Abstract:
Holo Meta Bolus is a coming-of-age novel where the theme of identity is explored in many different aspects. The protagonist, a post-apartheid 19-year-old, rejects the cultural identity of Boer (i.e. traditional Calvinistic Afrikaner), which he was born into, and adopts several stereotypical identities he encounters in the city of Pretoria, namely “jock”, “skater” and “hippie”. He also struggles with the identity-related questions of his social status, as well as what it means to be an adult.
The theme of post-apartheid Afrikaner repudiation is further explored in the mini-dissertation, which analyses the lyrics of punk band Fokofpolisiekar using psychoanalyst Erik Erikson’s theoretical framework of identity crisis and repudiation.
Fokofpolisiekar is a music group that formed in 2003, which sparked much debate with their controversial lyrics that outright reject and criticise the traditional Afrikaner culture that they were born into.
Erikson’s theoretical framework presents eight stages of psychosocial development of a healthy individual from infancy to late adulthood. According to this framework, the fifth stage is adolescence, and the successful completion of this stage results in the adaptive strength of fidelity, while individuals unsuccessful in this stage suffer from the malignancy of repudiation.
The dissertation argues that the speaker in Fokofpolisiekar’s early lyrics has developed Erikson’s so called developmental malignancy of repudiation, and links this to the socio-political circumstances of the band members’ upbringing. Another argument is that later lyrics (2017 onwards) indicate that the same speaker eventually overcomes this repudiation and gains Erikson’s developmental virtue of fidelity.
