Writing Spaces: Fiction and Non-Fiction in South Africa

摘要

The boundary has been a profound presence in South African writing as it has been in its history, yet in conceptual terms it has often been misconstrued as denoting an absolute limit. This essay, written as a contribution to a debate on fiction and non-fiction in South Africa, argues for a different construction. Here the boundary is a spacea??a space of crossing, navigation, danger, creationa??and the essay explores its construction in one of its seminal moments of contention, the debates around Gordimer and Coetzee in the 1980s. Taking a personal tack, I challenge Coetzeea??s view, as expressed in a??The Novel Todaya??, that historical criticism of the time saw literature only as a a??supplementa?? to history. Equally, in views dominant today, there is a disregard for certain forms of writing that are construed as only a??secondarya??, a version of a??non-fictiona??. Either-or binaries such as this, however, produce self-defeating category errors: that history equals non-fiction, that non-fiction equals history, that fiction equals non-history. Rather, I argue for a more expansive viewa??a view that might engage with the fact that both Gordimer and Coetzee produced their most resounding work at overlapping times in the 1970s and 1980s. Writing of many different kinds has disrupted the surface of the real in South Africa, just as the real has disrupted the surface of its writing. In the current period, this might explain some of the energies and exchanges between fiction and non-fiction, whether in the work of Steinberg, Vladislavi??, or van Niekerk. South Africa criticism too should be concerned with writing spacesa??its intricacies, complexities, possibilities.View full textDownload full textKeywordsCoetzee, Gordimer, South African fiction, South African non-fiction, the boundary in South Africa, a??The Novel Todaya??, Vladislavi??, Marlene van NiekerkRelated 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/10.1080/17533171.2011.642588