The Politics of Identity: South Africa, Story-telling, and Literary History
Abstract
The publication of Michael Chapman’s Southern African Literatures (1996) occasioned lively debate. In South Africa responses involved matters of identity: whose language, culture, or story would retain purchase in a new South Africa? In North America and Europe related questions were cast – less emotively – as enquiries into the possibility of writing literary history at a time of postmodernist “discontinuity”. Using such responses as a starting point, the paper considers the value of literary history’s retention, amid discontinuity, of an ethics of narrative.
Opsomming
’n Lewendige debat het gevolg op die publikasie van Michael Chapman se Southern African Literatures (1996). In Suid-Afrika was die meeste reaksies gerig op vraag-stellings oor identiteit: wie se taal, kultuur en storie sou stand hou in ’n nuwe Suid-Afrika? In Noord-Amerika en Europa is soortgelyke sake geopper – met minder emosie – as ondersoeksvrae na die moontlikheid daarvan om ’n literatuurgeskiedenis te skryf in ’n tyd van postmodernistiese “diskontinuïteit”. Met soortgelyke reaksies as ’n vertrekpunt, word daar in hierdie artikel besin oor die waarde van die litera-tuurgeskiedenis se behoud van ’n narratiewe etiek te midde van diskontinuïteit.
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