Fossicking in the house of love: Apartheid masculinity in the folly
2010; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 22; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/1013929x.2010.9678334
ISSN2159-9130
Autores Tópico(s)South African History and Culture
ResumoAbstract This paper attempts to analyse a hitherto ignored aspect of Vladislavić's The Folly, and of Vladislavić's writing more generally: that of sexuality and gender, masculinity in particular. I argue that Vladislavić's novella is innovative in its linking of individual subjectivity and psycho‐sexuality with the apartheid state and its machineries. In this respect, Vladislavić was prepared to enter regions of the self and psyche and to take the fictional risk of abstract surrealism that few of his contemporaries were, and, I argue, the results were revelatory in their exhumation of buried complexes. In this novel Vladislavić shows that a key mechanism that held the apartheid state together was macho homosociality which soothed the troubled conscience of the white majority via the prosthetic conscience of the leader whose vision led the homosocial pack. Importantly, however, Vladislavić also embodied an alternative to this apartheid identity and its workings in the text.
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