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Exile Encampments: Whiteness in Alexandra Fuller's Scribbling the Cat: Travels with an African Soldier

2009; SAGE Publishing; Volume: 44; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1177/0021989409105118

1741-6442

Antje M. Rauwerda,

Travel Writing and Literature

Alexandra Fuller's 2004 travel/homecoming narrative Scribbling the Cat reveals the problem of persistent whiteness in Zambia, Zimbabwe and Mozambique. The narrative raises questions about the place of African whiteness, and displaced Rhodesian whiteness in particular. This paper argues that Fuller's narrative depicts the tenuous hold white Africans have on their homeland in extensive descriptions of houses that are makeshift, incomplete, and temporary. It suggests, in addition, that rootless houses signify an effort to build a future that does not use the foundations of a violent, racist white past. The different effects of Fuller's descriptions of houses (emphasizing white vulnerability, obdurate distinctions between white and black and efforts to transcend the violence of history) reveal a tension in the narrative between what Fuller explicitly reveals about white Africanness and what she exposes by implication.