The Myth of Adamastor: the Ambivalent Metaphor of Otherness in South African Literature

Abstract

The myth of Adamastor as represented in Luis de Camoens’s epic poem The Lusiads has been frequently used as a metaphor for the unknown and dangerous other in South African literature. While analysing how this monstrous figure was used by the white colonial subject to represent Africa and Africans the article focuses on the ambivalence of its representation. The construction of such a repulsive figure serves by contrast as a proof of the white man’s humanity, and reinforces his awareness of selfhood and agency. It also serves a hermeneutic function whereby he can legitimate his subjugation of the colonised Other. As a simulacrum proceeding from European subjectivity, it evinces contradictory feelings of fear and fascination, rejection and attraction, and elicits a discourse which by endowing it with a personal voice exorcises the fear and uncertainty it arouses. This article shows how throughout South African literary history, from the early nineteenth century to the present day, representations of Adamastor have registered shifting and ambivalent attitudes towards the country’s colonial conundrum.