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Thesis Hum 2020 Roux Rowan.Pdf Post-apartheid Speculative Fiction and the South African City A thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctorate of Philosophy Town of UNIVERSITY OF CAPE TOWN Rowan RouxCape Departmentof of English Supervisors: Dr Christopher Ouma and Prof. Harry Garuba Date of submission: UniversityFebruary 2020 The copyright of this thesis vests in theTown author. No quotation from it or information derived from it is to be published without full acknowledgement of the source. The thesis is to be used for private study or non- commercial research purposes only.Cape Published by the Universityof of Cape Town (UCT) in terms of the non-exclusive license granted to UCT by the author. University Acknowledgments To my supervisors, family and friends, thank you for all your support and encouragement over the last three years. Every cup of coffee, every bit of advice, and every word of reassurance made each step that little bit easier. The financial assistance of the National Research Foundation (NRF) towards this research project is hereby acknowledged. Opinions expressed and conclusions arrived at are those of the author and should not be attributed to the NRF. Declaration I, Rowan Roux , hereby declare that the work on which this thesis is based is my original work (except where acknowledgements indicate otherwise) and that neither the whole work nor any part of it has been, is being, or is to be submitted for another degree in this or any other university. I authorise the University to reproduce for the purpose of research either the whole or any portion of the contents in any manner whatsoever. Signature: Date: 30/01/2020 2 Abstract This thesis examines the role that speculative fiction plays in imagining the city spaces of the future. Considering the rapid pace of change that has marked post-apartheid South Africa as an impetus for emerging literary traditions within contemporary South African speculative fiction, the argument begins by sketching the connections between South Africa’s transition to democracy and the emerging speculative texts which mark this period. Positioning speculative fiction as an umbrella term that incorporates a wide selection of generic traditions, the thesis engages with dystopian impulses, science fiction, magical realism and apocalyptic rhetoric. Through theoretical explication, close reading, and textual comparison, the argument initiates a dialogue between genre theory and urban theory as a means of (re)imagining and (re)mapping the city spaces of post-apartheid Cape Town and Johannesburg. 3 Contents Acknowledgments .................................................................................................................... 2 Abstract ..................................................................................................................................... 3 Contents .................................................................................................................................... 4 Chapter 1: Introduction .......................................................................................................... 6 Speculating on a sense of hope: from rainbow to dystopia ................................................... 9 Defining speculative fiction ................................................................................................. 14 Utopic cities ......................................................................................................................... 20 Speculative fiction and dystopia in South Africa ................................................................ 24 Reading Cape Town and Johannesburg ............................................................................... 29 Chapter outlines ................................................................................................................... 37 Chapter 2: Apartheid(s) future and past in Lauren Beukes’s Moxyland and Zoo City 41 Introduction .......................................................................................................................... 41 Genre, estrangement and the novum .................................................................................... 47 Issue Fatigue and cognitive estrangement ........................................................................... 53 Cape Town 2018 .................................................................................................................. 56 Technological regulations .................................................................................................... 62 Resistance and transgression: Art, bio-politics and the virtual world ................................. 68 The spatial and social regulation of Zoo City ...................................................................... 73 Johannesburg, Hillbrow ....................................................................................................... 76 The animalled and the Anthropocene .................................................................................. 86 Conclusion ........................................................................................................................... 93 Chapter 3: Speculative Selves in K. Sello Duiker’s Thirteen Cents and Rachel Zadok’s Sister-Sister.............................................................................................................................. 95 Introduction: Rainbow Dreams Deferred ............................................................................. 95 Zadok and Duiker: Voicing the marginal ............................................................................ 98 Magical realism .................................................................................................................. 105 Thirteen Cents: The myth of adulthood ............................................................................. 114 Queering Cape Town ......................................................................................................... 116 Stripped mythologies and contorted genealogies .............................................................. 122 Apocalyptic visions of Cape Town .................................................................................... 125 Sister-Sister ........................................................................................................................ 132 4 The streets of Johannesburg ............................................................................................... 134 Mythical births ................................................................................................................... 138 Going Home ....................................................................................................................... 141 The Long Dry and eschatological rhetoric ......................................................................... 146 The Legend of Thulisile Nxumalo ..................................................................................... 150 Conclusion ......................................................................................................................... 154 Chapter 4: Ecological and Economic Crisis in Henrietta Rose-Innes’ Nineveh and Neilll Blomkamp’s District 9.......................................................................................................... 156 Aliens in Joburg ................................................................................................................. 160 Pests in Cape Town ............................................................................................................ 176 Apocalyptic pestilence and the suburbs ............................................................................. 182 Encountering Nineveh ........................................................................................................ 187 Conclusion ......................................................................................................................... 191 Chapter 5: Speculating on the Anthropocene in Karen Jayes’s For the Mercy of Water 192 Speculative fiction and the Anthropocene ......................................................................... 193 A place that embodies an end ............................................................................................ 200 The war over bodies ........................................................................................................... 204 Conclusion: Rainbows dystopia and post-apartheid future(s) ........................................ 211 Works Cited .......................................................................................................................... 215 5 Chapter 1: Introduction “Just as the new worlds and galaxies of science fiction are often models of already known worlds and galaxies (literary ones, too), so also future history is plainly modelled on past history” – Frederick A. Kreuziger, Apocalypse and Science Fiction South Africa’s history could well have been written by a dystopian author. Under colonial settlement and apartheid regulations, South African cities were actively constructed as utopic for the white minority, while not catering to other racial groups, rather exploiting their labour to build cities. The legal end of apartheid, however, does not mean that South Africans have suddenly become equal across all boundaries. People are still divided along the lines of social class, gender, sexuality, citizenship
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