human’s novels (re-)negotiate South African whiteness by endowing it with a distinctly (Southern) African inflection. By way of conclusion, the paper proposes that speculative fiction gives an easier way to envisage possible solutions to the socio-political complexities at play in present South Africa, which are less difficult to swallow than what realist fiction might be (plausibly) able to offer.

Opsomming

Sedert 2011 het ’n beduidende aantal nuwe skrywers hul verskyning in die genre, Suid-Afrikaanse spekulatiewe fiksie, gemaak. Een van hulle is Charlie Human, die outeur van Apocalypse Now Now (2013) en Kill Baxter (2014). Ons artikel ontleed Human se twee romans in terme van die oorvleueling van mitologiese en historiese afstamming so wel as die samevloeiing van leefruimtes en hul invloed op die begrip en (her-)definiëring van Suid-Afrikaanse witheid. Met die gebruik van Sarah Nuttall se konsep van verstrengeldheid (’n toestand van vervlegdheid) in samehang met Melissa Steyn se observasies van Suid-Afrikaanse witheid se eienaardigheid met betrekking tot ander postkoloniale lande, illustreer ons hoe Human se romans Suid-Afrikaanse witheid (her-)onderhandel deur dit te stempel met ’n definitiewe (Suider) Afrika infleksie. Ten slotte suggereer die artikel dat spekulatiewe fiksie ’n toeganklike metode is om moontlike oplossings te vind vir die sosio-politieke ingewikkeldhede wat in die huidige Suid-Afrika afspeel. Hierdie metode is meer geloofwaardig as wat realistiese fiksie dalk sal kan bied.