Remembering the Self: Fragmented Bodies, Fragmented Narratives in Marlene van Niekerk's Triomf and Agaat
TL;DR: The significance of the motif of bodies in fragments in Marlene van Niekerk's Triomf (1999) and Agaat (2006) is explored in this article, where the correlation between corporeal and narrative fragmentation is explored to determine whether remembering (or remembering) can prove salutary.
Abstract: Summary This article explores the significance of the motif of bodies in fragments in Marlene van Niekerk's Triomf (1999) and Agaat (2006). It argues that van Niekerk's protagonists “speak” of their trauma primarily through their wounded bodies. The correlation between corporeal and narrative fragmentation is explored to determine whether remembering (or re-membering) can prove salutary. In both Triomf and Agaat, it is only when characters are faced with the irrefutable evidence of trauma as wrought upon one another's bodies that they are forced to reckon with the truth of their familial narratives. Their fragmented bodies belie any “saving perspective” (van Niekerk 1999: 175), which might gloss over such horror. While Louise Bethlehem proposes that the scar is the “amanuensis of violence” (2006: 83), this article seeks to investigate whether there is anything potentially empowering in the revelation of scars, regardless of their origin. It considers how intimate relationships are implicated in working th...
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Dissertation•
01 Jan 2014
18 citations
Cites background from "Remembering the Self: Fragmented Bo..."
...The broader social and ethical themes in the novel are revealed in analyses of the complex family relationships in the novel, particularly the mother-daughter relationship (Wessels 2006, Sanders 2008, Stobie 2009, Rossmann & Stobie 2012, Jacobs 2012, Buxbaum 2013)....
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Dissertation•
01 Feb 2015
TL;DR: In this article, the authors argue that science fiction film fills a gap where representations of trauma memory are concerned, arguing that its narrative strategies and tropes are highly suited to such representations.
Abstract: A small number of articles and book chapters have analysed post-dictatorship Argentine science fiction film from a historico-political perspective, tracing embedded references to the 1976-1983 dictatorship and showing the ways in which films such as Hombre mirando al sudeste (Subiela, 1986), Moebius (Mosquera, 1996), La sonambula (Spiner, 1998) or La Antena (Sapir, 2007) address the themes of political repression and violence through metaphor and connotation, under cover of a fantastic narrative. My approach complements these readings, extending the corpus and outlining the first book-length study of Argentine science fiction film. Contesting positions held by certain critics that science fiction is inadequate in terms of dealing with traumatic historical issues, and aiming to move beyond seeing the genre only as a ‘camouflage device’ which has enabled authors to hide their message within a fantasy framework under the threat of persecution, this thesis argues that science fiction film fills a gap where representations of trauma memory are concerned. On the one hand, its narrative strategies and tropes are highly suited to such representations. On the other, its status as popular culture places it on the outer margins of a political and cultural framework that has consistently denied the atrocities perpetrated in a totalitarian context and sought to impose a unilateral, hegemonic version of history. In the course of the study I draw on the fields of science fiction, psychology, and Latin American studies in a cross-disciplinary approach.
9 citations
Dissertation•
01 Jul 2015
TL;DR: The authors examines a selection of South African literary texts written in English and published after 2000, arguing that these works of literature illustrate the ways in which the exigencies of the vulnerable body complicate attempts to transcend discrimination in contemporary South Africa.
Abstract: This thesis examines a selection of South African literary texts written in English and published after 2000, arguing that these works of literature illustrate the ways in which the exigencies of the vulnerable body – brutal violence, HIV/AIDS, and social inequality – complicate attempts to transcend discrimination in contemporary South Africa. Consequently, the study concentrates on representations of the vulnerable body that specifically destabilise fixed categories of identity, thus instantiating the literary ethics of interconnection that comprises its main focus. Each of the five chapters, “Sex”, “Skin”, “Blood”, “Taste”, and “Tongue”, considers a primary text by one South African author, foregrounding a particular body part that plays an important role in the work’s exploration of vulnerability. The thesis engages with different genres, which range from narrative non-fiction to cyberpunk, in addition to diverse and controversial subject positions such as “victim”, “coloured”, “HIV-positive”, “cool”, and “Afrikaner”. The selected texts develop new modes of understanding the body’s vulnerability in order to unsettle the binary oppositions that continue to shape post-apartheid society. Discursive strategies by which this is achieved include Margie Orford’s “counter-derivatisation” in Like Clockwork, Zoe Wicomb’s tact in Playing in the Light, Jonny Steinberg’s clash of epistemologies in Three Letter Plague, Lauren Beukes’s aesthetics of cool in Moxyland, and Antjie Krog’s vocabulary of grace in A Change of Tongue. Following Fanon’s plea, “O my body, always make me a man who questions!”, the ideal post-apartheid author would be one who draws on the body’s potential for self-definition, ambiguity, and change in spite of decades of deep-seated discrimination. The thesis ultimately concludes that sustained critical engagement with representations of the vulnerable body is vital to the project of national reconciliation.
7 citations
TL;DR: The relationship between land and identity are important themes in the plaasroman (farm novel), a subgenre to which Marlene van Niekerk writes back in her novel Agaat (2004) as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: The relationships between land and identity are important themes in the plaasroman (farm novel), a subgenre to which Marlene van Niekerk writes back in her novel Agaat (2004). In this article, I explore identity, land and gender in Agaat. I offer a discussion of the ways in which identity and land are inextricably linked in the normative plaasroman, and within this vein, consider the case of Agaat.While I focus on the traditional relationship between patriarchy and the farm, I also refer to the notion of the volksmoeder (literally mother of the nation or people) – a role that Milla attempts to break free from.Through a close reading of the text, I then consider how the relationship with the land – and specifically farming land – is used as a textual device to problematize the gender relations on the fictional farm Grootmoedersdrift. In particular, I consider how the characters Milla and Jak’s different approaches to farming on Grootmoedersdrift, both multifaceted and threaded through the entire novel, ser...
3 citations
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TL;DR: In this article, the Lesbian Phallus and the Morphological Imaginary are discussed, as well as the Assumption of Sex, in the context of critical queering, passing and arguing with the real.
Abstract: Preface Acknowledgements Part 1: 1. Bodies that Matter 2. The Lesbian Phallus and the Morphological Imaginary 3. Phantasmatic Identification and the Assumption of Sex 4. Gender is Burning: Questions of Appropriation and Subversion Part 2: 5. 'Dangerous Crossing': Willa Cather's Masculine Names 6. Queering, Passing: Nella Larsen Rewrites Psychoanalysis 7. Arguing with the Real 8. Critically Queer. Notes. Index
10,391 citations
TL;DR: The body as inscriptive surface and the choreography of knowledge are discussed in this article, where the body image is transformed inside out and the inside out of the body is reconstructed.
Abstract: Introduction and acknowledgments..Part I. Introduction..1 Refiguring bodies..Part II The inside out..2 Psychoanalysis and physical topographies..3 Body images: neurophysiology and corporeal mappings..4 Lived bodies: phenomenology and the flesh..Part III The outside in..5 Nietzsche and the choreography of knowledge..6 The body as inscriptive surface..7 Intensities and flows..Part IV Sexual difference..8 Sexed bodies..Notes..Bibliography..Index
3,005 citations
Book•
01 Jan 1994
TL;DR: Volatile Bodies as mentioned in this paper explores various dissonances in thinking the relation between mind and body and investigates issues that resist reduction to these binary terms - psychosis, hypochondria, neurological disturbances, perversions and sexual deviation - and most particularly the enigmatic status of body fluids.
Abstract: Volatile Bodies is based on a risky wager: that all the effects of subjectivity, psychological depth and inferiority can be refigured in terms of bodies and surfaces. It uses, transforms and subverts the work of a number of distinguished male theorists of the body (Freud, Lacan, Merleau-Ponty, Schilder, Nietzsche, Foucault, Lingis and Deleuze) who, while freeing the body from its subordination to the mind, are nonetheless unable to accomodate the specificities of women's bodies. Volatile Bodies explores various dissonances in thinking the relation between mind and body. It investigates issues that resist reduction to these binary terms - psychosis, hypochondria, neurological disturbances, perversions and sexual deviation - and most particularly the enigmatic status of body fluids, and the female body.
2,046 citations
TL;DR: A recent conference at Yale brought together scholars, journalists, and public intellectuals working on the Holocaust or on the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), as well as members of the latter body.
Abstract: A recent conference at Yale brought together scholars, journalists, and public intellectuals working on the Holocaust or on the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), as well as members of the latter body. The New Haven Hotel, in which many participants stayed, had a floor that was indicated on the elevator by the initials TRC, standing for Trauma Recovery Center. At first the encounter with the acronym on the elevator created an uncanny impression, especially in recently arrived guests from South Africa. But it belatedly became evident that the TRC in the hotel had an elective affinity with the TRC at the conference. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission was in its own way a trauma recovery center. Its awe-inspiring and difficult, if not impossible, project was to provide a quasi-judicial setting in which the truth was sought and some measure of justice rendered (at least retrospectively) in a larger context where former victims were now rulers who were trying to find ways and means of reconciling themselves with former rulers and at times with perpetrators of oppression. The TRC also provided a forum for the voices-often the suppressed, repressed, or uneasily accommodated voices-of certain victims who were being heard for the first time in the public sphere. Indeed, as a force in the public sphere the TRC itself was attempting to combine truth seeking in an open forum with a collective ritual, requiring the acknowledgement of blameworthy and at times criminal activity, in the interest of working through a past that had severely divided groups and caused damages to victims (including damages in-
297 citations
"Remembering the Self: Fragmented Bo..." refers background in this paper
...Jakkie has the potential to heal, by mourning and thus “working through” trauma (LaCapra 1999: 713-714)....
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