Cracked Vases and Untidy Seams: Narrative Structure and Closure in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and South African Fiction (original) (raw)

The South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission reveals a tension between a desire to open up the story of the past and to " close the chapter on our past ". I explore this tension by considering both the TRC's relation to closure and those of selected fictional narratives that explicitly respond to the TRC. I argue that the tidy closure of reconciliation both excludes the traumatic traces of " deep memory " and fails to account for the presence of the past in the present. Focusing on formal structure and endings, I consider how metaphors of narrative such as Walcott's " cracked vase " and textile images of quilting, tapestry and weaving suggest ways of writing the past that defer closure and complacency in favour of process and creative reworking.