The Problem of Identity: South Africa, Storytelling, and Literary History

Abstract

Commission with families and friends recollecting those who were bludgeoned to death by the forces of the racist state? A single-authored literary history, Southern African Literatures covers work from the expression of stone-age Bushmen to that of writers such as Gordimer, Brink, Breytenbach, and Coetzee. In considering the questions of what constitutes a usable past, what value may be assigned to traditional, elite, and popular forms, generally how after apartheid one might understand the linguistic and cultural complexity of the southern African region, the study inherited a literary culture that had been constructed upon of linguistic-racial exclusivities. I use the term assumptions rather than principles: although a few critics have consistently called for integrative study, the practice?a practice very short on theory?has favored surveys, anthologies, and histories delineated according to the several languages and races of the region. There are in consequence separate studies of Afrikaans litera ture, South African English literature, Zulu literature, Xhosa literature, Sotho literature, a few on white writing, and a few on black writing.2 Southern African Literatures, in contrast, presents a single though multi vocal narrative based on principles of comparison and translation. In crossing language and race barriers it asks questions such as: would Xhosa expression have developed the way it did had it not encountered a British settler presence on its ancient land? Conversely, would South