Imagining and Imaging the City – Ivan Vladislavić and the Postcolonial Metropolis

Imagining and Imaging the City – Ivan Vladislavić and the Postcolonial Metropolis KUDZAYI M. NGARA (2618559) A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor Philosophiae, in the Department of English, University of the Western Cape. Supervisor: Prof Wendy Woodward Co-supervisor: Prof Loes Nas Co-supervisor: Prof Kristiaan Versluys 11 November 2011 Imagining and Imaging the City – Ivan Vladislavić and the Postcolonial Metropolis Kudzayi M. Ngara KEYWORDS Johannesburg Ivan Vladislavić Postcolonial metropolis Post-apartheid Representation Identity Urbanity Flâneur Irresolvability Dialogic Postcolonialism II ABSTRACT Imagining and Imaging the City – Ivan Vladislavić and the Postcolonial Metropolis Kudzayi M. Ngara PhD Thesis, Department of English, University of the Western Cape This thesis undertakes an analysis of how six published works by the South African writer Ivan Vladislavić form the perspective of writing the city – Johannesburg – into being. Beginning from the basis that Vladislavić’s writing constitutes what I have coined dialogic postcolonialism, the thesis engages with both broader contemporary urban and postcolonial theory in order to show the liminal imaginative space that the author occupies in his narrations of Johannesburg. Underlining the notion of postcolonialism being a “work in progress” my thesis problematises the issue of representation of the postcolonial city through different aspects like space, urbanity, identity and the self, and thus locates each of the texts under consideration at a particular locus in Vladislavić’s representational continuum of the continually transforming city of Johannesburg. Until the recent appearance of Mariginal Spaces – Reading Vladislavić (2011) the extant critical literature and research on the writing of Ivan Vladislavić has, as far as I can tell, not engaged with his work as a body of creative consideration and close analysis of the city of Johannesburg. Even this latest text largely consists of previously published reviews and articles by disparate critics and academics. The trend has therefore largely been to analyse the texts separately, without treating them as the building blocks to an ongoing and perhaps unending project of imaginatively bringing the city into being. Such readings have thus been unable to decipher and characterise the threads which have emerged over the period of the writer’s literary engagement with and representation of Johannesburg. III I suggest that, as individual texts and as a collection or body of work, Ivan Vladislavić’s Missing Persons (1989), The Folly (1993), Propaganda by Monuments and Other Stories (1996), The Restless Supermarket (2006 – first published in 2001), The Exploded View (2004) and Portrait with Keys: Joburg & what-what (2006), are engaged in framing representations of the postcolonial city, representations which can in my view best be analysed through the prism of deconstructive engagement. To this end, the thesis examines contemporary South African urbanity or the post-apartheid metropolitan space (as epitomised by the fictive Johannesburg) and how it is represented in literature as changing, and in the process of becoming. As a consequence, the main conclusion I arrive at is on how the irresolvable nature of the city is reflected in the totality of Ivan Vladislavić’s writing. In that way, it was possible to treat every text in its own right (rather than forcing it to conform to an overarching thesis). This central insight allowed for the effective application of urban theory to the close readings of the texts. IV DECLARATION I declare that Imagining and Imaging the City – Ivan Vladislavić and the Postcolonial Metropolis is my own work, that it has not been submitted before for any degree or examination in any other university, and that all the sources I have used or quoted have been indicated and acknowledged as complete references Kudzayi M. Ngara November 2011 Signed:……………………… V ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS “In the beginning there was the word and the word was with God.” I would like to begin by thanking God, without whom none of this would have been possible. Loving thanks goes to my wife Rudo for all the cajoling, encouragement and patience in standing by me through all the frustrations of this task. To my children Takudzwa, Ruvimbo and Tadiwa who might not always have understood why I did not spend as much time with them as I used to, I want to say a very warm thank you. Thank you to my extended family for keeping me in your thoughts and prayers to the end. Prof Wendy Woodward, Prof Loes Nas and Prof Versluys, my sincere gratitude for all the guidance and support provided throughout these academically taxing times. A special thank you goes to Mark Espin for finding the texts that nobody else could, and to Prof Hermann Wittenberg for always being available as a touchstone. To the members of the Department of English generally, thank you for all the kind words of encouragement and polite enquiries as to my progress. The bursary and travel support of the DBBS Project and VLIR(Flemmish Universities Council) is gratefully acknowledged, as is the support of Prof Stan Ridge, as well as that of Prof Lorna Holtman (the latter through the ambit of the Division for Postgraduate Studies) for availing financial resources for conference travel to the University of Pécs, Hungary in June 2010. Thank you to all with whom this leg of life’s journey has been shared. What is to be must be. VI Table of Contents KEYWORDS ................................................................ ............................................................................ II ABSTRACT ................................................................ ............................................................................. III DECLARATION................................................................ ........................................................................ V ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS................................................................ ......................................................... VI 1 Introduction: Background, Critical and Theoretical Perspectives ............................................. 1 1.1 Contextual Background ........................................................................................................... 1 1.2 Aims.......................................................................................................................................... 10 1.3 Rationale.................................................................................................................................. 13 1.4 Literature Review – Reading Vladislavić............................................................................. 16 1.4.1 Contesting Pasts and Contested Space in Missing Persons.................................... 25 1.4.2 The Folly – Living Beyond the Realms of the Imaginable......................................... 29 1.4.3 Propaganda by Monuments and Other Stories: The Poetics of Memory ............... 33 1.4.4 Ode to ‘Order’ in an Age of ‘Chaos’ - The Restless Supermarket ........................... 39 1.4.5 Dissected Postapartheid Selves - The Exploded View ............................................. 49 1.4.6 Portrait with Keys: Joburg & what-what – Infinite Imponderables, Intangible Possibilities and Intractable Futures ...................................................................................... 54 1.5 Conclusion: False Endings, New Beginnings..................................................................... 57 2 Chapter One: Fragments of Passing Urbanities ....................................................................... 62 2.1 Introduction.............................................................................................................................. 62 2.2 Ephemeral Spaces and Monuments – Performing Agency and Making Memory ........ 67 2.3 Destabilising Juxtapositions – Writing the Willing and Unwilling Suburban................... 83 2.4 Fantastically Ordinary – Fragments of the Urban Spectacular........................................ 90 2.5 Joint Presence in Confined Space..................................................................................... 101 2.6 Conclusion............................................................................................................................. 107 3 Chapter Two : “Foreigners in our Midst” – Plans, Invasions and Spatial Discord in The Folly................................................................................................................................................... 110 VII 3.1 Introduction............................................................................................................................ 110 3.2 On the Intimacy and Chaos of Some Urban Spaces ...................................................... 114 3.3 “Absolute antithesis” - Plans as Illusions of Grandeur .................................................... 128 3.4 Conclusion............................................................................................................................. 143 4 Chapter Three: Heritage and (Memory in) Public Spaces in Propaganda by Monuments and Other Stories............................................................................................................................ 145 4.1 Introduction............................................................................................................................ 145

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