Abstract
Summary Ivan Vladislavić’s 1993 novel The Folly has received less critical attention than his other writing. The novel was republished recently and, in this article, I read The Folly as a text that, from the vantage point of 1993, stages white South African suburbia as a site fraught with tensions. In the novel, the appearance of a drifter on a terrain vague dissolves the certainties of a suburban neighbourhood, creating an inchoate but gnawing sense of threat that finds expression in the Malgas family. I argue that white suburbs are under-examined cultural sites whose mundanity disguises their disci- plining principles. I draw on experiences of inhabiting ‘white space’ as a Black person to read Vladislavić’s novel as parodying white unease towards spaces that disrupt the taut or smoothed surfaces of suburbia. This unease is reflected most visibly in the post-apartheid evolution of such suburbs into lifestyle clusters, security estates and other configurations of life that are arranged around the alleviation of white middle- class anxieties.
Published Version
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