Fathers, sons and the political in contemporary Afrikaans fiction

Abstract

This article examines the role of the father in the transferral of ideological beliefs to the son within the Afrikaans-speaking family as represented in the fiction of contemporary male authors, specifically Alexander Strachan, Mark Behr and S.P. Benjamin. The research is guided by the central question of ideological factors regulating the relation between gender and politics. Kaja Silverman's interpretation of Jacques Lacan's work and her psychoanalytical distinction between the penis and the phallus in Male Subjectivity at the Margins (1992) form the theoretical basis of this study. Finally, some remarks are made on the role of the father in the public debate about the cultural identity of Afrikaans-speaking South Africans after apartheid.