Rethinking the Idiom of Transition

Abstract

A dilemma facing those exploring the post-apartheid novel in English is how to group white and black writers in a single box, given that previous scholarship often focused on racial binaries. Debates anticipating the post-apartheid liberal order attempted to highlight areas to be privileged without equal regard for the historical reality of pain inflicted on the population. This is probably why some white academics have invoked a defacement of history in the discourse of recent fiction. Others, however, have argued that literary scholarship should remain a search for ‘social justice’. Michael Chapman, for one, appeals for “a humanism of reconstruction” and “a hermeneutics of suspicion”—a position confirmed by the work of several black scholars. This essay explores the views of Mphahlele, Mzamane, and Oliphant with respect to the emerging tradition of writing in post-apartheid South Africa. It takes into account the fact that South Africa is still a ‘transitional state’—a ‘nation’ undergoing immense transformation not only in the political arena but also in practically every facet of its social imaginary.