Apocalypse now, never ... or forever : Venter and Medalie on the everyday politics of post-apartheid South Africa
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Date
Authors
West-Pavlov, Russell B.
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Routledge
Abstract
This article undertakes an analysis of the narrative temporalities and of the
narratives of temporality, specifically those of apocalypse or end-times and of
living-on respectively, to be found in two recent South African novels, Eben
Venter’s Trencherman (2008) and David Medalie’s The Shadow Follows
(2006). Against Venter’s hyperbolic narrative of catastrophe, which also turns
out to be a critique of the residual elements of the erstwhile apartheid era,
I posit that Medalie’s litotic and patchwork narrative offers a more appropriate
narrative of the slow transformation of the post-apartheid South African polity.
I use Venter’s and Medalie’s oddly complementary novels as a template for
exploring an emergent sense of a non-teleological ‘minor narrative’ of
liberation in a time ‘after postcoloniality’.
Description
Keywords
Anti-teleology, Catastrophism, Futurity, Post-apartheid, Post-post colonialism, Temporality, South Africa (SA)
Sustainable Development Goals
Citation
Russell West-Pavlov (2015) Apocalypse Now, Never … or Forever: Venter and Medalie on the Everyday Politics of Post-Apartheid South Africa, English Studies in Africa, 58:1,42-55, DOI: 10.1080/00138398.2015.1045160