Shane Moran - Alternation Journal

Ilklo Women Critics crnd ,S'ortth Afvican English I,iterarj) Studies
state bureaucratisation and regimentation, which in the cultural sphere reproduced
ile she recognises that the desire to preserve indigenous oral traditions can be an
itself in the doctrine of socialist realism, and the rise of the proletkult movemen
portant element of an insurgent nationalism, she is also wary of the ideological and
Consequently, Literature and Revolution treads a difficult path between a
itical consequences of such preoccupations in the hands of the less scrupulous. For
endorsement of revolutionaly literature, and an indictment of emerging tendencie
government official, their existence is used to justify oppressive racial policies like
towards rigid ideological prescription and control in the cultural sphere. Much
steeship' and 'separate development', and for the missionary-under the auspices
'Trotsky's contribution lies in his attempt to take up the problem posed in Marx's k
a mission-controlled press-they become a vehicle for religious indoctrination.
argument in the 'Preface to A Contribution to the Critique ofPolitical Economy' (1 85
ming to African writing of the early twentieth century, Taylor argues that the material
that 'changes in the economic foundation lead sooiler or later to the transformation
ions of racial oppression and economic exploitation, and a corresponding
the whole immense superstructure' (Marx 1992:426). In his 'cultural continuity' th
a1 docility, have been inimical to the growth of culture:
'Trotsky reiected the notion popular amongst Soviet intellectuals in the 1920s that a
proletarian culture would bk fonned in 'l&oratory' conditions under the direction o
Culture requires a sound basis on wltich to build. Where is it for the
proletarian avant-guard. Both Trotsky and Lenin had argued that continuities with African? There is no basis. There is an abyss. Africans form an oppressed
Revolutionary bourgeois culture should be preserved and extended rather mass, without political power. without democratic rights; their political and
discarded. What Taylor shares with Lenin and Trotsky is the attempt to apply Ma economic destitution is summed up in the pass laws, in the Colour Bar Act.
categories to literature, and a desire to complement critical endeavour with a in the Urban Areas Act. in the Land Act, in the whole policy of segregation.
participation in political struggle. Taylor's critical method is based on the assumptio Under sucli conditions there must be cultural destitution also (1 9421n: 10).
that
Aside from the ~overtv of its inaterial base, another factor that contributes to the
the writer is largely the product of the society and the culture that nourishes
him and that an understanding of that society acts like a searchlight upon his
work(l943~:12).
and it is towards the identification of the social roots of art, that mu
produced. She argues that, the economic, political and social context o
production in South Africa has had a distinct bearing on the kind of culture which
emerged. As she puts it: 'A culture ... bear[s] the stamp of its material basis' (1943
According to her, the compromised political and economic position of white E
speaking South Africans in the 1940s, bolstered as it was by a numbcr of
scierice srclai~itcti ant1 watpcd aid cannot read
Anoilicr good exa~nplc of llo~v Taylor
lived iri the present' (1942l:lO). I-Iere, Taylor's remarks echo Trotsky's
revolutionary distaste for the cultural 'backwardness' of an agrarian existence.
In this regard, see also her discussion of tile work of Peter Abrahams ( 1943a).