Not Just a Detective Novel: Trauma, Memory and Narrative Form in Miss Smilla 's Feeling for Snow

Abstract

This article argues that Peter H0eg's "detective novel", Miss $mi/la's Feeling for Snow, contains many elements relevant to postmodern and postcolonial experience. Smilla, the main character, who seeks answers to the death of a young Inuit boy in Denmark, encounters, in a profound way, the complexities of postmodern subjectivity, blended with postcolonial issues of identity formation and the power imbalances extant in any colonialist system. The journey of self-discovery Smilla undergoes in the narrative is the real "detective story", and cannot be untangled from the wider political story of Danish colonialism of Greenland, and the encounter between the two cultures. There is no neat "answer" to the problems of colonialism and the hybrid identities formed out of it. At best the future belongs to a continued and traumatic "Middle Passage" where past and present interchange so thoroughly that any journey towards a teleological future or "closure" is one fraught with trauma and suffering.

Opsomming
Hierdie artikel voer aan dat Peter Hoeg se "speurverhaal", Miss Smilla's Feeling for Snow, baie elemente bevat wat betrekking het op die postmoderne en postkoloniale ervaring. Smilla, die hoofkarakter, wat antwoorde soek vir die dood van 'n jong lnuit­seun in Denemarke, ervaar op 'n diepgaande manier die ingewikkeldhede van postmoderne subjektiwiteit wat gemeng is met postkoloniale kwessies van identiteitsvorming en die magswanbalanse wat voortbestaan in enige kolonialistiese stelsel. Die narratief oor Smilla se selfontdekkingsreis is die werklike "speurverhaal" en dit kan nie losgemaak word van die breer politieke storie oor Deense kolonialisme in Greenland en die ontmoeting tussen die twee kulture nie. Daar is geen netjiese "antwoord" vir die probleem van kolonialisme en die hibriede identiteite wat daaruit voortspruit nie. Ten beste behoort die toekoms tot 'n voortgesette en traumatiese "Middelpad" waar verlede en hede so deeglik verwissel dat enige reis in die rigting van 'n teleologiese toekoms of "genesing" besaai is met trauma en lyding.