“Local is Lekker”: Or why the New South African Parochialism will not go

Abstract

Summary Based upon brief comparisons with other literatures, the article examines the current debates on South African literature, isolating four symptoms which seem to indicate national self‐assertion via the high road of literature. These are the pride taken in locally produced artefacts; an increasing “cross‐over” and mingling of different languages which make any quests for purity of language a risky business, challenging control over dominant discursive formations; the attempt to find an “authentic” South African voice in literature, and, finally, a questioning of hitherto accepted critical traditions and boundaries. But although the intense focus upon the local seems both necessary and fruitful at this particular juncture in South African political history, the birthpangs of an emerging literature ought not to blind its practitioners into becoming parochial by cutting themselves off from the international debate.