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The Spatial Politics of Belonging in Post-Apartheid Novels

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The Spatial Politics of Belonging in Post-Apartheid Novels University of Tennessee, Knoxville TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange Doctoral Dissertations Graduate School 12-2017 South African Homes: The Spatial Politics of Belonging in Post- Apartheid Novels Heather Price Williams University of Tennessee, Knoxville, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_graddiss Recommended Citation Williams, Heather Price, "South African Homes: The Spatial Politics of Belonging in Post-Apartheid Novels. " PhD diss., University of Tennessee, 2017. https://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_graddiss/4783 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange. It has been accepted for inclusion in Doctoral Dissertations by an authorized administrator of TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange. For more information, please contact [email protected]. To the Graduate Council: I am submitting herewith a dissertation written by Heather Price Williams entitled "South African Homes: The Spatial Politics of Belonging in Post-Apartheid Novels." I have examined the final electronic copy of this dissertation for form and content and recommend that it be accepted in partial fulfillment of the equirr ements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, with a major in English. Urmila S. Seshagiri, Major Professor We have read this dissertation and recommend its acceptance: Amy Elias, Gichingiri Ndigirigi, Catherine Higgs Accepted for the Council: Dixie L. Thompson Vice Provost and Dean of the Graduate School (Original signatures are on file with official studentecor r ds.) South African Homes: The Spatial Politics of Belonging in Post- Apartheid Novels A Dissertation Presented for the Doctor of Philosophy Degree The University of Tennessee, Knoxville Heather Price Williams December 2017 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS My greatest gratitude goes to my dissertation director, Urmila Seshagiri. Her graduate seminars helped plant the first seeds of this project, and her unwavering patience and encouragement kept me writing, reading, and thinking. She has forever shaped the way I approach the discipline, and I will always be inspired by her challenging questions and lessons. I am also grateful to Amy Elias, Gῖchingiri Ndῖgῖrῖgῖ, and Catherine Higgs for serving on my committee. They encouraged me to confront and re-think my critical framework and the foundations for this project. I would also like to thank the English Department at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville, for cultivating my love of language, writing, and theory. This dissertation would not have been possible without the love and support of my family. They continually motivated and encouraged me at every step along the way. My parents unfailingly cheered me on when I was discouraged. They always believed in me and reminded me to keep my eye on the prize. My husband Jon was beside me every step of the way, and sacrificed so that I could achieve my goal and bring this project to fruition. He never questioned my ability, and was always my biggest fan. Finally, I would like to thank my son, Luke. He joined me at the beginning of this project, and helped motivate me with his smile and growing laugh. As I wrote about home, he became my home. I dedicate this dissertation to him. ii ABSTRACT In this dissertation, I interrogate the postcolonial condition in contemporary South Africa still controlled by the effects of unjust geographies. This project offers an examination of conceptualizations of home in contemporary South African novels in English; specifically, the focus reveals how these representations reflect the multifaceted politics of belonging and identity formation. Drawing on the frameworks of home, belonging, and space of Foucault, Soja, Bhabha and others, this dissertation contends that concepts of home provide fertile areas of exploration into past and continued dislocation, while challenging the binaries embedded in South African identity discourse haunted by colonialization and apartheid. The primary texts reflect various subgenres of the South African novel in English, and each chapter explores how a spatial reading expands the aesthetic texture of the novel. Rachel Zadok’s Gem Squash Tokoloshe (2005), Sindiwe Magona’s Mother to Mother (1998), and Matlwa’s Coconut (2007) interact and transform South African novel sub-genres born in traditions established through European colonialism and apartheid rule, and I explore the sites of dwelling as heterotopias. Next, I examine Andre Brink’s The Rights of Desire (2000) and Damon Galgut’s The Good Doctor (2004) and The Impostor (2009) alongside J. M. Coetzee’s Disgrace (1999) as crime novels revealing the unhomely condition of their white, middle-age protagonists. Finally, Zoë Wicomb’s October (2014), and Zukiswa Wanner’s London Cape Town Joburg (2014) reveal stories of those who left South Africa during apartheid and later returned. In this chapter, I utilize Bhabha and Soja’s dual vision of the thirdspace to reveal how Wicomb and Wanner explore the balance between the vacillating push and pull of home and the postmodern flux of cosmopolitan migration and rootlessness. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter I: Introduction to Space and the Post-Apartheid Novel ........................................ 1 Colonial and Apartheid Spatial Legacy .......................................................................... 7 Space and Apartheid Writing ........................................................................................ 18 Spatial Concepts of Belonging...................................................................................... 28 Spatial Readings and the Post-Apartheid Novel in English ......................................... 34 Chapter II: Genre Transformation and Heterotopian Homes ........................................... 40 Plaasroman Heterotopia- Gem Squash Tokoloshe ........................................................ 45 Township Heterotopia, Protest Literature, and Mother to Mother ............................... 66 Gated Community Heterotopia and Coconut ................................................................ 85 Post-Apartheid Novels of Home as Heterotopias ....................................................... 112 Chapter III: Apartheid Transition and the Spatial Uncanny ........................................... 115 Disgrace- Unhomely Hospitality ................................................................................ 122 The Rights of Desire- Unhomely Ghosts .................................................................... 141 The Good Doctor and The Impostor- Unhomely Morality ......................................... 164 Chapter IV: The Thirdspace and The Writing of Home ................................................. 194 October ....................................................................................................................... 203 London, Cape Town, Joburg ....................................................................................... 215 Third Space Novels of Home and Spatial Justice ....................................................... 225 Works Cited .................................................................................................................... 242 Vita .................................................................................................................................. 266 iv CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION TO SPACE AND THE POST- APARTHEID NOVEL Following the Native Resettlement Act, No 19 of 1954, the apartheid regime began an insidious campaign to destroy the individual spirit, family, history, and fundamental humanity of black and colored South Africans through the violent, destruction of home. Afforded little warning and no opportunity to fight or stop the apartheid machine, hundreds of thousands of non-white South Africans witnessed the demolition of their homes when bulldozers razed communities such as District Six in Cape Town and Johannesburg’s Sophiatown.1 The utter desolation of the human spirit, brought down by falling rubble, drives Don Mattera’s poem (1962) “The Day They came for Our House”: clumsy crushers crawled over the firm pillars into the rooms that held us and the roof that covered our heads We stood. Dust clouded our vision We held back tears It was over in minutes, Done. (15-26) 1 Between 1950 and 1982, over 3.5 million people were forcibly removed from their homes. For more information see, Isabella Kentridge’s (2013) “‘And so they moved one by one’: Forced Removals in a Free State Town (1956-1977) which examines rural forced removals exemplified by the Northern Free State town Kroonstad, the Western Cape Oral History Project’s (2001) Lost Communities, Living Memories: Remembering Forced Removals in Cape Town edited by Sean Field. 1 The horrors of apartheid culminate in the annihilation of physical dwellings in Sophiatown and the erasure of South African identity. The demolition of home—“the rooms that held us” and “the roof that covered / our heads”—echoes the erasure of personal and public histories of the non-white majority. Mattera concludes the poem with the dramatic image of bulldozers reducing the history of generations to dust: Bulldozers have power. They can take apart in a few minutes All that had been built up over the years And raised over generations And generations of children The power of destroying The pain of being destroyed, Dust. (27-34) Instead of homes raised over generations, Mattera presents rubble razed to the ground, as home
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