“[T]og het iets gebeur […] iets wat die jare en die afstand en die aarselende, ontoereikende woorde oorlewe het”. Die gebeurtenis en die getuie in Karel Schoeman se Die uur van die engel

Abstract

Karel Schoeman’s novel, Die uur van die engel (The hour of the angel) (1995), seems to invite a deconstructive reading as the impossibility to represent an event (understood in Derridean terms as unpredictable and singular) in language is repeatedly demonstrated in this novel (and also in many of his later novels). It is pointed out that although this kind of Derridean reading of the novel makes sense, a careful reading also indicates that Schoeman attempts to reach beyond the aporia. Drawing on Badiou’s thought on the event and on Gumbrecht’s emphasis on “the production of presence”, I indicate how reading Schoeman’s novel (in contrast to reading his historical works) becomes an event in itself. The article opens up a “third way”, beyond the dominant paradigms of Deconstruction and Cultural studies, namely to read literature as an event.