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Papers by solomon mwapangidza
Imbizo
 In this paper I use postmodernism to explore Antjie Krog’s engagement with post-Apartheid ide... more  In this paper I use postmodernism to explore Antjie Krog’s engagement with post-Apartheid identities in Country of My Skull. These identities, often complex and multiple, are mediated in the process of nation-building. I take the exercise of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) as metonymy for the nation-building project, and I argue that Krog quite deliberately chose an ambiguous and complex genre to represent equally ambiguous and complex identities. One of the salient features of postmodernism is its anti-systemic, anti-form impulse, and the form that Krog uses refuses to be conscripted into any single conventional form. Dominated by testimonies of victims and perpetrators of apartheid violence, the form also bears aspects of autobiography, novel, poetry and journalistic snippets interlaced with quotes from psychoanalysts and philosophers. From time to time, anecdotes, fairytales, myths and legends are interpolated into the narrative to remind the reader of the porou...
Latin American Report
In this article I use Barack Obama’s Dreams from my father: a story of race and inheritance (here... more In this article I use Barack Obama’s Dreams from my father: a story of race and inheritance (hereafter to be referred to as Dreams from my father) and Nelson Mandela’s Long walk to freedom to demonstrate Hall’s (1996, 4) view that identities are about ‘… using the resources of history, language and culture in the process of becoming rather than being,’ meaning to say that they are not a fixed essence, but a process, always being constructed and deconstructed in response to the cultural and historical circumstances in which the subject finds himself. This theory rejects the claim that a life narrative is an uncontaminated story of one’s personal history and life. I argue that Obama’s and Mandela’s identities take shape in response to the challenges of the duo’s respective cultures and societies. Both men deploy narrative towards political ends: Obama uses it to resolve questions of his origins as well as to launch his political career while Mandela uses it mainly to justify and uphol...
Imbizo
The aim of this paper is to demonstrate how Marxist literary theory affirms and protests the spir... more The aim of this paper is to demonstrate how Marxist literary theory affirms and protests the spirit of Enlightenment and modernity. The argument is made here that the road from tradition to modernity is not a single strait road, that in fact, it is a path littered with contradictions, ambivalences and discontents. When it came, the Enlightenment was heralded and lauded as a breakthrough; it ushered in a new spirit of interrogating everything. Ironically, that spirit has come back to haunt the Enlightenment itself. Indeed, it has proved to be its very nemesis such that modernity/Enlightenment cannot be taken as “givens” which are out there and immune to questioning. It is thus imperative that this discussion begins by defining the “spirit of Enlightenment/modernity.” The next step will be to outline the tenets of Marxist literary theory. The third and final part will illustrate how the said theory affirms and/protests Enlightenment and modernity. To this end, George Orwell’s Animal F...
Latin American Report, Jul 20, 2016
Imbizo
 In this paper I use postmodernism to explore Antjie Krog’s engagement with post-Apartheid ide... more  In this paper I use postmodernism to explore Antjie Krog’s engagement with post-Apartheid identities in Country of My Skull. These identities, often complex and multiple, are mediated in the process of nation-building. I take the exercise of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) as metonymy for the nation-building project, and I argue that Krog quite deliberately chose an ambiguous and complex genre to represent equally ambiguous and complex identities. One of the salient features of postmodernism is its anti-systemic, anti-form impulse, and the form that Krog uses refuses to be conscripted into any single conventional form. Dominated by testimonies of victims and perpetrators of apartheid violence, the form also bears aspects of autobiography, novel, poetry and journalistic snippets interlaced with quotes from psychoanalysts and philosophers. From time to time, anecdotes, fairytales, myths and legends are interpolated into the narrative to remind the reader of the porou...
Latin American Report
In this article I use Barack Obama’s Dreams from my father: a story of race and inheritance (here... more In this article I use Barack Obama’s Dreams from my father: a story of race and inheritance (hereafter to be referred to as Dreams from my father) and Nelson Mandela’s Long walk to freedom to demonstrate Hall’s (1996, 4) view that identities are about ‘… using the resources of history, language and culture in the process of becoming rather than being,’ meaning to say that they are not a fixed essence, but a process, always being constructed and deconstructed in response to the cultural and historical circumstances in which the subject finds himself. This theory rejects the claim that a life narrative is an uncontaminated story of one’s personal history and life. I argue that Obama’s and Mandela’s identities take shape in response to the challenges of the duo’s respective cultures and societies. Both men deploy narrative towards political ends: Obama uses it to resolve questions of his origins as well as to launch his political career while Mandela uses it mainly to justify and uphol...
Imbizo
The aim of this paper is to demonstrate how Marxist literary theory affirms and protests the spir... more The aim of this paper is to demonstrate how Marxist literary theory affirms and protests the spirit of Enlightenment and modernity. The argument is made here that the road from tradition to modernity is not a single strait road, that in fact, it is a path littered with contradictions, ambivalences and discontents. When it came, the Enlightenment was heralded and lauded as a breakthrough; it ushered in a new spirit of interrogating everything. Ironically, that spirit has come back to haunt the Enlightenment itself. Indeed, it has proved to be its very nemesis such that modernity/Enlightenment cannot be taken as “givens” which are out there and immune to questioning. It is thus imperative that this discussion begins by defining the “spirit of Enlightenment/modernity.” The next step will be to outline the tenets of Marxist literary theory. The third and final part will illustrate how the said theory affirms and/protests Enlightenment and modernity. To this end, George Orwell’s Animal F...
Latin American Report, Jul 20, 2016