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The Body in Pain*: South African Literature Today

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The Body in Pain*: South African Literature Today The Body in Pain*: South African Literature Today Imke van Heerden Department of English and Related Literature, University of York, UK [email protected] | [email protected] First watch my clip: “I know what it feels like to hear your own fear beating in your ear, to bite the insides of your mouth, to bite your nails till Social Context: At least 1 in 6 your fingertips are raw and sensitive to everything you touch. The streets are roads to hell. 10 Things You There are things watching us when we sleep.” is HIV-positive; 1 in 4, Need to Know – Homeless boy, Thirteen Cents, K. Sello Duiker unemployed; 50 people are about South African murdered each day; and every Literature 26 seconds a woman is raped. Purpose Type of Study My thesis tackles social issues in South Africa head-on Methodology: Literary Analysis in response to the erroneous assumption that literature is superfluous, elite, and detached from the challenges Theoretical Approaches: Postcolonial Theory, faced by developing countries. The thesis concludes Phenomenology, Post-structuralism, Feminism that sustained critical engagement with representations of the body in pain is vital to the project of national Interdisciplinary: This thesis goes well beyond reconciliation. Literary Studies and includes research in the Chapter Sex Skin Blood Taste Tongue fields of Medical Science, Criminology, Politics, Problem Sexual violence Racism HIV/AIDS Social inequality Afrikaner complicity in Sociology, Philosophy, Translation Studies, Media Summary Studies, Women’s Studies and Subcultural and exclusion apartheid More than two decades after the fall of apartheid, Studies. South Africa remains a land of contrasts. According to Primary text Like Clockwork Playing in the Light Three Letter Plague Moxyland A Change of Tongue 2012’s “Reconciliation Barometer”, almost half of South Future Directions: Xenophobia, disability, drug Margie Orford Zoë Wicomb Jonny Steinberg Lauren Beukes Antjie Krog Africans seldom communicate with individuals from Author abuse, poverty racial groups other than their own. Enduring prejudice Genre Crime fiction Novel Narrative Cyberpunk Creative non-fiction across race, class and gender divides complicates the process of reconciling groups that were segregated non-fiction Acknowledgements under apartheid law – and is therefore a critical matter. Rape and gender Racial identity and Men’s refusal of Consumerism in a Reconciliation Text’s concern This research project was funded by the Commonwealth Scholarship Commission in In this literary study, “the body in pain” is less the post-apartheid HIV testing and neoliberal age addition to a doctoral fellowship courtesy of the question than it is the answer – the answer to the belonging treatment University of York’s Humanities Research Centre. crucial conundrum: Why do racism and other forms of Many thanks to my supervisor, Prof. Derek discrimination persist when South Africans “know Essentialised Male perpetrator Black vs. white HIV-neg. (“clean”) Rich vs. poor Afrikaner vs. African Attridge, and York’s RDT. better” than to think in black-and-white terms? difference vs. female victim vs. HIV-pos. (“dirty Based on South African literature published after 2000, blood”) I argue that it is a heightened sense of vulnerability Text’s answer Counter- The gentle touch Narrative inquiry Aesthetics of cool Vocabulary of grace References that fuels discriminatory practices after apartheid. derivatisation Duiker, K. Sello. Thirteen Cents. Cape Town: David Philip, South Africans are highly aware of the “wound- 2000. Print. ability” of their bodies and well-known statistics (see What does this Dehumanisation of Touch (proximity Culture and Subcultures: new Cross-cultural translation: “HIV and AIDS Estimates (2013).” UNAIDS, 2013. Web. 30 top right) produce a challenging climate of fear and Dec. 2013. mean? rapist to vindicate and acceptance) metaphor: forms of social listening to one another Itano, Nicole. “South Africa Begins Getting Tough on suspicion. Rape.” Women’s eNews, 24 Feb. 2003. Web. 12 May 2014. victim overrules sight understand the belonging Lefko-Everett, Kate. SA Reconciliation Barometer Survey: Because language is central to discrimination, many Ticking Time Bomb or Demographic Dividend? Youth and authors have explored how the “zebra-striped mind” (problematic) (distance and myth, understand Reconciliation in South Africa. Cape Town: Institute for Justice and Reconciliation, 2012. Web. 14 June 2014. continues to shape social relations in the country. Five difference) the man Rossington, Ben. “Nearly 50 Murders a Day in a Country chapters – “Sex”, “Skin”, “Blood”, “Taste” and Where One in 10 Own a Gun.” Mirror, 14 Feb. 2013. Web. 12 “Tongue” – analyse literary representations of bodies Key influences – The Body in Pain – Black Skin, White – AIDS and Its – Distinction – Conditional Tense (Krog) May 2014. in pain. The additional significance of the primary texts (Scarry) Masks (Fanon) Metaphors (Sontag) (Bourdieu) – Language Shock (Agar) Scarry, Elaine. The Body in Pain: The Making and lies in introducing new conceptual strategies by which * – “The Grammar of – The Book of Skin – Purity and Danger – New Urban Tribes Unmaking of the World. New York and Oxford: Oxford UP, 1987. vulnerability might instil, not fear, but a sense of Print. community instead. Violence” (Orford) (Connor) (Douglas) of SA (Chang) “Unemployment Rate Eases to 24.1%.” SouthAfrica.info, 11 Feb. 2014. Web. 25 Mar. 2014. .
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