Reading Resistance in Damon Galgut’s The Promise: An Analysis of Narrative Perspective

Abstract

ABSTRACT This paper concentrates on the self-reflexive and multi-voiced narration in Damon Galgut’s The Promise. Adopting Elleke Boehmer’s analysis of postcolonial poetics and Derek Attridge’s notion of resistance, the discussion shows how Galgut’s novel both invites and resists modes of reading associated with the third-person narrative, specifically the principles of detachment and narratorial omniscience. The first part of this article investigates the narrator’s complex interaction with the protagonists and the narratees. One feature of narration in The Promise is that it shows the narrator as belonging to the same racial group as the protagonists, at the same time seeking to transcend the limitations of their viewpoint. The fact that the protagonists’ racially inflected perception of the world is projected onto the narratees impacts the readers’ reception of the narrative text, denying them a stable subject position from which to judge the thoughts and actions of the protagonists. The second part of the article is devoted to the treatment of narratorial omniscience, which is consciously and self-reflexively limited by Galgut’s decision to focus on the perspective of white South Africans. It is shown that the narrator’s limitations direct our attention to the boundary between the said and the unsaid, thus resisting modes of reading connected with the realist novel. The conclusion of the article considers The Promise in the wider context of the liberal humanist tradition, arguing that the novel can be situated in the broad tradition of reconstructed liberalism, though it should be kept in mind that Galgut’s treatment of this stance is characterized chiefly by cautiousness and political realism.