The Place of Nostalgia in Zoë Wicomb's Playing in the Light

摘要

Much recent South African fiction deploys the motif of returning to a place associated with the past. Medalie claims that this motif justifies characterising these fictions as a literature of nostalgia, and is critical of their idealising the past rather than engaging critically with the process of constructing the past. My article examines Wicomb's Playing in the Light as a novel of return that similarly concerns itself with nostalgia, though it seeks not to oppose naïve nostalgia with critical nostalgia but to explore the ambivalence that typifies nostalgia as such. I suggest that in as much as nostalgia is located between phantasy and the real, it resembles the aesthetic figure of the uncanny. I draw an analogy between the uncanny and the likely narrator, showing how the novel presents the location of the speaking subject, and the memories at the disposal of the subject, as a fundamental problematic of the writing.View full textDownload full textKeywordsnarrative, nostalgia, pastoral, memory, the uncannyRelated var addthis_config = { ui_cobrand: "Taylor & Francis Online", services_compact: "citeulike,netvibes,twitter,technorati,delicious,linkedin,facebook,stumbleupon,digg,google,more", pubid: "ra-4dff56cd6bb1830b" }; Add to shortlist Link Permalink http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1013929X.2011.602911