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Contextualizing Liminality in Botswana Fiction and Reportage

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Contextualizing Liminality in Botswana Fiction and Reportage THE COLLAPSE OF CERTAINTY: CONTEXTUALIZING LIMINALITY IN BOTSWANA FICTION AND REPORTAGE by FETSON ANDERSON KALUA submitted in accordance with the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF LITERATURE AND PHILOSOPHY in the subject ENGLISH at the UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH AFRICA PROMOTER: PROF P D RYAN NOVEMBER 2007 Student No: 3115-208-2 DECLARATION I declare that The Collapse of Certainty: Contextualizing Liminality in Botswana Fiction and Reportage is my own work and that all the sources that I have used or quoted have been indicated and acknowledged by means of complete references. ------------------------------ --------------------- Signature Date (MR FA KALUA) ii Abstract The Collapse of Certainty: Contextualizing Liminality in Botswana’s Fiction and Reportage. This thesis deploys Homi Bhabha’s perspective of postcolonial literary theory as a critical procedure to examine particular instances of fiction, as well as reportage on Botswana. Its unifying interest is to pinpoint the shifting nature or reality of Botswana and, by extension, of African identities. To that end, I use Bhabha’s concept of liminality to inform the work of writers such as Unity Dow, Alexander McCall Smith, and instances of reportage (by Rupert Isaacson and Caitlin Davies), from the 1990s to date. The aims of the thesis are, among other things, to establish the extent to which Homi Bhabha’s appropriation of the term liminality (which derives from Victor Turner’s notion of limen for inbetweenness), and its application in the postcolonial context inflects the reading of the above works whose main motifs include the following: a contestation of any views which privilege one culture above another, challenging a jingoistic rootedness in one culture, and promoting an awareness of the existence of several, interlocking or even clashing realities which finally produce multiple meanings, values and identities. In short, it is proposed that identity is not a given but rather a product of a lived reality and therefore a social construct, something always in process. The thesis begins by theorizing liminality in Chapter 1 within the context of Homi Bhabha’s understanding and interrogation of the iii colonial discourse. This is followed by the contextualization of liminality through the reading of, firstly, the fiction of Unity Dow in Chapters 2 and 3, and then the “detective” fiction of Alexander McCall Smith in Chapters 4 and 5. In the discussion of these works, I also touch on instances of reportage which relate to the lives of the authors. In the case of Smith’s “detective” fiction, for example, reportage refers to his incorporation of actual historical events and personages whose impact, I argue, suggests the liminality of culture. In Chapter 6, the idea of reportage varies slightly to denote works of fiction in which there is a great deal of historical fact. Thus Rupert Isaacson’s The Healing Land: A Kalahari Journey and Caitlin Davies’ Place of Reeds are treated as works of reportage in line with Truman Capote’s application of that term. What comes out most evidently in this study is the shifting idea of (Botswana/African) identity. It should be noted that rather than present an all-embracing account of the fiction on Botswana, the study only looks at the selected examples of writing and reportage. Key terms: liminality, in-betweenness, intersubjectivity, postcolonial theory, colonial discourse, modernity, African identity, shifting identity, Botswana, and reportage. iv Dedication This thesis is dedicated to my mother and to the memory of my father -- two unlettered individuals who made a lasting impact on my life by affording me an opportunity to attend school. v Acknowledgements I am grateful to members of my family for their unstinting support throughout the duration of this study. Special thanks are due to my daughters Thumbiko, Tawonga and Temwani who always kept me smiling and feeling lighthearted in those anxious moments of thesis- writing when quitting seemed to be the only option. I also wish to thank, most profoundly, my promoter, Professor Pamela D. Ryan, for her intelligence, her personable nature, and above all, her nurturing approach to the whole process of supervision. Professor Ryan was a symbol of inspiration all the way, as she still is and will ever be in other future endeavours. For me, working with her has always been a source of much immense joy. I also want to acknowledge the following colleagues and friends for their assistance in various ways: Professor Karen Scherzinger for giving me immense support during the three years of toil, often making me aware of the latest fiction on Botswana as well as providing secondary material on the topic of my study; Professor Leon de Kock for purchasing me several useful textbooks on postcolonial theory, as well as giving useful advice on thesis writing; Professor Deirdre Byrne also provided much advice about research activities; Professor Leonie Viljoen and Professor Zodwa Motsa for facilitating various forms of support, financial and otherwise, making it possible for me to travel places collecting data; Subject Librarian Dawie Malan for his staggering efficiency, integrity and charm; Lesley Robertson and Marina Mukadi for teaching me word processing in the vi early days; Sandra Mogoaneng, Caroline Tabane and Bernard Nchindila for helping with formatting; and David Levey for reading through the thesis. I also wich to acknowledge all my colleagues in the Department of English Studies at University of South Africa, and other individuals too many to mention who rooted for and stood by me when getting the thesis done was really hard-going. Finally, I wish to acknowledge the Department of English Studies at University of South Africa and the National Research Foundation (NRF) for funding this project. Nawonga chomene/ my profound gratitude vii Table of Contents Introduction ........................... 1 -- 31 Chapter 1 ........................... 32 -- 92 Chapter 2 ............................ 93 -- 139 Chapter 3 ............................. 140 -- 175 Chapter 4 .............................. 176 -- 222 Chapter 5 .............................. 223 -- 253 Chapter 6 .............................. 254 -- 288 Conclusion ............................... 289 -- 299 Works Cited ............................... 300 -- 318 viii Abbreviations and short forms used for primary texts Far and Beyon’ -- F&B In the Company of Cheerful Ladies – Cheerful Ladies Juggling Truths – JT Morality for Beautiful Girls – Morality Place of Reeds – (POR) Tears of the Giraffe – Tears The Full Cupboard of Life – Cupboard The Healing Land: A Kalahari Journey – The Kalahari Journey The Heavens May Fall – Heavens The Kalahari Typing School for Men – Kalahari The No1 Ladies’ Detective Agency – The No 1 Ladies The Screaming of the Innocent – Screaming ix Introduction “…life is, among other things, a circus, where liminal folly may make deep sense”. (Turner 1992: 161) “It is in this space of liminality, in the ‘unbearable ordeal of the collapse of certainty’ that we encounter … the narcissistic neuroses of … discourse”. (Bhabha 2004: 214) “There can be no absolutes: no absolute good or evil; no absolute way of living. No absolute truth. All truths are mediated and tempered by the fact of living. Being alive qualifies all things” (Okri 1997: 54). The above quotations encapsulate the central concerns of this thesis in their authors’ utter conviction and unqualified acknowledgement of the fluid and indeterminate and therefore provisional nature of truth or reality. Invoking Turnerian as well as poststructuralist1 assumptions about the shifting rather than constitutive nature of meaning, Homi Bhabha contends that identity, especially in culture, cannot be pinned down, but is always subject to and constructed through a negotiation of difference in what he calls liminal spaces, or the spaces in- between, so that only a semblance of verisimilitude can be achieved at any point in time. Similarly, writing a tribute to Salman Rushdie in an essay, “The Human Race is not Yet Free”,2 Ben Okri, sharing in Rushdie’s celebration of hybrid identities in the modern world, echoes 1 In The Turbulence of Migration (2000: 168), Nikos Papastergiadis draws on thinkers such as Derrida and Foulcault to argue that “one of the ‘achievements’ of post-structuralist theory was to liberate the subject from notions of fixity and purity in of origin”. 1 Homi Bhabha’s argument and sounds his conviction that our universe is divested of all absolutes. For Okri, lived reality or the act of living in itself is of the essence; moral certainties or categorical imperatives do not exist. Thus both Homi Bhabha and Ben Okri laud the accomplishments of the poststructuralist theoretical project for liberating the subject from the stultifying narcissism that defines identity in terms of fixity and purity of origins. According to Bhabha, a “third space” emerges when two cultures encounter and translate each other, setting in motion the process of transformation in the subject, a kind of consciousness which is an interface between the cultures. Also known as hybridity3, this interface allows us to view culture not as a transparent and static category but rather a dynamic and open-ended package that is always evolving and subject to change. At the core of Bhabha’s argument is the fact that identity is a product of enunciation, that it is formed contingently and indeterminately at the border line between cultures. Such views are directly relevant to African literature written in English,
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