The Individuated Collective Utterance: Lack, Law and Desire in the Autobiographies of Ellen Kuzwayo and Sindiwe Magona

Abstract

This article signposts the discussion of autobiographical selfing through figures of cultural memory that are a function of double consciousness and double temporality. Two exemplary autobiographies, one by Ellen Kuzwayo and one by Sindiwe Magona, are shown to evince complex ontological formations between which the gap in representing the self of experience and the writing self is radically repeated in the multiplicity of individual articulation of collective agency. The paradox of individual-collective articulation bespeaks the "gap" of writing in double temporality. The article explores that "gap" between Darste/lung and Vertretung1 on the premise that it evocatively refers to the slippage or instability of "Truth" written from the exergue of margins of the borderline texts of remembrance in the autobiographies of two black women. For these women's writing runs parallel - and gives testimony - to their central involvement in the urban township communities as social workers and mothers or, if you will, private and public figures. In this politicised private-public dialectical movement, the autobiographies under discussion take on a Kafkaesque dimension of what Deleuze & Guattari (1986) consistently call a "minor literature". The article ultimately brings to view the extent to which the mark of history as a territorial machine is inscribed upon the body of the autobiographical subject, and how it produces a representational crisis that unwittingly provides - rather than strictly regulates - the conditions of possibility for even more radical memoric testimony to history and becoming in self-writing.

Opsomming

Hierdie artikel dien as 'n padwyser in die bespreking oor die outobiografiese uitbeelding van die self deur figure van kultuurherinnering wat 'n funksie is van dubbele bewustheid en dubbele tydelikheid. Daar word aangetoon hoedat twee outobiografiee, naamlik die van Ellen Kuzwayo en Sindiwe Magona, komplekse ontologiese formasies aan die dag le waartussen die gaping in die uitbeelding van die self van ervaring en die skrywende self radikaal herhaal word in die veel­vuldigheid van individuele artikulering van kollektiewe werking. Die paradoks van individueel-kollektiewe artikulering dui die "gaping" aan wat onstaan wanneer daar in dubbele tydelikheid geskryf word. Hierdie artikel verken dus die "gaping" tussen Darstellung en Vertretung in die veronderstelling dat dit evokatief verwys na die glipperigheid of onstabiliteit van "Waarheid" wat geskryf is vanuit die grense van die
grenslyntekste van herinnering in die outobiografiee van twee swart vroue. Want
hierdie vroue se skryfwerk loop parallel met - en getuig van - hul sentrale betrok­kenheid by stedelike townshipgemeenskappe as maatskaplike werkers en moeders of, as u wil, privaat- en openbare figure. In hierdie gepolitiseerde privaat-publieke dialektiese beweging neem die outobiografiee wat ter sprake is 'n Kafkaanse dimensie aan van wat Deleuze en Guattari ( 1986) deurgaans 'n "minor literature" noem. Ten slotte bring die artikel die mate waarin die geskiedenis as 'n territoriale masjien op die liggaam van die outobiografiese subjek afgeets word aan die lig, asook hoe dit 'n verteenwoordigende krisis skep wat onbewustelik moontlikheids­toestande verskaf - eerder as streng reguleer - vir selfs meer radikale getuienis van die geskiedenis en wording in skryfwerk oor die self.