In the dialectic of memory: rediscovering graced fatherhood in Farida Karodia's stories

Abstract

This article considers Farida Karodia's construction of an alternative engagement with the violence of apartheid on the nuclear family. It proposes that central to her representation is the narration of this primary space of socialization in enunciations that reveal how apartheid interpellated kith and kin in the besieging of fatherhood. The suggestion is that depicting the family in these elocutions foregrounds it as a site of gender-specific casualties. I also propose that the healings of these wounds are revealed through textures that call for reflexivity. The discussion then proceeds to focus on how these inflections ratify the family and fatherhood in porous terms. Key to this analysis is, therefore, an attempt to demonstrate that the stories that let slip how the family members, who became implicated in the domino consequences set in motion by apartheid, define fatherhood in permeable lines. The exploration purports that this diplomacy highlights a productive tension between documenting atrocities, on the one hand, and taking an ironical distance from them, on the other hand. This examination suggests that the paradox, which is apparent in re-calling the family from inside it and through its gendered pivot, is pertinent to an enterprise on memory.