Reviews for Apartheid and Beyond: South African Writers and the Politics of Place

The average rating for Apartheid and Beyond: South African Writers and the Politics of Place based on 2 reviews is 4.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2019-12-05 00:00:00 Raymond Bauer This study focuses on how spaces signify in apartheid and post-apartheid South African literature. Barnard thinks carefully about how different types of spaces become meaningful, both the spaces of the country (rural landscapes, townships, etc.) and the spaces of daily life (e.g., the white suburban home). Taking the position that apartheid was fundamentally grounded in the control of space--who was allowed into particular spaces, who could have particular kinds of relationships with certain spaces, and who was allowed mobility through spaces--Barnard shows how manifestations of space work symbolically in the work of writers like Coetzee, Gordimer, Fugard, and Mda to shape the potentials characters identify for their own lives within the highly regulated and segregated apartheid world. One of the interesting recurring points is that the bridging of spacial divides--contact between different racial groups or the erosion of the spacial boundaries between those groups--is often an important gesture towards liberation in apartheid literature, as it highlights the artificial nature of the boundaries.

Review # 2 was written on 2014-12-22 00:00:00 Monica Brezzi Language can be a bridge from one way of thinking to another person's culture, which is what this book provides. It isn't about clever puns, riveting plot twists, or flowing descriptions, it's about a culture that you've most likely never seen, told through the eyes of a man who is watching it crumble into dust. The language is basic English, probably 6th grade or middle school level, but it provides a fascinating glimpse into an Africa that doesn't exist anymore. It doesn't romanticize it either. People are killed in ways that modern Western views still find barbaric, but it's just a fact of life for this tribe, a sacred law. The white men that come later do things that are just as barbaric, and some try to enforce civilization in a way that doesn't seem so bad. The point-of-view turn at the very end of the book makes it for me... I won't spoil it, but it made me want to scream with indignity for a culture that was squandered. This book will make you see Africa in a different way, and you'll be better for it.