Shane Moran - Alternation Journal
Shane Moran - Alternation Journal
Shane Moran - Alternation Journal
You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles
YUMPU automatically turns print PDFs into web optimized ePapers that Google loves.
Writing<br />
South Africa<br />
Kelwyn Sole<br />
Review Article<br />
lwj~n Sole<br />
Il'rztivlg Soi~th A.fiicu:<br />
Literatiire, Apirrfheid and Dernocmcji 1970 1995.<br />
Edited by llerek AttridgeandRoseriiary Jolly<br />
Cambridge, New York andMelbourne: Cambridge Uliiversity Press,<br />
1998, xvii + 288pp. atic insistence on absolute difference' (1 70).<br />
ISBN0 521 592186:O 521 597684(pbk)<br />
This collection consists of essays, interviews and position<br />
with the exception ofAlbie Sachs' well-known I989 inter<br />
Serote. According to the editors, the contents are intent on exploring the rela<br />
between art and politics in South Africa. They approach issues relating to the<br />
s can wipe out shame' (106). It becomes i~lcreasingly clear that 'shame' is<br />
responsibility, the interrelationship between class, gender<br />
representations in literature, the relationship between aesthetics and ethics, ly lnobilised as a lnoralising term in this essay, which results in an elnotional<br />
questions of for111 and language. In addition, the specificity of the country's liter<br />
traditions, and their relationship to wider African and metropolitan traditions, is un<br />
scrutiny; underpinned with examinations of the usefulness of designations<br />
'modemism', post-lnodemism' and 'post-coloniality' to an<br />
These are of course, all crucial concerns for anyone t<br />
co~nplexity and diversity of our literary and cultural practices.<br />
Of the essays in this collection a few are COmp<br />
sulnmary. Tile interchange between Parry and Attwell abou<br />
John Coetzee is olle of these instances. Despite Coetzee's efforts in his novels<br />
critical writing to disrupt the social and discursive auth<br />
Parry suggests that his work can be eventually seen to<br />
The interest in the relation ofpostcoloniality and postmodemism to notions of<br />
perceptioll. This is because he represents the oppressed in h<br />
viewpoints 'situated as objects of representations and meditations which offer them<br />
place from which to resist the modes that have constituted them' (15 1); thus effectiv<br />
pre-enlpting non-Westem knowledges. The withholdillg of any gesture toward<br />
politics of 'fulfillment' or any prospect of a different, transformed, social order resul<br />
in a 'textual practice which dissipates the engagement<br />
inscribes' ( 1 64). Sinlilarly, his refusal to engage with the t<br />
landscape clear ill his criticism of'white writing') becomes, ironically enough,<br />
denial ofally possibility of connection to the land. Attwell responds by pointing outth<br />
-<br />
I,,,,~,,,,, 5 I I S o ISSN 102:-1i,7 250 257