Shane Moran - Alternation Journal

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Van I-teyningeii, Christina 1946i. Unpi~blisl~ed Review of The Posl,,zcrn Al14,a~.s Rings Tiu Pietermaritzburg Archives STP 2/21] ere be Dragons7: Van Heyningen, C1i1-istina 1947. Tlie Poets' Poet. 7'heoria 393- 109. Van Heyningen. CIII-istina 1948a. A Performance of 'Tile Flies' by ~ean-P~LII Sa~tre. stan allenging 'Liberal7 3.1 :46-53. Van I leyningen, Christina 1948b. The Technique of Practical Cliticism. In Mackie, W. S (c nstructions of Prates S)/II~~OSI~LWI 011 Practical CrilIci~r12. Cape Town: Urliversity of Cape 'Town. Van Meyningen, Christina 1948~. Letter to Nell Marquard. 19 July. Pietermaritzburg STP 21713. Van I-lcyningen. Christina 1949. The Theatre in England. Stcrndpz~rzte 4.2:66-74, a Narismulu Williariis. Raymond 1958. Crrllrlre ai?i/Sociely: 1750-1950. London: Chatto and Windus. Willial~s, Rayiilond 197 1. 1,ileratul-e and Sociology: In Mernory of L~lcien Goldniann. Nelu Review 67:72-8 1. t Poetry ition to the apartheid State, the einergcnt culture of liberation had to contend with er hegelnonic formation, comprising white English-speaking intellectuals who a] interest in South African literature. Liberals have been highly influential in the on and reception of literature in English, through university English euts, literary journals and literary magazines, publishing houses, the English einy of South Africa, the Grahamstown Festival, the Market Theatre'. and most of nglish press. Despite their influence, the liberals have been a slnall group. ating that liberals comprise some 5% of South Africa's population, Petel- FIOIT a culturc catering to less tlian live percent of tlie population of a nalioi? is a limited cultllre and a limiting culture: it is time \vc saw through thc proposition that culturc is by nature only for the select f'exv. HOI-11's conclusion is important, the size of the iibel-als is hut a !;-::ction of his te. Further, although there bas been a tendency to refer to this gioui? ii~clusively erals, it has ranged from what may be designated as conservative jiberais to 1efi rals'. Altl~ough imprecise, the tenn 'conservative liberals' useiirlly rienotes those See Anne Fuchs' (1 990:1251-) critique of the role of the Market Tl~eatre bet~vee~? i 976 and 'he IJrban Foundation's statislics suggest that whites as a wliolc comprised a littlc over 5 people. i.c.. 12% of the population (Race Relations Srllevey 1993:24i). D~iriiig ilic 1087 e elections 111ost Eliglish-speakers voteci for [lie National I'arty. to the cutcnl illat llie lihcrrrl ressivc Fedel-ai Party lost its positioil as official oppositioii io tlii: Conservative l'ar!y. Sonie lish-speakers have supported groups to the far rigllt of theNationai Party. Fiiially. ;iboul ilail' orn's tigure seems to colnprise cllildre~i , who arc not ~lsually included in SLICII a cour~i. Ldgc 8: 109) refers to Martin Legassick's ilistinctio~~ bct~ee11 '\vi~ite groups priniarily coxlcer~iccl the saving of wlial they believed to be csisting clemocl-atic value.; aiid [lie natiounlisl ern with tlle ovel-all transSormatio~l ol'whitc lhscist domi~iatioii into democracy '.
I'F~CI N~~~I.S~I~I~IL Constr~lctions ofProtest Poetry who sought to characterise the~nselves as liberal but who were also co~lcer~led with maintaining their privileged position in the existing structure of power: olony as neo-colonial guardians of access to the centre of cultural life. In particular llyatt and Stephen Watson have clearly shown their presumption of themselves of the principal interpretive community. This bears similarities to the Sociologists who have studied the white community of the sixties conclude that. on the whole, one is dealing with a conservative majority, and this includes the English-speaking South Africans whose liberal tradition has been greatly exaggerated. Although there is no aggressive racialism ainong illally of them, prejudices and stereotyped attitudes towards the black con~munity .... abound (Alvarez-Pereyre 1984:24). ead assumption among intellectuals of themselves as the natural audience of re, as exemplified by Stanley Fish's (1 980) 'interpretive community'. Such a n is produced through the tactical delimitation of the noun 'community' so as to onegroup, in Bourdieu's terms, to impose the 1101-ms oftheir own perception, i.e. erceived as they perceive theinselves (see Mattelart & Siegelaub 1983: 19). In y, questions regarding the source of interpretive authority are circumvented, and ority devolves as if by default upon a tiny intellectnal coterie which constitutes This group is central to understanding the hesitations, silences, gaps and elf as universal, transparent and ahistorical, but which has tended to be white, niale, misrepresentation in the literary discourse that deals with the development of resistance le-class and Anglocentric. The presu~nption of a fairly homogeneous audience literature. In a country moving towards civil war in which literature offered people sents atactical disregard ofthe deep divisions in South African society. resisting the State a forum, conservative liberals were part of the institutional forces that have sought to neutralise resistance writers. This had the effect of naturalising econoinic and political domination behind prescriptions of taste, despite the fact that, as test literature' Nadine Gordiiner (1988a:228) has pointed out, 'the white middle-class establishment was not, as it claimed, the paradigm of South African life, and white culture was not the definitive South African culture'. Central to the existence ofthe minority interest group has been its ability to impose All critics declare not only their judgement of work but also their claim to the right to talk about it and judge it. 111 short. they take part in a struggle for the rnonopoly of legitimate discourse about the work of art. and its preoccupations and probleins. its particular solutioris and its vision of the world on all other sectors .... to prescribc the conceptual and real universe consequently ill the production of the value of the work of art (Bourdieu 1993:35). according to its own law (Mattelart & Sicgelaub 1983: 17)'. ing English offered black resistance writers a better chance of being published. This Although there were lively and varied experiments in poetry and other genres (notabl drama and music) in the 1970s and 1980s, there were vely few attempts to develop sense of what these expressions might mean, particularly in relation to the sociopolitical contestation and transformation that was underway. Significantly, the revision of liberal South African historiography that had been undertaken by writers such as Johnstone, Wolpe, Trapido and Legassick in the early 1970s seemed to have bypassed litera~y studies. Writers kept claiming that they were apolitical in a highly politicised society, as is evident in the articles of Douglas Livingstone (1 974; 1976). As the State policed cultural production, coiisei-vative liberal intellectuals believed that the s parti; the result of the State's control, division and underdev>lopment of the us languages. There was scarcely any structural support for the development terary culture in any of the indigenous languages. Further, given the State's age of publishing monopolies that adhered to its line, there was no space for pendent publishers and other structures of production'. In addition to the nic power of the English language which made many black writers feel obliged in English (their second or third language), there were strategic reasons. Writers that publishing in English rendered their work less susceptible to State ce, while it increased their access to a broader community of South Africans operated 'in abstraction from the institutional sites in which the complex relations ting apartheid and to people located beyond the borders who read English. They discourse and power are actually negotiated' (Pechey 1989:52). their decision in a context inhospitable to their artistic and political aims. I will argue that the ideological position of the conservative liberals clarifies Some of those in charge of English language publication and validation used the dilemma of some settler cultures: never substantive and too remote from the repression, either consciously or unconsciously, to advance their power and European centre, they coinpensated for their marginality by asserting their power in the s. To maintain their cultural dominance they tried to absorb and deflect the ge of resistance writing. Ullyatt's article 'Dilemmas in Black Poetry' (1 977) is a For Kelwyn Sole ( 1990:61) '[tlhcy have a power of exclusion far in excess, it scems to of their powers of discrimination'. I would add that the ideological production ol'conserv liberals is 'complicit with Westet-n inlei-national economic interests .... to conserve tile subject the Wcst. or the West as Subject' (Spivak 1988:27 I). The sole publisher in Zulu declined to publisli Mazisi Kunene's En~peror Shuk~z the GI*~LI~. hneccssitated hishaving to translate it into English and publisli it overseas, by which time lie d decided togo into exile.
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uilds and [it in turn] creates anot
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nn Hooper tlie language, ~nesmerisi
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Song and dance as we have Teen are
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Glerzn Hooper sense, one that rende
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Glenn Hooper Armah, Ayi Kwei 1973.
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71e lise ~rnoa~~liii- I,crizgii~lge
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References I he Use o/ 1Vet.narllla
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Davicl Kazanlian deportat~on scheme
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David EiLzzcznjlaw Racial C;overrzn
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L)av~tl KCIZII~J~U~ Racial Cioverrz
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David Kusi~njian Spain's colonies i
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David Kczcilzanjicln calculably and
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YC'VLU 11Lllilr~/lurl and in Ann La
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David Kazanjian terrify~ng effect o
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JI~ivi (1 kiiztitz~za~z Raclal Gove
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Dovid Kcrzavrjzan Racial Governnzen
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David Kastrnjrnn white Americans ar
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Slanlo~i, I.,ucia C: 1993. 'Those W
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Page 49 and 50: De Mzst, Race and Nation opposjlion
Page 51 and 52: De Mist, Race and Nutlon Whether th
Page 53: L ur-rerzt Irencis in the I'rodz~ct
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Page 62 and 63: C'zirrent Turrzds in the Production
Page 64 and 65: urrent lrends in the Prodzdction of
Page 66 and 67: LI(IIEPZI ~reilus zn the Prodzlcllo
Page 68 and 69: Alex la Guma's Politics and Aesthet
Page 70 and 71: Alex In Gzlrna i Polltics and Aesth
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Page 74 and 75: Alex la Gums k Politics and Aesthet
Page 76 and 77: Alex la (Yurna 3 Polilics and Aesth
Page 78 and 79: Alex In Gumn 2 Politics and Aest la
Page 80 and 81: Ale\: la (I'11~zcr k Politics cr~z~
Page 82 and 83: Alex lil Gzlnla .? Politics and Aes
Page 84 and 85: apart from events, who do not maint
Page 86 and 87: Ales la C;zlma i Politics ~~ndilesf
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Page 90 and 91: C'orlnne .sunr/~i~th X,vo wo~orrzen
Page 92 and 93: Corinne Sandwith Two Women Critics
Page 94 and 95: Tilo Women Critics and South Africa
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Page 105 and 106: value is socially constructed and d
Page 107 and 108: C'onstuzrct~ons of Protest Poetqj u
Page 109 and 110: Priya Narisrntll~l Cowstrnctions of
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Page 113 and 114: epresentative ~nullicultural tlnive
Page 115 and 116: .Yh~zne MU~LZPJ Acnder~~ic I.l.tchn
Page 117 and 118: Africa. This partially accounts for
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Page 122 and 123: Maqagi. Sisi 1990. Who Theorises? C
Page 124 and 125: The L)~viikiA Africtrrl Stc~t avid
Page 126 and 127: T/7e Dividect African S id Hernson
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Page 130 and 131: ion. Johannesburg: SATRK. This does
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Page 136 and 137: Book Reviews States of Eniergency i
Page 138 and 139: Arrived after you had returned honi
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