André Brink, Dissenter

<p>This thesis provides a survey of the novels written in English by Afrikaans author, André Brink. It contextualises these texts in terms of the political and social issues of the era in which each was written. Specifically, it examines the ways in which the novels stand as a dissenting body of work against a particularly prescriptive and preclusive environment, challenging the racially prejudiced practices of apartheid South Africa and, later, challenging other forms of oppression in the post-apartheid nation. One of the most interesting aspects of Brink's work, I argue, is that his challenge comes from within the Afrikaner community. Discussion of the novels is concerned not merely with the literary treatment of a range of themes, but also with the worldly implications of this treatment, the ways in which Brink considers his questions about, and challenges to, authoritarianism. I argue that the oeuvre demonstrates Brink's developing social and political conscience, a series of 'rebirths' in which the artist is prompted to reconsider his role as an artist. I examine Brink's works from a number of perspectives and in relation to a number of central themes. My approach in looking at the oeuvre from different angles is highly suggestive of the problem as it plays out for Brink: he is unable to straightforwardly resolve the themes he treats, but refuses to concede defeat or retreat from the central issues. This, I suggest, is one of the most significant aspects of Brink's work - his willingness to continually reassess his environment and his response to it. He returns to favourite themes and considers the same issues from new perspectives and with new knowledge. The irresolution which defines his treatment allows the possibility for future investigation, a further dialectic interrogation of the issues in a new context. The works also trace the author's 'cultural conversation', a dialogue which both records and challenges the prescriptive and preclusive environment of apartheid South Africa. I extend this examination to include the post-apartheid novels, discussing the situation of the dissenting artist for whom the most obvious forms of authoritarianism have become defunct. Essentially, the thesis investigates the politics of writing as dissident politics and considers whether Brink's dissident project is a success and, indeed, whether dissent itself is viable.</p>

André Brink, Dissenter

<p>This thesis provides a survey of the novels written in English by Afrikaans author, André Brink. It contextualises these texts in terms of the political and social issues of the era in which each was written. Specifically, it examines the ways in which the novels stand as a dissenting body of work against a particularly prescriptive and preclusive environment, challenging the racially prejudiced practices of apartheid South Africa and, later, challenging other forms of oppression in the post-apartheid nation. One of the most interesting aspects of Brink's work, I argue, is that his challenge comes from within the Afrikaner community. Discussion of the novels is concerned not merely with the literary treatment of a range of themes, but also with the worldly implications of this treatment, the ways in which Brink considers his questions about, and challenges to, authoritarianism. I argue that the oeuvre demonstrates Brink's developing social and political conscience, a series of 'rebirths' in which the artist is prompted to reconsider his role as an artist. I examine Brink's works from a number of perspectives and in relation to a number of central themes. My approach in looking at the oeuvre from different angles is highly suggestive of the problem as it plays out for Brink: he is unable to straightforwardly resolve the themes he treats, but refuses to concede defeat or retreat from the central issues. This, I suggest, is one of the most significant aspects of Brink's work - his willingness to continually reassess his environment and his response to it. He returns to favourite themes and considers the same issues from new perspectives and with new knowledge. The irresolution which defines his treatment allows the possibility for future investigation, a further dialectic interrogation of the issues in a new context. The works also trace the author's 'cultural conversation', a dialogue which both records and challenges the prescriptive and preclusive environment of apartheid South Africa. I extend this examination to include the post-apartheid novels, discussing the situation of the dissenting artist for whom the most obvious forms of authoritarianism have become defunct. Essentially, the thesis investigates the politics of writing as dissident politics and considers whether Brink's dissident project is a success and, indeed, whether dissent itself is viable.</p>

From apartheid to Post-Apartheid: The Representational Trajectory to a Multiracial Nation in Nadine Gordimer’s None to Accompany Me, Andre Brink’s The Rights of Desire and Zakes Mda’s The Madonna of Excelsior

This article, which draws inspiration from the literary works of three South African writers, focuses on the two (amongst many) major historic periods in the life of the present-day nation described as post-apartheid South Africa. The two periods, evident in the works of Andre Brink, Zakes Mda and Nadine Gordimer under review, are the reign of apartheid and the transition to a democratic multiracial society built on the principles of equality and the respect of the rights and freedoms of South Africans. From both historical and literary standpoints, the transition to multiracialism is the outcome of the struggle of the oppressed black population of South Africa against the oppressive monolithic racist regime which ruled the country on an official governance policy which it called ‘Apartheid’. In order to enforce this inhumane worldview, the said racist regime used means of brutality and savagery with the intention of transforming the country into a ‘white nation’ that would belong to a minority-turned majority known as the Afrikaners. The often callous and gruesome acts of inhumanity perpetrated by the different racist apartheid regimes (that ruled South Africa from 1948-1994) became a major concern to the world at large and South African anti-apartheid writers in particular. Thus this category of the country’s writers tended to use literature as an instrument of protest against racial discrimination, which brought untold hardship to the black population. Andre Brink, Zakes Mda, and Nadine Gordimer are among the writers whose works vividly trace the South African experience from apartheid to post-apartheid eras. Brink, Mda and Gordimer in their respective works attempt to portray the endeavours and challenges of reconstructing the new nation from the debris of close to four decades of the brutal regime. The main issues discussed in this article are analyzed from New Historicist and Postcolonial perspectives due to the peculiar postcolonial nature of South Africa.

Violetta's Further Predicament: La traviata under Apartheid

Long before opera was first heard in South Africa, and even longer before it took root there, the country had its own operatic figure. But Adamastor was not introduced to the rest of the operatic world until 1865 and the premiere of Meyerbeer's L'Africaine, where in Nélusko's Act III ballade the terrifying story is told of the Titan whose body, legend has it, formed the rocky spine of the Cape Peninsula and barred sailors from rounding the ‘Cape of Storms’ and opening up the sea route to the East. The literary invention – perhaps via Rabelais – of Luís Vaz de Camões, the great Portuguese Renaissance poet who himself was the first European artist to round the Cape, Adamastor appears in Canto V of Os Lusíadas (1572) and has exercised a considerable fascination over South African artists and writers. But to whom does Adamastor belong? This is a question that some, increasingly, have sought to answer, re-examining Camões's myth from an indigenous perspective – for example, André Brink in his postmodernist novella The First Life of Adamastor, imagining how that meeting with the Portuguese fleet would have looked from the landward side, and the artist Cyril Coetzee in his huge T'kama-Adamastor painting commissioned for the University of the Witwatersrand.

“We are his children”: de Landmanfamilie als erfgenaam van Adamastor

In Die eerste lewe van Adamastor (The first life of Adamastor, 1988) André Brink reinvented the giant Adamastor, introduced in 1572 with the publication of Os Lusíadas, the Portuguese epic by Luis de Camões. So fascinated was Brink by the Southern African monster, that he wanted to write more novels containing new personifications of Adamastor. An Act of Terror (1992) can be seen as his most prominent Adamastor novel. An addendum entitled “The Chronicle of the Landman Family: As told by Thomas Landman” was included in this novel. In this article, I focus on this chronicle and unravel the way in which Adamastor manifests himself in every character, because each figure bears some resemblances to the Adamastor that Brink recreated in T’kama, the protagonist in Die eerste lewe van Adamastor (1988). All the characters in the Landman family fight against a dominant entity, but they do it on their own terms. This article shows that Brink uses the Adamastor figure as a metaphor for conflict, but also for reconciliation and protection. Against the background of these characteristics, Adamastor also appears to be a personification of different ideological constructs and of the continent of Africa. Furthermore, Adamastor’s appearance is a key feature to understanding how ideology transforms the representation of historical knowledge in Brink’s novel.