Suffering, Violence and Victimhood: Damon Galgut’s A Sinless Season as an Allegory

Reviewed by: Waiting for Godot Cóilín Parsons Waiting for Godot. By Samuel Beckett. Directed by Damon Galgut. The Little Theatre, Cape Town, South Africa. 25 May 2010. Waiting for Godot. By Samuel Beckett. Directed by Sean Mathias. The Fugard Theatre, Cape Town, South Africa. 29 July 2010. In 1937, Samuel Beckett applied for a job as a lecturer in Italian at the University of Cape Town. He was turned down on the basis that he was not a native speaker of Italian, but it is tempting to imagine how taking the job might have changed the shape of Beckett's career and of South African letters. No doubt he would have found plenty of material for his plays in the absurd and inhuman policies of the National Party, which embarked on full-scale, systematic segregation in 1948, just months before Beckett began writing Waiting for Godot. Two recent productions of Godot in Cape Town have invited audiences here to engage with Beckett as a writer of consequence to South Africa and a powerful critical voice on questions of colonialism and postcolonialism not just in Ireland, but around the world. Running within a few weeks of each other, the productions ensured that nothing happened twice—twice. By a logic of quadruple negation, something quite significant happened in the Cape Town theatre world. It was, of course, not the first significant Godot event in South Africa. A Beckett-sanctioned interracial Godot appeared at the Baxter Theatre of the University of Cape Town in 1980, fourteen years before the country's first free elections. Directed by Donald Howarth, the Godot at the Baxter has retained a certain celebrity status among productions. Howarth's insistence on the play's relevance to apartheid South Africa was a signal moment for understanding that Godot could be made to ask pressing and awkward political questions. Godot's insistent parodying of the language of human rights, enshrined in the "Universal Declaration of Human Rights" during the months that Beckett wrote the play, made it particularly urgent in South Africa in the 1980s. When Pozzo determines that Vladimir and Estragon are indeed "of the same species" as himself, his affirmation is not unequivocal—he puts on his glasses in an effort to confirm the almost impossible fact. The assumption that these tramps are human beings is momentarily withdrawn until Pozzo can assure himself that this is indeed true. The end of apartheid and the sixteen years that have elapsed since the first free elections in 1994 have changed the valence of Pozzo's inquiry—the constitution has resoundingly confirmed the equal humanity of all South Africans—but the hesitancy, the momentary possibility that Pozzo might find that these tramps are not, in fact, of the same species as himself continues to make Godot a play for the times in South Africa and elsewhere. As South Africans have been learning since 1994, the long-term effects of state-engineered discrimination are difficult to overcome, even with the strongest of political wills. Both productions in Cape Town—one local, one international—made these continuing resonances with the discourse of human rights in the play very clear. The directors of both productions, Damon Galgut and Sean Mathias, are South Africans, and both appear to have felt a particular urgency in bringing this play back to what might have been its home had Beckett been offered the job in Cape Town. Galgut, a novelist whose name appeared on the Booker Prize shortlist this year for the second time, financed his production himself; Mathias and designer Stephen Brimson Lewis considerably pared down their high-profile international production in order to fit it into the space of the Fugard Theatre. Both of these productions reproduced Howarth's interracial Godot, though without the political background of 1980, the composition of the cast was neither surprising nor unusual—a fact of life in the new South Africa. And yet Beckett's play challenges us to be cognizant of the human capacity to differentiate and discriminate, so that Godot in South Africa, or any other place struggling to come to terms with colonialism, will always have echoes, however vague, of a violent past. Godot is, for...

In his well-known interview with Richard Woodward, Cormac McCarthy had occasion to remark: “The ugly fact is books are made out of books” (Woodward). Using his words as the point of departure for a detailed investigation of a multi-stranded case of intertextuality, I examine the influence of McCarthy’s Blood Meridian on three South African novels – Mike Nicol’s Horseman, Damon Galgut’s The Quarry and James Whyle’s The Book of War – in a way that I hope sheds light on the provenance, literariness and meaning of these texts.Keywords: Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian, Damon Galgut, Mike Nicol, James Whyle

Damon Galgut is an important representative of contemporary South African literature. Over the past 20 years (2003-2023), scholars both internationally and domestically have conducted extensive research on his works from multiple perspectives, covering aspects such as socio-historical contexts, narrative techniques, and identity. These studies have revealed the multi-dimensional value of Galgut’s works. While international research started relatively late but developed rapidly, focusing on his insights into South Africa’s post-apartheid society and his unique narrative style, domestic research has gradually emerged in recent years, mainly concentrating on his narrative features and thematic ideas. Overall, despite the diverse perspectives, there is still room for further exploration. Future research could further explore the uniqueness and ideological depth of Galgut’s creations and attempt comparative studies with other literary masters to enrich the research horizon of South African literature.

This study explores the evolution of racism in South Africa by analysing representations of interracial relationships depicted in the novels of the following South African authors: Andre Brink’s An Instant in the Wind (1976) set in the colonial period, J. M. Coetzee’s Disgrace (1999) set in the transitional era of post-antiapartheid, and Damon Galgut’s The Impostor (2008) representing the current post-antiapartheid twenty-first century. I focus on the historical, socio-political, and economic aspects of South Africa to analyse how racism has developed over the years. I use Louise Vincent and Simon Howell’s identification of three popular incantations (“I’m not a racist but…,” “I’m over it,” and “it’s not race it’s…”), which define South Africa’s contemporary views on racism, in their discussion of a controversial poster designed by DASO (2012) representing a black-white couple. I bridge the gap between the conventional view of deep-seated racism and the diversified contemporary view by exploring how the race issue has transformed from radical racism, under the colonial and apartheid period, to the emerging of non-racialism during the transitional period, and then finally to a re-racialization in the post-antiapartheid state.

This study critically examines the conflicts surrounding land, unfulfilled promises, and the dichotomy of self versus other in Damon Galgut’s The Promise. The novel provides a profound exploration of the manipulation and subjugation of individuals and cultures under oppressive political regimes, particularly the apartheid system in South Africa. A state-sanctioned system of racial segregation and discrimination that was institutionalized from 1948 until the early 1990s, systematically privileging the settlers while marginalizing the indigenous populations. Through a close reading of The Promise, this study reveals how the novel reflects the broken promises that defined apartheid and its lingering aftermath. Central to this analysis is the exploration of apartheid’s legislative framework and its devastating socio-economic consequences, particularly for black South Africans. The study investigates how apartheid entrenched systemic inequality by fostering a rigid hierarchy that positioned the white “self” as superior and the black “other” as inferior. Galgut’s narrative captures the psychological and material repercussions of this ideology, exposing its dehumanizing effects. Furthermore, the study examines post-apartheid South Africa as depicted in The Promise, focusing on the unresolved issue of land redistribution. Despite the end of apartheid, equitable land restitution remains an unfulfilled promise, perpetuating historical injustices. The novel portrays the resistance of white landowners to relinquishing property, highlighting ongoing racial and economic disparities. By interrogating these themes, this study underscores the enduring legacy of apartheid and the challenges of achieving true reconciliation and justice in contemporary South Africa. The study examines the symbolism of the unfulfilled promise and the silencing of black persons in the novel. Eventually, it displays the disputes and confrontations between settler and native characters, highlighting their viewpoints and the reverberations of colonialism and racist policies.

This article begins with a brief overview of my original article published in Journal of Bisexuality (2003, vol. 3, issue 1), and a discussion of its personal implications for the author. The author then proceeds to update her research by examining the climate of opinion toward variant homosexualities in selected African countries, including South Africa. She mentions specific cases of homophobia in Malawi and Uganda, a gap between the progressive provisions of the South African Bill of Rights that guarantee human rights in terms of sexuality, and a reluctance on the part of the South African government to raise this issue with other African Union states. The author also highlights the role of activist organizations in Malawi, Uganda and South Africa. She then turns to an analysis of cultural productions in South Africa, beginning with a discussion of homophobia in Spud: The Movie. After a brief overview of her book, Somewhere in the Double Rainbow: Representations of Bisexuality in Post-Apartheid Novels, published in 2007, the author examines a number of more recent authors’ treatments of bisexuality. She argues that Damon Galgut's In a Strange Room: Three Journeys portrays bisexual characters in terms of stereotypes; however, other novels, by authors across a range of subject positions, are more open and accepting of sexual fluidity. The ones which the author discusses are Fred Khumalo's Seven Steps to Heaven, Zukiswa Wanner's Men of the South, Zinaid Meeran's Saracen at the Gates and Sarah Lotz's Exhibit A and Tooth and Nailed.

Set in the period following South Africa’s first democratic elections, Damon Galgut’s The Good Doctor traces the friendship that develops between two doctors working at a rural hospital. While it does not deal overtly with the politics of the “new” South Africa, the novel’s treatment of friendship, which cuts across the distinction between the private and the public, reflects obliquely on the nature of the emerging democratic dispensation. In this paper, I explore the link that Galgut constructs between friendship and community, and argue that his portrayal of the former points to the possibility of a form of community that is premised on a “common strangeness.”

Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2003, Damon Galgut’s The Good Doctor enjoyed a positive reception from reviewers as an incisive, if bleak, portrait of post-apartheid South Africa and its failure to realize the idealistic promises of “rainbow nationalism.” It also drew criticism from some scholars who argued that it attracted prestige and recognition precisely by pandering to the neocolonial values of a conservative metropolitan readership and its predilection for works which portend the demise of the former British colony. In this article, I offer a close reading of The Good Doctor that contests its reception as an opportunistic disseminator of post-apartheid disillusionment, and argue instead that it offers a scrupulous interrogation of the forms of vocalization and self-fashioning available to white South Africans in the aftermath of apartheid. In accounting for the emphasis Galgut places on the ongoing labour of self-interpretation in this context, I turn to the philosophy of Paul Ricoeur whose work on narrative identity, I demonstrate, strongly resonates with the value The Good Doctor finds in a hermeneutically examined life.Keywords: Damon Galgut, The Good Doctor, post-apartheid literature, narrative identity

This interview with South African author Damon Galgut examines responses to his Booker short-listed novel, The Good Doctor, and the effect that being short-listed for the award has had on his career. He discusses his twenty-five-year career, which, after a very early start at a young age, has been erratic. The author discusses his opinions on “the new South Africa”, and its challenge to South African fiction, post- apartheid and post-anti-apartheid. And he shares his thoughts on his love for, and ongoing relationship with, India.

Summary The article considers the descendants of the original white settlers’ experience of space and place in terms of the perception of self and other as represented by the male protagonists who feature in three comparatively under-read novels of the post- apartheid period: John Conyngham’s The Lostness of Alice (1998), Damon Galgut’s The Good Doctor (2003) and Michiel Heyns’s Lost Ground (2011). After the election of a black-majority government, many white South African men feel that they can no longer negotiate a place that supplies them with a stable and secure sense of self. The novels’ three subjects, who exemplify the psychological condition of these men, endeavour to discover who they are and where they belong. Through the traversal of boundaries, the protagonists make connections with the outside world and the different other. The authors, likewise, stretch boundaries by implementing the narrative frame of the detective novel. To foreground the characters’ search for selfhood, belonging and meaning, reference is made in the article to aspects of identity formation in relation to the other, such as place, and the expansion of place by the navigation of boundaries.

Damon Galgut's The Good Doctor (2003) deals with the present moment in which South Africans wonder how to confront their historical legacy as they attempt to build a different kind of future. At a rural hospital that may stand for South Africa, Galgut throws together a sceptic – scarred by his experience of the former regime's repressive mechanisms – two foreign NGO volunteers who have been shocked into stupor by violence elsewhere, a woman who has been recently empowered, but whose fear of change leaves her immobile, and a hopeless idealist who will work to make the world a better place, whatever the cost. None of these characters incarnate pure evil or the promise of a better life in absolute terms, as the impossibility of identifying the referent for the novel's title demonstrates. What the novel leaves no doubt about, however, is the persistence of the racial and social schisms inherited from the past. This paper will analyse the extent to which the meeting of these contrasting outlooks on the country's situation results in a violent clash, detachment, even violence and death, or whether hope may result from the collision.

This article evaluates the position and experience of whites in South Africa after the advent of a black majority government, insofar as these are represented by the English-speaking white male protagonist in The Good Doctor (2003) by Damon Galgut. Analysis of the novel will illustrate that the legacy of colonisation and apartheid continues to influence the settler descendants’ perceptions of self and the other and their place in the country.

Being a South African post-apartheid novel, The Promise (2021) by Damon Galgut is a narrative whose characters are caught up in a nation torn by racial divisions. The novel bids a sharp comment on racial supremacy ideologies and the dead-ends such dogmas engender. As a white writer who is cognizant of the appalling racial condition of his nation, Galgut brawls to find hope in post-apartheid South Africa which does not live up to the pledged heterogeneity between races. Thus, the fundamental premise of this essay adopts the notion of the abject in the novel which is employed, I argue, to depart from the Manichean politics of black-white divide into a “Third Space” that threatens the norms of fixity. In addition, the essay makes use of Homi Bhabha’s notions of enunciation and the stereotype. These concepts help in construing the novel as a site of erupting the prevailed racial patterns in South Africa.

A Study on the Theory of Ethical Literary Criticism

Michael Keren’s new monograph offers detailed individual readings of 13 contemporary novels clustered around the turn of the millennium. It also uses these readings to advance a broad argument about the merits of applying analysis of literary novels to research in the social sciences. Keren is a social scientist – a Professor of Political Science – who took his BA in Israel (where he was born) and his PhD in the USA, and who is now based in Canada at the University of Calgary. Unsurprisingly, Politics and Literature at the Turn of the Millennium focuses on ‘world politics’, and the selection of novels it works through is compellingly diverse. Keren’s analysis of these texts comes together to make a strong argument for the potential of literary analysis to expose ‘hidden dimensions that may not reveal themselves in a straightforward empirical investigation’ (p. 9). Keren locates his work within a wider ‘aesthetic turn’ in the social sciences around the turn of the millennium. He outlines a series of major societal issues or ‘problems facing the world at the turn of the millennium’, which ‘seemed too complex, contingent, and unpredictable to be comprehended and solved by theories, typologies, and data-gathering services’ (pp. 6–7). Additionally, he points to fears around ‘Y2K discourse’ and the global political fallout of 9/11 as key exacerbations of this condition of contingency. Literature, arts, film, and other aesthetic representations have had increased value in the social sciences, Keren argues, but he makes claims for the particular merits of the novel. Not only, he suggests, can the novel provide insight into the human contingency of empirical analysis but also it can ‘moderate’ it: ‘the novel not only provides a special kind of knowledge but also a sense of moderation over the knowledge we hold on to, often with great zeal’ (pp. 9–10). This is an exciting idea, which moves beyond the idea of simply combining qualitative and quantitative investigation, though one could argue that it isn’t exclusive to the novel form: film or television narratives could surely offer something similar. In fact, given that David Simon’s television series The Wire (2002–2008) has, famously, been part of the sociology curriculum at Harvard (and many other universities around the world) this feels like an omission. Nevertheless, Keren’s readings have real substance and the benefits of his approach can also be reversed in the sense that, while he clearly states his intention to derive insight into contemporary politics through analysis of novels, we can also gain insight into debates about contemporary fiction through his political science lens – particularly around political allegory and contemporary political fiction. For example, by emphasizing the potential for analysis of novels to ‘moderate’ empirical analysis, Keren’s approach could provide a new dimension to polarized debates around the ‘9/11 novel’. Where some literary critics such as Richard Gray, Michael Rothberg, and Pankaj Mishra have criticized early 9/11 novels that have ‘domesticated’ the crisis, others such as John Duvall, Bruce Marzec, and Catherine Morley have dismissed the idea that novels should be obliged to make explicit political statements. Keren’s view that novels build on other kinds of political knowledge and inquiry offers a compelling possibility to challenge or move beyond this polarization.