University of KwaZulu-Natal A Handful of Spaghetti: Entanglements of Space, Place, and Identity in the Works of Imraan Coovadia By Alan Muller 208524162 A dissertation submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts English Studies Howard College Campus Durban Supervised by Professor Lindy Stiebel 2014 DECLARATION The Registrar (Academic) UNIVERSITY OF KWAZULU-NATAL I hereby declare that this dissertation is the result of my own investigation and research and that it has not been submitted in part or in full for any other degree or to any other university. All citations references and borrowed ideas have been duly acknowledged. ………………… Alan Muller November 2014 i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I acknowledge with extreme gratitude my supervisor Professor Lindy Stiebel. Her insight, dedication, and boundless patience and motivation have been vital in the writing of this dissertation. I gratefully acknowledge funding from both the University of KwaZulu-Natal in the form of a Travel Grant with which I was able to present some of this research at the 1st Annual Postcolonial Narrations postgraduate conference held at The University of Göttingen: “Postcolonial Narratives and Notions of the Global” (10-12 October 2013). In addition, I acknowledge generous funding from the National Research Foundation toward the completion of this dissertation. The views expressed in this thesis, however, are my own and in no way represent the views of the National Research Foundation. I acknowledge a number of people have aided me in sourcing various materials used in this project. Among these are Tyler Richard of the Harvard Advocate, who provided me with Coovadia’s “Match Made”, published in the 1993 Short Story issue. I also acknowledge the assistance of Graeme Arendse of Chimurenga Magazine in locating “Diary of a Bad Year: Mbeki’s 2007 Letters to the Nation” prior to the piece’s publication in Transformations (2012). Lastly, I would like to thank Imraan Coovadia for replying to my emails, accepting me into his home, and taking the time to answer my questions. ii ABSTRACT Durban born novelist, essayist, and academic, Imraan Coovadia has been described by Jane Rosenthal as “turning into a national treasure as a novelist” (Coovadia 2012a: cover). Despite winning numerous prizes including the Sunday Times Fiction Prize and University of Johannesburg Prize for High Low In-between (2009), and the M-Net Literary Award for The Institute for Taxi Poetry (2012), there has been little extended scholarly focus on his works. This thesis focuses primarily on The Wedding (2001), Green-Eyed Thieves (2006), High Low In-between 2009), and The Institute for Taxi Poetry (2012), with brief remarks, in the conclusion, on the recently-published fifth novel Tales of the Metric System (2014). I argue that Coovadia, while being a South African Indian author, eschews romanticising nostalgia that has come to typify much South African Indian authored fictions. In doing so, he looks beyond archetypal depictions of Indian experience in South Africa, opting for a more global and cosmopolitan approach to his works. My study examines how Coovadia, in his novels, is able to look simultaneously both directly at and beyond the South African cultural milieu, creating fictions that are punctuated by cosmopolitan places and people while retaining local specificity. Using selected theories of space, place, and identity, I suggest that the novels under discussion reflect an era of globalisation, interconnectedness, and hybridity through the construction of cosmopolitan literary cities and the hybrid identities that inhabit them. In doing so, I find that Coovadia writes beyond what Mphahlele has termed the ‘tyranny of place’ (Web2), creating literary spaces that are porous and offer potential for (re)definition, personal growth and fulfilment, and cultural newness. In this way, I argue that his works can be tentatively labelled as post-transitional texts that strive to craft connections rather than to construct self-isolating communities and characters seen in South African texts such as Richard Rive’s Buckingham Palace, District Six (1986), Aziz Hassim’s The Lotus People (2003), and Phyllis Naidoo’s Footprints in Grey Street (2002). Coovadia’s status as a post- transitional author would group him with a younger generation of South African global imaginaries – like Lauren Beukes (Moxyland [2008], Zoo City [2010], The Shining Girls [2013], and Broken Monsters [2014]) and Phaswane Mpe (Welcome to Our Hillbrow [2001]) – that situate South Africa, along with its unstable and protracted political transition, within a complex global network characterised by global exchange of information, items, people, and cultures. iii CONTENTS CHAPTER 1: Macro/Microgeography and Identity .................................................................. 1 CHAPTER 2: Biographical Context ........................................................................................ 20 CHAPTER 3: Novels ............................................................................................................... 31 3.1 Durban: The Wedding..................................................................................................... 31 3.2 Durban: High Low In-between ....................................................................................... 53 3.3 Johannesburg & Beyond: Green-Eyed Thieves .............................................................. 69 3.4 Cape Town: The Institute for Taxi Poetry ...................................................................... 85 CHAPTER 4: Conclusion ...................................................................................................... 100 BIBLIOGRAPHY .................................................................................................................. 106 Primary References ............................................................................................................ 106 Secondary References ........................................................................................................ 106 iv TABLE OF FIGURES Figure 1: Relative Shrinking of the World Map (Harvey 1989:241) ....................................................... 7 Figure 2: 1987 Advert Popularising the Notion of a Shrinking Globe (Harvey 1989:242) .................... 7 Figure 3: Visual Representation of Massey's Global Sense of Place (http://rnh3bc.wordpress.com 2013) ....................................................................................................................................................... 9 Figure 4: A Rhizomian Rootstock (http://schizophrenicsummer.wordpress.com 2013) ...................... 15 Figure 5: A Sâpeur or Gentleman of the Congo (http://www.flavorwire.com 2014) ........................... 19 Figure 6: Imraan Coovadia (https://www.mg.co.za 2012) .................................................................... 20 Figure 7: The Wedding (scanned by Alan Muller 2013) ....................................................................... 21 Figure 8: Green-Eyed Thieves (scanned by Alan Muller 2013) ........................................................... 21 Figure 9: High Low In-between (scanned by Alan Muller 2013) ......................................................... 22 Figure 10: The Institute for Taxi Poetry (scanned by Alan Muller 2013) ............................................ 22 Figure 8: Transformations (scanned by Alan Muller 2013) ................................................................. 22 Figure 12: Necker Cube ........................................................................................................................ 28 Figure 13: Wife and Mother-In-Law (http://www.ski.org 2013) .......................................................... 28 Figure 14: A Map of the Warwick Junction Precinct During the Colonial Phase (Hassim, A., Moodley, S., Rosenberg, L., Singh, K. & G. Vahed 2013:67) ...................................................... 54 Figure 15: The Area of Reservoir Hills (Hassim, A., Moodley, S., Rosenberg, L., Singh, K. & G. Vahed 2013:70) .................................................................................................................................... 55 Figure 16: Hout Bay II (http://www.carmelart.co.za 2014) .................................................................. 96 Figure 17: Untitled (http://www.carmelart.co.za 2014) ........................................................................ 96 Figure 18: Macrophotography Focusing on Detailed Subject Stripped of Context (http://webneel.com 2014) ..................................................................................................................................................... 97 Figure 19: Wide-Angle Photography Focusing on Detailed Subject in Context (http://www.webdesigncore.com 2014) ................................................................................................ 97 v CHAPTER 1: Macro/Microgeography and Identity In order adequately to analyse the literary spaces and identities depicted in Coovadia’s novels, it is imperative to view them through a theoretical lens that will provide this dissertation with the necessary foci. The following chapter will serve to construct a trifocal lens, drawing from theories concerning globalisation and time-space compression, contemporary urban experience and ‘city-ness’, and international or hyphenated identities. In an effort to proceed in a linear fashion, it might be useful