(N)either Afrikaner (n)or English: Cultural cross-over in J. M. Coetzee's Summertime

Abstract

J. M. Coetzee's autobiographical novel/ fictional autobiography, Summertime: Scenes from Provincial Life (2009. London: Harvill Secker), engages more fully and more self-reflexively than any of his other works with the knotty question of his identity as a white South African.This essay argues that in a characteristically elaborate narrative construct he both avows and disavows his Afrikaner as well as his English cultural roots. The essay begins by contextualizing Summertime in the current critical discourse on South African identity, and then suggests that the rhetorical figure of chiasmus provides a way of understanding the cruciform logic that underpins much of Coetzee's thinking and writing, and of engaging with the cultural cross-over between English and Afrikaner cultural filiation and affiliation that he foregrounds in works such as Boyhood, Slow Man, Diary of a Bad Year, and Summertime. In the cruciform exchanges between Coetzee's biographer Vincent and his interlocutors in Summertime, questions are raised concerning the former South African author's mother tongue, spoken and written command of English and Afrikaans, and authority and authorship in both languages.