Where to Locate the Self? Gendered Hospitality, African Immigration and White Self-Renewal in Nadine Gordimer’s The Pickup

Abstract

This article reads Nadine Gordimer’s preoccupation with migration in her 2001 novel The Pickup through the metaphor of hospitality. In doing so, it draws links and inaugurates a dialogue with a worldwide debate in which scholars of various disciplines and backgrounds are concerned with the philosophy and ethics of hospitality towards migrants. My attention lies on the interconnectedness of political and public discourses and private, everyday practices of hospitality in Gordimer’s novel. It is here that the gendered dimension and construction of hospitality gains particular prominence as the “national home” continues to be negotiated through the female body, whose (sexual) possession now promises access and potential national membership. I argue that the novel locates the motivations behind the main protagonist’s extension of welcome to an African migrant within discourses of whiteness and privilege in the post-apartheid context. I further explore ways in which the novel conceives its African migrant protagonists both inside and outside the dominant benevolent/malevolent guest paradigm.

Opsomming

Hierdie artikel ondersoek Nadine Gordimer se preokkupasie met migrasie in The Pickup (2001) aan die hand van gasvryheid as metafoor. Dit lê verbande met en tree toe tot ’n wêreldwye debat tussen vakkundiges in verskillende dissiplines en met verskillende agtergronde oor die filosofie en etiek van gasvryheid wat aan migrante betoon word. Ek fokus op die onderlinge verbande tussen politieke en openbare diskoerse, en private, alledaagse gasvryheid soos dit in Gordimer se roman betoon word. Dit is hier waar die genderspesifieke dimensie en konstruksie van gasvryheid opmerklik word, want die “nasionale tuiste” word steeds deur die vrou se liggaam beding: seksuele besit hou nou die belofte van toegang en moontlik nasionale lidmaatskap in. Die roman plaas die hoofprotagonis se motivering om gasvryheid aan ’n Afrika-migrant te betoon binne diskoerse oor witwees en bevoorregting in ’n postapartheid-konteks. Voorts ondersoek ek die wyses waarop die roman sowel binne as buite die dominante paradigma van die welwillende/kwaadwillige gas vorm gee aan protagoniste wat Afrika-migrante is.