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Periodical article Periodical article Leiden University catalogue Leiden University catalogue WorldCat catalogue WorldCat
Title:Re-imagining the other: the politics of friendship in three twenty-first century South African novels
Author:Pucherova, Dobrota
Year:2009
Periodical:Journal of Southern African Studies
Volume:35
Issue:4
Pages:929-943
Language:English
Geographic term:South Africa
Subjects:friendship
foreigners
identity
About persons:Achmat Dangor (1948-2020)ISNI
Kabelo Sello Duiker (1974-2005)ISNI
Ishtiyaq Shukri (1968-)ISNI
External link:https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03057070903314218
Abstract:The outburst of xenophobic violence that shook South Africa in May 2008 severely damaged the belief in a multicultural society. This article re-reads three early twenty-first century South African novels - Achmat Dangor's 'Bitter Fruit' (2001), Kabelo Sello Duiker's 'The Quiet Violence of Dreams' (2001), and Ishtiyaq Shukri's 'The Silent Minaret' (2005) - in the context of the May 2008 events. It is argued that the figure of the foreigner, apparently marginal in all three narratives, is in fact central to their ethical project, which seeks redemption, renewal and redefinition of the South African identity through an identification with the foreign other. The affective impulses of hospitality and friendship directed towards the foreigner in Dangor, Duiker and Shukri are read not merely as accepting or welcoming alterity, but as instances of self-othering - becoming strange in one's own domain. Expressing disillusionment with the liberatory potential of the narrative of the anti-apartheid struggle, they provide access to alternative sites of memory borrowed from the stranger that become sources for re-imagining South African history. In the context of the various racial and ethnic identity politics that have emerged in the new South Africa, such de-centred understanding of identity has radical implications for notions of nationhood. Notes, ref., sum. [Journal abstract]
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