The Classical ‘Traception’: Reconceptualizing Classics in Africa (With an Analysis of Fugard, Kani and Ntshona’s The Island)

Abstract

Classics has been used for various social, cultural and political purposes on the African sub-continent. Part I highlights some theoretical considerations regarding the traditional models of the classical tradition and the classical reception in Africa. The idea of the classical ‘traception’ embraces the classical tradition through its suggestion of linear descendent and the classical reception through its ‘receptive’ and reconfigurative associations. Part II discusses how and when classical ideas and texts reached and extended into Africa from the time of the sixteenth century and the main areas that constitute the classical ‘traception’ on the subcontinent. Part III presents a case study in the area of drama to illustrate some of the interpretive consequences of using the model of the classical tradition as opposed to that of the classical reception. My proposed model of the ‘classical traception’ seems preferable to either of these models when describing the dynamics of Fugard, Kani, and Ntshona’s The Island (1974) since it spans both the European conception of the original Antigone and its linear descent as well as its reconfiguration by its split collective (hybrid) multi-racial ‘author’ in The Island. Considering the elements of the classical tradition along with those of the classical reception—what I jointly term classical ‘traception’—helps to provide a broader view of the ways in which Classics has helped to shape and been received by different African societies and their cultures from the perspectives of both the European colonizers and indigenous peoples.