Writing in Crisis: Ethics and History in Gordimer, Ndebele and Coetzee
In the 1980's, South African literary criticism was preoccupied with the issue of political responsibility and various aspects of literary texts were largely ignored by the dominant critical debates of the time. By focusing on the predicament of literary writing in times of historical turmoil, Writing in Crisis investigates three central apartheid-era texts that attempt to engage a cultural form and deviate from it at the same time. Helgesson argues that Fools and Other Stories by Njabulo...
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South African literary debates of the 1980s were preoccupied with the issue of political responsibility at the expense of other aspects of literary texts. Now, Helgesson (Uppsala U., Sweden, and U. of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa) offers close readings of three central apartheid-era texts that attempt to engage a cultural form and deviate from it at the same time. He argues that the works—Ndebele's Fools and Other Stories, Gordimer's A Sport of Nature, and Coetzee's Life & Times of Michael K.—each forms a response to the upheavals of late apartheid. But they do so by deconstructing their own grounding in the historical conflicts that dictate the crisis. Distributed in the US by ISBS. Annotation ©2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
Pt. 1Negotiating the 'beyond' : theoretical considerations9Ch. 1Exploring 'history' and 'writing'11Ch. 2Blankness, irony, ambivalence24Ch. 3The post-colonial metanarrative33Pt. 2Significant others : modes of knowledge and resistance in Njabulo Ndebele's Fools and other stories45Ch. 4'Black' writing in South Africa47Ch. 5Ambivalence and alienation51Ch. 6Know the write thing57Ch. 7Body language76Ch. 8Disembodiment and presence95Pt. 3Trust her? Ambivalent singularity in Nadine Gordimer's A sport of nature109Ch. 9Differing interpretations of A sport of nature111Ch. 10Hillela as sign117Ch. 11Hillela as realistic character137Ch. 12Hillela as allegory150Pt. 4'... a wrong story, always wrong' : reading the ethically sublime in J. M. Coetzee's Life & times of Michael K.179Ch. 13Critical responses to Life & times of Michael K.181Ch. 14Levinas and passivity193Ch. 15Michael K. as sovereign subject196Ch. 16The alterity of Michael K.211Ch. 17The plurality of times218Conclusion : writing in crisis235
