Representations of slave subjectivity in post-apartheid fiction : the 'Sideways Glance'

[摘要] ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Over the past three decades in South Africa, the documentation of slave history at the CapeColony by historians has burgeoned. Congruently, interest in the history of slavery hasincreased in South African letters and culture. Here, literature is often employed in order toimaginatively represent the subjective view-point and experiences of slaves, as officialrecords contained in historiography and the archive often exclude such interiority. This thesisis a study of the representations of slave subjectivity in two novels: Rayda Jacobs's The SlaveBook (1998) and Unconfessed (2007) by Yvette Christiansë. Its task is to investigate andtraverse the multitude of readings made possible in these literary representations, and then tochallenge such readings by juxtaposing the representational strategies of the two novels.Both primary texts are works of historical fiction that, in different ways, draw on thearchive and historiography in order to grant historical plausibility to their narratives.Engaging with the distinct methods with which they approach and interpret such historicalinformation, I adopt the terms 'glimpsing and 'reading sideways. Throughout this study, Iengage each of these methods in order to demonstrate the value, and limits, of each techniquein its engagement with the complexities of representing slave subjectivity in the wake of its(predominant) occlusion from historical and official data.Chapter One presents a brief overview of the emergence of the slave past inhistoriography and public spaces. Following Pumla Gqola's statement that 'slave memory[has] increase[d] in visibility in post-apartheid South Africa, I move to a discussion of thetheoretical perspectives on (re)memory as employed by writers of fiction that exemplify 'ahigher, more fraught level of activity to the past than simply identifying and recording it ('Slaves 8) . In turn, I identify the imperative archival silence places on authors to writeabout slaves, and the relevance of genre in this undertaking. Specifically, I consider theromantic and tragic historical fiction genres as they are utilised by Jacobs and Christiansë inapproaching representations of slave subjectivity, and how this influences emplotment.Chapter One concludes with a brief exposition of the literary representations offered byUnconfessed and The Slave Book.Chapter Two presents a detailed study of Rayda Jacobs's The Slave Book as a novel ofhistorical fiction. Jacobs takes up a methodology of 'glimpsing at the slave past through therepresentations available in historiography. I trace the moments at which the text seeks toconvey slave subjectivity, within and without historical discourses, through such 'glimpses, and show how they are employed to establish a focus on interiority and to humanise slavecharacters.Chapter Three focuses on Yvette Christiansë's Unconfessed and explores its explicitengagement with silences surrounding the protagonist Sila van den Kaap's historical presencein the Cape Town Archives. I read Christiansë's representation of these silences as 'acts oflooking sideways at the discursive practices inherent in the historical documentation of slavevoices that enact her resistance to 'filling these silences with detailed narrative. I argue thatthe various forms of silence in the narrative allow for a deeper understanding of the injusticesand oppression suffered by Sila van den Kaap, and that it is these silences, ironically, whichgrant her voice.Chapter Four presents a comparison of the novels and their respective representationaltechniques of 'glimpsing versus 'looking sideways. While the distinct efficacy andimplication of each approach is critically evaluated, both are ultimately found to make aninvaluable addition to the literary exploration of slave subjectivity as attention is drawn to theinteriority of each text's characters.

[发布机构] Stellenbosch University