Chasing Eden: Margaret Atwood’s MaddAddam trilogy and the value of reading in a technological age
- Authors: Bosman, Zoë June
- Date: 2020
- Subjects: Atwood, Margaret, 1939- MaddAddam trilogy , Speculative fiction -- History and criticism , Capitalism in literature , Dystopias in literature , Science fiction -- History and criticism , Technology in literature
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/145796 , vital:38467
- Description: This thesis is focussed on Margaret Atwood’s MaddAddam trilogy: Oryx and Crake (2003) The Year of the Flood (2009) and MaddAddam (2013). Detailing Atwood’s own specifications as to why these texts should be categorised as works of speculative fiction, the thesis examines how this literary genre, and Atwood’s MaddAddam trilogy in particular, is uniquely capable of encouraging readers to interrogate critically the socio-economic, environmental, and ethical problems to which she, and the contemporary reader, bear witness in the present technological age. With reference to Atwood’s essays and critical writings, Darko Suvin’s Metamorphoses of Science Fiction, and Wolfgang Iser’s The Act of Reading, this project explores the value of reading speculative fiction and details how Atwood has constructed the fictional, yet plausible, possible future world of her trilogy by extrapolating our current scientific capabilities, environmental challenges, and political configurations to their logical conclusions. It explores the close relationship that exists between the near-future world of Atwood’s texts and the contemporary context from which she has drawn her subject matter, and argues that the trilogy demonstrates graphically the long-term consequences of capitalism, sustainability, and the doctrine of human exceptionalism, which this project, following Yuval Harari, defines as orthodox guiding narratives: fictions that humanity has created, and which structure our perception of reality and guide our behaviour. The project maintains that Atwood’s trilogy presents the reader with a hypothetical future that looks towards and beyond the end of contemporary technological society in order to urge her reader to imagine, and actualize, alternatives to the scenarios that these texts depict. The most significant question Atwood’s texts ask is whether contemporary technological society is willing and able to transform in order to avert the ecological apocalypse that is the logical conclusion to the Anthropocene?
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2020
- Authors: Bosman, Zoë June
- Date: 2020
- Subjects: Atwood, Margaret, 1939- MaddAddam trilogy , Speculative fiction -- History and criticism , Capitalism in literature , Dystopias in literature , Science fiction -- History and criticism , Technology in literature
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/145796 , vital:38467
- Description: This thesis is focussed on Margaret Atwood’s MaddAddam trilogy: Oryx and Crake (2003) The Year of the Flood (2009) and MaddAddam (2013). Detailing Atwood’s own specifications as to why these texts should be categorised as works of speculative fiction, the thesis examines how this literary genre, and Atwood’s MaddAddam trilogy in particular, is uniquely capable of encouraging readers to interrogate critically the socio-economic, environmental, and ethical problems to which she, and the contemporary reader, bear witness in the present technological age. With reference to Atwood’s essays and critical writings, Darko Suvin’s Metamorphoses of Science Fiction, and Wolfgang Iser’s The Act of Reading, this project explores the value of reading speculative fiction and details how Atwood has constructed the fictional, yet plausible, possible future world of her trilogy by extrapolating our current scientific capabilities, environmental challenges, and political configurations to their logical conclusions. It explores the close relationship that exists between the near-future world of Atwood’s texts and the contemporary context from which she has drawn her subject matter, and argues that the trilogy demonstrates graphically the long-term consequences of capitalism, sustainability, and the doctrine of human exceptionalism, which this project, following Yuval Harari, defines as orthodox guiding narratives: fictions that humanity has created, and which structure our perception of reality and guide our behaviour. The project maintains that Atwood’s trilogy presents the reader with a hypothetical future that looks towards and beyond the end of contemporary technological society in order to urge her reader to imagine, and actualize, alternatives to the scenarios that these texts depict. The most significant question Atwood’s texts ask is whether contemporary technological society is willing and able to transform in order to avert the ecological apocalypse that is the logical conclusion to the Anthropocene?
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2020
Enabling violence: the ethics of writing and reading rape in South Africa
- Authors: Lloyd, Dylan Reumen
- Date: 2020
- Subjects: Rape -- South Africa , Rape -- Fiction , Rape in literature , Rape in literature -- South Africa , Psychic trauma in literature , Post-traumatic stress disorder in literature , Dystopias in literature , Coetzee, J. M., 1940- Disgrace , South African fiction (English) -- History and criticism
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/166173 , vital:41335
- Description: This thesis is concerned with describing the stakes of reading, writing and criticising fictional depictions of rape in a country plagued by high levels of sexual violence. I consider the capacity of rape representations to cause harm to women and rape survivors, and worsen the various injuries suffered by survivors as a direct or indirect consequence of rape. The possibility of such harm prompts me to examine the role and responsibilities of readers and critics in facilitating or preventing such harm. I further discuss the potential strategies of harm prevention that readers of novelistic portrayals of rape might adopt as well as the positive outcomes that such reading strategies make possible, and which might balance out the risks that accompany them. My description of the potential harm of rape representations combines postmodern critical feminist analysis with Miranda Fricker’s work on epistemic justice and Judith Herman’s work on trauma in order to illustrate the way that these representations shape our conception of rape in a manner that affects everything from how it is enacted to our treatment of survivors to the possibility of their recovery from posttraumatic stress disorder. In order to situate my analysis in the context of South African literature and to explore the notion of responsibility in relation to the writing of scenes of rape, I utilise a close reading of J.M. Coetzee’s Disgrace. Furthermore, I discuss the utility and limits of the critical feminist strategy of using a normative critical approach to rape representations in order to prevent harm. Ultimately, I argue that the use of such a strategy, along with the development of a purpose-honed adaptive critical style, is essential to the fulfilment of our responsibilities as readers and to the prevention of further suffering.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2020
- Authors: Lloyd, Dylan Reumen
- Date: 2020
- Subjects: Rape -- South Africa , Rape -- Fiction , Rape in literature , Rape in literature -- South Africa , Psychic trauma in literature , Post-traumatic stress disorder in literature , Dystopias in literature , Coetzee, J. M., 1940- Disgrace , South African fiction (English) -- History and criticism
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/166173 , vital:41335
- Description: This thesis is concerned with describing the stakes of reading, writing and criticising fictional depictions of rape in a country plagued by high levels of sexual violence. I consider the capacity of rape representations to cause harm to women and rape survivors, and worsen the various injuries suffered by survivors as a direct or indirect consequence of rape. The possibility of such harm prompts me to examine the role and responsibilities of readers and critics in facilitating or preventing such harm. I further discuss the potential strategies of harm prevention that readers of novelistic portrayals of rape might adopt as well as the positive outcomes that such reading strategies make possible, and which might balance out the risks that accompany them. My description of the potential harm of rape representations combines postmodern critical feminist analysis with Miranda Fricker’s work on epistemic justice and Judith Herman’s work on trauma in order to illustrate the way that these representations shape our conception of rape in a manner that affects everything from how it is enacted to our treatment of survivors to the possibility of their recovery from posttraumatic stress disorder. In order to situate my analysis in the context of South African literature and to explore the notion of responsibility in relation to the writing of scenes of rape, I utilise a close reading of J.M. Coetzee’s Disgrace. Furthermore, I discuss the utility and limits of the critical feminist strategy of using a normative critical approach to rape representations in order to prevent harm. Ultimately, I argue that the use of such a strategy, along with the development of a purpose-honed adaptive critical style, is essential to the fulfilment of our responsibilities as readers and to the prevention of further suffering.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2020
Johannesburg as dystopia: South African science fiction as political criticism
- Authors: Kirsten, Ashton Lauren
- Date: 2020
- Subjects: Science fiction, South African -- History and criticism , Johannesburg (South Africa) -- Fiction , Science fiction films -- History and criticism , Dystopias in literature , Dystopian films , Politics in literature , Politics in motion pictures , Beukes, Lauren -- Zoo City , Blomkamp, Neill, 1979- -- Chappie , Miller, Andrew K., 1974 or 1975- -- Dub steps
- Language: English
- Type: text , Thesis , Masters , MA
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/147671 , vital:38659
- Description: This thesis will interrogate the spatial dynamics and configurations of one of the country’s most prominent cities: Johannesburg. Johannesburg has been, and continues to be, a central focus in the nation’s imaginary. There is a trend within South African science fiction (sf) – both literature and film – to portray Johannesburg as a dystopian, post-law, poverty-stricken space as a means of conceptualising the socioeconomic situation within the country. This study will isolate Johannesburg-based works of sf and interrogate why authors and filmmakers disproportionately return to this setting. Investigated are three contemporary works, namely, Zoo City (2010) by Lauren Beukes, Neill Blomkamp’s film, Chappie (2015), and Dub Steps (2015) by Andrew Miller. This study explores the ways in which South African works of sf serve as social and political critique in the post-apartheid era of financial disparity, the formation of new boundaries, divisions of space and privilege, and the dereliction of critical infrastructure. The primary methodology of this thesis is that of Marxist literary analysis (specifically with reference to Louis Althusser’s theoretical models), which will be conducted alongside discussions of authentic history of the country as well as political developments in order to illustrate how South African sf critically engages with, and succinctly critiques, its context. The aesthetics of African sf are inseparable from the politics of the past and the current moment and through the aesthetics of the future, South Africans can reimagine the politics of the now. This study therefore also revisits a selection of non-sf Johannesburg-set novels published post-1925 and argues that these texts can be studied as early examples of South African dystopian writing. In doing so, this study illustrates that dystopian writing about and in South Africa is not an advent of the 21st century, but an extension of a long history of critical engagement. This thesis suggests that the dystopian genre is helpful in reframing the issues of the present (and the past) so that some form of meaningful change is theorized. The underlying impulse of dystopian cultural production is ultimately hopeful: a worse context is imagined to warn society of its follies so that these shortcomings and issues can be corrected, thereby avoiding the disastrous world(s) portrayed in the fiction. In this way, this study contends that local sf should not be inextricably linked to the melancholia that thoughts of dystopia bring about. Rather, the nuanced criticism contained within these dystopian texts is testament to the country’s ever-enduring spirit of change and transformation.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2020
- Authors: Kirsten, Ashton Lauren
- Date: 2020
- Subjects: Science fiction, South African -- History and criticism , Johannesburg (South Africa) -- Fiction , Science fiction films -- History and criticism , Dystopias in literature , Dystopian films , Politics in literature , Politics in motion pictures , Beukes, Lauren -- Zoo City , Blomkamp, Neill, 1979- -- Chappie , Miller, Andrew K., 1974 or 1975- -- Dub steps
- Language: English
- Type: text , Thesis , Masters , MA
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/147671 , vital:38659
- Description: This thesis will interrogate the spatial dynamics and configurations of one of the country’s most prominent cities: Johannesburg. Johannesburg has been, and continues to be, a central focus in the nation’s imaginary. There is a trend within South African science fiction (sf) – both literature and film – to portray Johannesburg as a dystopian, post-law, poverty-stricken space as a means of conceptualising the socioeconomic situation within the country. This study will isolate Johannesburg-based works of sf and interrogate why authors and filmmakers disproportionately return to this setting. Investigated are three contemporary works, namely, Zoo City (2010) by Lauren Beukes, Neill Blomkamp’s film, Chappie (2015), and Dub Steps (2015) by Andrew Miller. This study explores the ways in which South African works of sf serve as social and political critique in the post-apartheid era of financial disparity, the formation of new boundaries, divisions of space and privilege, and the dereliction of critical infrastructure. The primary methodology of this thesis is that of Marxist literary analysis (specifically with reference to Louis Althusser’s theoretical models), which will be conducted alongside discussions of authentic history of the country as well as political developments in order to illustrate how South African sf critically engages with, and succinctly critiques, its context. The aesthetics of African sf are inseparable from the politics of the past and the current moment and through the aesthetics of the future, South Africans can reimagine the politics of the now. This study therefore also revisits a selection of non-sf Johannesburg-set novels published post-1925 and argues that these texts can be studied as early examples of South African dystopian writing. In doing so, this study illustrates that dystopian writing about and in South Africa is not an advent of the 21st century, but an extension of a long history of critical engagement. This thesis suggests that the dystopian genre is helpful in reframing the issues of the present (and the past) so that some form of meaningful change is theorized. The underlying impulse of dystopian cultural production is ultimately hopeful: a worse context is imagined to warn society of its follies so that these shortcomings and issues can be corrected, thereby avoiding the disastrous world(s) portrayed in the fiction. In this way, this study contends that local sf should not be inextricably linked to the melancholia that thoughts of dystopia bring about. Rather, the nuanced criticism contained within these dystopian texts is testament to the country’s ever-enduring spirit of change and transformation.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2020
Power in Africa: a comparison of selected South African and Nigerian dystopian fiction
- Authors: Simelane, Smangaliso
- Date: 2020
- Subjects: Dystopias in literature , Africa -- In literature , South African fiction (English) -- History and criticism , Nigerian fiction (English) -- History and criticism , Beukes, Lauren -- Moxyland , Herne, Lily -- Deadlands , Bandele-Thomas, Biyi, 1967- The Sympathetic Undertaker and Other Dreams , Bandele-Thomas, Biyi, 1967- The Man Who Came in from the Back of Beyond
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/148171 , vital:38716
- Description: Dystopias have frequently been explored in literature to better understand the present and imagine the effects of certain elements of society if taken to a logical extreme. In this way, dystopian fiction can act as both cautionary tales and a form of social commentary. This can be explored within the context of African dystopian fiction where power is a recurring theme, highlighting the anxiety and turbulent history several countries on the continent continue to face. To demonstrate this, I compare selected South African and Nigerian Dystopian texts. With regards to South Africa, I analyse novels by South African science fiction authors Lauren Beukes and Lily Herne, namely Moxyland (2008) and Deadlands (2011) respectively, to investigate how South Africa’s past under Apartheid shapes the segregated societies presented. Nigerian dystopian texts by Biyi Bandele-Thomas, namely The Sympathetic Undertaker And Other Dreams (1993) and The Man Who Came in from the Back of Beyond (1992), are discussed with regards to the way Nigeria’s colonial past and several military juntas have contributed to the kinds of corruption that are depicted. I argue that all four texts warn of the dangers of power, albeit in ways that pertain specifically to their countries of origin. With regards to the South African texts, readers are shown the ways in which those in power can manipulate the desire to survive to keep those they subjugate dependent and, consequently, obedient through what Judith Butler terms ‘passionate attachments’. In the case of the Nigerian dystopias, I argue that Bandele-Thomas’s texts warn of tyranny and effects of the corruption that result from misused power strategies. While the dire settings of dystopian fiction may be grim enough, on their own, to motivate change in the real world, this may not be enough to prevent the texts from becoming pessimistic and fatalistic outlooks. Hence, I seek to understand how the selected novels maintain hope and, consequently, convince readers that the depicted dystopias are ones that can be avoided. Typically, dystopian literature fosters hope by setting the narratives in the future, giving readers hope that they may take steps today to protect their societies from becoming like the damned worlds described by dystopian authors. However, the selected texts are not set in the future. Hence, I explore three literary techniques that might foster hope within the selected African dystopian texts in lieu of temporal distancing. They are, namely: identification with the protagonist, defamiliarization and cognitive estrangement.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2020
- Authors: Simelane, Smangaliso
- Date: 2020
- Subjects: Dystopias in literature , Africa -- In literature , South African fiction (English) -- History and criticism , Nigerian fiction (English) -- History and criticism , Beukes, Lauren -- Moxyland , Herne, Lily -- Deadlands , Bandele-Thomas, Biyi, 1967- The Sympathetic Undertaker and Other Dreams , Bandele-Thomas, Biyi, 1967- The Man Who Came in from the Back of Beyond
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/148171 , vital:38716
- Description: Dystopias have frequently been explored in literature to better understand the present and imagine the effects of certain elements of society if taken to a logical extreme. In this way, dystopian fiction can act as both cautionary tales and a form of social commentary. This can be explored within the context of African dystopian fiction where power is a recurring theme, highlighting the anxiety and turbulent history several countries on the continent continue to face. To demonstrate this, I compare selected South African and Nigerian Dystopian texts. With regards to South Africa, I analyse novels by South African science fiction authors Lauren Beukes and Lily Herne, namely Moxyland (2008) and Deadlands (2011) respectively, to investigate how South Africa’s past under Apartheid shapes the segregated societies presented. Nigerian dystopian texts by Biyi Bandele-Thomas, namely The Sympathetic Undertaker And Other Dreams (1993) and The Man Who Came in from the Back of Beyond (1992), are discussed with regards to the way Nigeria’s colonial past and several military juntas have contributed to the kinds of corruption that are depicted. I argue that all four texts warn of the dangers of power, albeit in ways that pertain specifically to their countries of origin. With regards to the South African texts, readers are shown the ways in which those in power can manipulate the desire to survive to keep those they subjugate dependent and, consequently, obedient through what Judith Butler terms ‘passionate attachments’. In the case of the Nigerian dystopias, I argue that Bandele-Thomas’s texts warn of tyranny and effects of the corruption that result from misused power strategies. While the dire settings of dystopian fiction may be grim enough, on their own, to motivate change in the real world, this may not be enough to prevent the texts from becoming pessimistic and fatalistic outlooks. Hence, I seek to understand how the selected novels maintain hope and, consequently, convince readers that the depicted dystopias are ones that can be avoided. Typically, dystopian literature fosters hope by setting the narratives in the future, giving readers hope that they may take steps today to protect their societies from becoming like the damned worlds described by dystopian authors. However, the selected texts are not set in the future. Hence, I explore three literary techniques that might foster hope within the selected African dystopian texts in lieu of temporal distancing. They are, namely: identification with the protagonist, defamiliarization and cognitive estrangement.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2020
White anxieties in the Post-Apartheid speculative dystopian fiction of Eben Venter, Lauren Beukes and Lily Herne
- Authors: Matroos, Allissa Shanice
- Date: 2018
- Subjects: Dystopias in literature , Women and literature Fiction -- Women authors
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10948/22682 , vital:30054
- Description: This study uncovers and critiques the various ways in which Eben Venter‘s Trencherman (2008), Lauren Beukes‘ Moxyland (2008) and Lily Herne‘s Deadlands (2011) manifest an engagement with socio-political expressions of whiteness within post-apartheid South Africa. These overtly dystopian depictions of a country twenty-two years into its democracy reflect a level of anxiety felt by white South Africans attempting to negotiate the change in their socio-political circumstances. Within the alternate post-apartheid South Africa of Trencherman, whiteness comes to the fore as a socially constructed albatross preventing engagement with the trenchant effects of apartheid, as well as a grotesque bulging mass of unearned privilege embodied by a descendent of an Afrikaans farmer. Moxyland and Deadlands, however, portray a less overt engagement with whiteness by foregoing a critique of prevalent racial inequities. Instead, both authors favour an interrogation of South Africa‘s deleterious class hierarchy in settings that are fantastically futuristic and dystopic. This lends to my argument that the genre of speculative dystopian fiction has been sought out as an ideal space for white South African writers to (safely) deal with white anxieties. It is also pivotal to place these texts alongside one another to examine the ways in which white writers deal with whiteness as a marker of social privilege within the South African socio-political landscape. The theory of whiteness and the theories surrounding dystopian fiction will be used as integral theoretical frameworks for this study.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2018
- Authors: Matroos, Allissa Shanice
- Date: 2018
- Subjects: Dystopias in literature , Women and literature Fiction -- Women authors
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10948/22682 , vital:30054
- Description: This study uncovers and critiques the various ways in which Eben Venter‘s Trencherman (2008), Lauren Beukes‘ Moxyland (2008) and Lily Herne‘s Deadlands (2011) manifest an engagement with socio-political expressions of whiteness within post-apartheid South Africa. These overtly dystopian depictions of a country twenty-two years into its democracy reflect a level of anxiety felt by white South Africans attempting to negotiate the change in their socio-political circumstances. Within the alternate post-apartheid South Africa of Trencherman, whiteness comes to the fore as a socially constructed albatross preventing engagement with the trenchant effects of apartheid, as well as a grotesque bulging mass of unearned privilege embodied by a descendent of an Afrikaans farmer. Moxyland and Deadlands, however, portray a less overt engagement with whiteness by foregoing a critique of prevalent racial inequities. Instead, both authors favour an interrogation of South Africa‘s deleterious class hierarchy in settings that are fantastically futuristic and dystopic. This lends to my argument that the genre of speculative dystopian fiction has been sought out as an ideal space for white South African writers to (safely) deal with white anxieties. It is also pivotal to place these texts alongside one another to examine the ways in which white writers deal with whiteness as a marker of social privilege within the South African socio-political landscape. The theory of whiteness and the theories surrounding dystopian fiction will be used as integral theoretical frameworks for this study.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2018
“Something past provoked by something to come”: the dystopian complex in selected texts by Lauren Beukes
- Authors: Forrest, Catherine
- Date: 2017
- Subjects: Beukes, Lauren -- Moxyland , Beukes, Lauren -- Zoo City , Dystopias in literature , Science fiction -- History and criticism , South African fiction (English) -- History and criticism
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/18604 , vital:22360
- Description: This thesis examines Lauren Beukes’s novels, Moxyland and Zoo City, in relation to spectral theory, a tool of critique which enables an inspection of the author’s fictional societies, by looking at the return of that which has previously been repressed. It will be argued that, by portraying the country’s future imaginaries in a dystopian light, Beukes predicts the dissatisfaction that continues to be felt in the urbanised present as having extended into the near-future. Such discontent results not solely from the country’s history of apartheid and the poverty-stricken period of recovery that has followed, but in the lack of agency found in the future subject. The concerns of this thesis lie with the programmed conditions placed on the societies depicted in Beukes’s novels and the citizens that are made to inhabit these predetermined spaces. Arising from these fixed conditions are spectral subjectivities, protagonists who, having been denied recognition by the hegemonic powers at hand, are made inherently aware of the discourse of othering imposed upon them. Constructed from the writings of Jacques Derrida and contemporary spectral theorists, I present a framework capable of dealing with the popularity of ghosts/spectres, and the propensity for haunting, within post-transitional literature. Spectrality, then, is understood as a conceptual metaphor and a mode of characterisation that Beukes employs in her writing to highlight various inconsistencies about the spectralised subject and the future. By working with a theory capable of blurring the divide between the living and the dead, the self and other, it is possible to read Beukes’s fiction as possessing the potential to destabilise supposedly secure positions on otherness and alterity. Furthermore, it will be argued that, by tracking the spectre’s capacity to haunt and the multiplicity of responses which it invokes, it is possible to conceive of alterity, and the response which it generates, as responsible for determining the conditions for the coming of a radically unknowable and therefore open future.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2017
- Authors: Forrest, Catherine
- Date: 2017
- Subjects: Beukes, Lauren -- Moxyland , Beukes, Lauren -- Zoo City , Dystopias in literature , Science fiction -- History and criticism , South African fiction (English) -- History and criticism
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/18604 , vital:22360
- Description: This thesis examines Lauren Beukes’s novels, Moxyland and Zoo City, in relation to spectral theory, a tool of critique which enables an inspection of the author’s fictional societies, by looking at the return of that which has previously been repressed. It will be argued that, by portraying the country’s future imaginaries in a dystopian light, Beukes predicts the dissatisfaction that continues to be felt in the urbanised present as having extended into the near-future. Such discontent results not solely from the country’s history of apartheid and the poverty-stricken period of recovery that has followed, but in the lack of agency found in the future subject. The concerns of this thesis lie with the programmed conditions placed on the societies depicted in Beukes’s novels and the citizens that are made to inhabit these predetermined spaces. Arising from these fixed conditions are spectral subjectivities, protagonists who, having been denied recognition by the hegemonic powers at hand, are made inherently aware of the discourse of othering imposed upon them. Constructed from the writings of Jacques Derrida and contemporary spectral theorists, I present a framework capable of dealing with the popularity of ghosts/spectres, and the propensity for haunting, within post-transitional literature. Spectrality, then, is understood as a conceptual metaphor and a mode of characterisation that Beukes employs in her writing to highlight various inconsistencies about the spectralised subject and the future. By working with a theory capable of blurring the divide between the living and the dead, the self and other, it is possible to read Beukes’s fiction as possessing the potential to destabilise supposedly secure positions on otherness and alterity. Furthermore, it will be argued that, by tracking the spectre’s capacity to haunt and the multiplicity of responses which it invokes, it is possible to conceive of alterity, and the response which it generates, as responsible for determining the conditions for the coming of a radically unknowable and therefore open future.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2017
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