Remembering the Self: Fragmented Bodies, Fragmented Narratives in Marlene van Niekerk's Triomf and Agaat

Abstract

Summary This article explores the significance of the motif of bodies in fragments in Marlene van Niekerk's Triomf (1999) and Agaat (2006). It argues that van Niekerk's protagonists “speak” of their trauma primarily through their wounded bodies. The correlation between corporeal and narrative fragmentation is explored to determine whether remembering (or re-membering) can prove salutary. In both Triomf and Agaat, it is only when characters are faced with the irrefutable evidence of trauma as wrought upon one another's bodies that they are forced to reckon with the truth of their familial narratives. Their fragmented bodies belie any “saving perspective” (van Niekerk 1999: 175), which might gloss over such horror. While Louise Bethlehem proposes that the scar is the “amanuensis of violence” (2006: 83), this article seeks to investigate whether there is anything potentially empowering in the revelation of scars, regardless of their origin. It considers how intimate relationships are implicated in working through the embodied experience of trauma and whether recognition might provide an alternative narrative of healing to the confessional mode. Van Niekerk's novels present neither easy solutions to the experience of trauma nor a false sense of closure. Nevertheless, the texts insist that trauma must be confronted, and that such a confrontation is possible only via the medium of the body. Finally, this piece considers whether Maurice Blanchot's account of the liberating potential of the fragment might provide pertinent insight into the absence of a coherent narrative of the healed body.