White Africans?

Katja Bendels

White Africans? Negotiating Identity in White South African Writing

ISBN 978-3-86821-174-0, 180 pp., paperback, € 20,00 (2009)

(Reflections - Literatures in English outside Britain and the USA, Vol. 20)

With the demise of apartheid in the early 1990s, South Africa found itself at a turning point in history, which called for a fundamental re-negotiation of the identities and self-concepts of all its citizens. Especially the country's white inhabitants feel at a particular loss to situate themselves in these new and thoroughly changed circumstances. The study at hand argues that in a situation like this, in the process of liberating oneself from the burden of the past and of appraising one's identity and position within society, literature can play a pivotal role. With the help of eight narrative texts it analyses the current discourse among white South Africans about their present situation, their self-concepts and anticipations of the future as it has been represented in white South African writing of the last fifteen years.

Preview / Table of Contents (pdf)

Review

"This is an excellent and well documented study which cointains sensitive readings of well-chosen works of post-apartheid literature."

Geoffrey V. Davis, Anglia – Journal of English Philology 128.3 (2010)