Zoë Wicomb's Queer Cosmopolitanisms
2011; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 12; Issue: 3-4 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/17533171.2011.586838
ISSN1753-3171
Autores Tópico(s)South African History and Culture
ResumoAbstract Taking as its starting point a reading of Zoë Wicomb's 2009 short story “In Search of Tommie”, this paper considers the queer energies at the heart of, and the representation of ‘queer’ characters across, Wicomb's oeuvre. Van der Vlies argues that the chief character of this story is usefully considered as a figure of queer potential not only because he is constructed as gay, but also because of his place at the centre of an imagined family in a non-genealogical revisioning of affiliation that is suggestive for Wicomb's engagement with the cosmopolitan—figured as the opposite of the homogeneous, parochial, or ethno-centric—more broadly. The paper argues that Wicomb's commitment to subversive interrogations of ideas about the nation as family, affiliation, genealogy, and reproducibility, might be said to be ‘queer’ in the sense that queer studies is concerned to reveal the operation of discourses of normalization in the everyday, and to reveal these as the locations of violence. Along the way, the essay addresses the subversive deployment of allusion and intertextuality (in this story, and more broadly), instances of homosexual identification and suggestive queering throughout Wicomb's oeuvre, and the fraught engagement of queer studies with race, class, and ‘reproductive futurity’ that is keenly at issue in debates about the rights of LGBTI South Africans, and about the place of queerness in constructions of authochthony and African identity. Keywords: queer studiesgay and lesbian studiespostcolonialcosmopolitanismtransnationalWicombCapefuturitygenealogy Acknowledgments I am grateful to: the School of English and Drama, Queen Mary, University of London, for funding my attendance at the “Cape & the Cosmopolitan: Reading Zoë Wicomb” conference in Stellenbosch in April 2010; the British Academy, for a Small Research Grant that has, in part, enabled research contributing to this essay; Patrick Denman Flanery, for astute comments and observations; and Rita Barnard and Carli Coetzee for their encouragement and suggestions. Errors and infelicities remain my own. Notes 1 The story was also included in the anthology Touch: Stories of Contact (2009). All quotations are from the story as it appeared in Wasafiri. It also appeared online on the Untitled Books website, where its date of posting is given as 7 September 2009, and where it was still available at the time of going to press. 2 Wicomb, “In Search of Tommie,” 51. 3 Wicomb, Telephone Interview, 13 November, 2009. 4 Wicomb, “In Search of Tommie,” 52. 5 Ibid., 52. 6 Ibid., 51. 7 Ibid. “Vark” is the Afrikaans for pig. 8 Ibid., 54. 9 Ibid., 55. 10 Ibid. 11 Ibid., 53. 12 Ibid., 52. 13 Ibid., 53. 14 Ibid., 54, 55. 15 TS “raises his eyebrows in a camp gesture” that Hallam “is unable to read” during her visit with TS and his mother; Ibid., 55. 16 Wicomb, “In Search of Tommie,” 52. 17 See Eliot, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” 17. 18 They are canny, too, allowing Wicomb to avoid having to request permission from the notoriously quotation-averse Eliot estate. 19 Wicomb, “In Search of Tommie,” 53. “Moffie” is a derogatory term for homosexual, see Branford, A Dictionary of South African English, 226, and the discussion of “moffie” in David's Story offered below. 20 Brenda asks “Dare I eat a peach?”; see Wicomb, Playing in the Light, 100. I discuss the purpose of allusions to Eliot in the novel in Van der Vlies, “The Archive, the Spectral, and Narrative Responsibility,” 595. 21 Its apparent or putative cultural familiarity appears to be why Michiel Heyns, for example, decided to use allusions to Eliot's work to replace allusions to Afrikaans folksongs in the FAK-Sangbundel [Federation of Afrikaans Cultural Organisations songbook] when translating Marlene van Niekerk's magisterial Agaat (2004) into English. See Heyns, “Translator's Note” and “Irreparable Loss and Exorbitant Gain,” 131–2; and Van Niekerk, Agaat, 696. 22 See Van der Vlies, “The Archive, the Spectral, and Narrative Responsibility,” 595. 23 Wicomb, “Setting, Intertextuality,” 150. 24 Ibid. 25 Wicomb, “In Search of Tommie,” 52 26 Wicomb, You Can’t Get Lost in Cape Town (hereafter You Can’t Get Lost), 42. Wicomb uses the form Tess of the D’Urbervilles. 27 Ibid., 42. 28 Ibid., 40. 29 Ibid., 49. 30 Ibid., 56. 31 Sicherman, “Literary Afterword,” 202. 32 Wicomb, You Can't Get Lost, 74. 33 I will stop referring to them as both stories and chapters henceforth. 34 Wicomb, You Can’t Get Lost, 90. 35 In Hardy's novel, the late Simon Stoke adopted the name to ennoble his own family and distance himself from his former life, we learn. “Parson Tringham had spoken truly when he said that our shambling John Durbeyfield was the only real and lineal representative of the old d’Urberville family existing in the country or near it: he might have added, what he knew very well, that the Stoke-d’Urbervilles were no more d’Urbervilles of the true tree than he was himself.” Hardy, Tess, 44. 36 Ibid. 37 Wicomb, “In Search of Tommie,” 52. 38 See “Trompe l’oeil” in Wicomb, The One That Got Away, 117–33; Roddy is the son of Ben, the expatriate South African nurse in the story “Neighbours,” in the same collection (81–99; see 95). I will have more to say about Fotheringay in due course: see “Boy in a Jute-sack Hood” in Wicomb, The One That Got Away, 9–21. 39 See Van der Vlies, “The Archive, the Spectral, and Narrative Responsibility,” 595–98. 40 Wicomb, “In Search of Tommie,” 52. 41 Ibid. 42 Ibid. 43 Ibid. 44 Ibid., 53. 45 Ibid. 46 Ibid., 52. 47 Ibid., 51. 48 Wicomb, You Can’t Get Lost, 103. There are a great many similar instances of metaphorical roaring (the “roar of distaste,” for example; see 163) and of unidentified sounds (93) in You Can’t Get Lost, all of which challenge Frieda's composure, or presage a challenge to her self-perception (see also 91, 115). 49 Wicomb, Playing in the Light, 2; see also 45. 50 Wicomb, David's Story, 196. See also, for example, Ouma Ragel's “[m]emories of 16 June 1976 and of Sharpeville before that,” which “buzz like persistent flies around her head.” Ibid., 208; and see 211. 51 Ibid., 204. 52 Ibid., 212, 213. Goggas are insects or, more idiomatically, “creepy-crawlies.” David's Story is full of references to loud noises, many of which function metaphorically: there is, for example, “the new roar of eugenics” (41). There are also multiple references to the noises made by rain or by running water, which sometimes drowns out speech, or threatens the composure of those who hear these sounds; see, for example, 144, 154, 162. 53 The Oxford English Dictionary cites historical examples back to 1513. See queer, adj.1. Oxford English Dictionary, 3rd edition, December 2007, online. 54 Wicomb, You Can’t Get Lost, 76. 55 Wicomb, David's Story, 62. 56 Ibid., 212. 57 See queer, n.2. Oxford English Dictionary, 3rd edition, December 2007, online. Queer, adj.1. includes, as the third definition, the following: “Although originally chiefly derogatory (and still widely considered offensive, esp. when used by heterosexual people), from the late 1980s it began to be used as a neutral or positive term (originally of self-reference, by some homosexuals…) in place of gay or homosexual, without regard to, or in implicit denial of, its negative connotations.” 58 See, for example, instances in David's Story on 6, 50, 73, 173, 207, where “funny” might easily be replaced with “queer.” 59 See, for example, expatriate Sri Lankan novelist Shyam Selvadurai's 1994 novel, Funny Boy. 60 Warner, “Introduction,” xxvi. 61 Ibid., xxvii. 62 Ibid., xxvi. See also Jagose, Queer Theory, 1. 63 On “‘subjectless’ critique,” see Eng et al., “Introduction: What's Queer about Queer Studies Now?” 3. See Smith, “Queer Theory and Native Studies,” 44–5, for a summary of critiques of the silencing, in race and class terms, that is a pernicious potential corollary of this subjectlessness. 64 Smith, “Queer Theory and Native Studies,” 63. 65 Wicomb, David's Story, 20; the glosses are offered in the “Glossary” (215–19; 273–78 in the CUNY Feminist Press edition), specifically 219 (277) and 217 (275), respectively. (The pagination of these editions is identical, except that the CUNY Feminist Press edition includes a substantial afterword by Dorothy Driver [215–71]. The Kwela edition's glossary is more tightly spaced typographically.) 66 Wicomb, David's Story, 176, 185. Branford's Dictionary of South African English (3rd ed. 1987) cites an intriguing instance of the use of the word “moffie” in relation to the Rhodes Memorial, from DRUM magazine in July 1977: “Susie, Rodney and Pauline relax on the Rhodes Memorial, next to the university of Cape Town. They are just three of the moffies who have engaged in meticulous research to trace their ancestors right back to the days of Van Riebeeck. Jackie Heyns gives DRUM readers an exclusive insight into the early days of moffiedom.” See Branford, Dictionary, 226. 67 See, for example, how the gem “sodalite” is said to sound to David's wife, Sally, like “sinful sodomites”; Wicomb, David's Story, 175. 68 Perez, “You Can Have My Brown Body,” 176. 69 Wicomb, The One That Got Away, 140. 70 This statement, made by Jacob Zuma in a Heritage Day speech in KwaZulu-Natal in 2006, was widely reported in the media; see BBC News. See Seale, “Zuma's Anti-Gay Comments,” online, and “Zuma Apologises,” online. On the national debate about same-sex “marriage” leading up to the Civil Union Act (17 of 2006), see Reid “‘This Thing’ and ‘That Idea,’” and “The Canary of the Constitution,” 39–44. 71 Wicomb, The One That Got Away, 144, 135. 72 Ibid., 140, see 136. 73 Ibid., 142. 74 Ibid., 143. 75 I am grateful to Patrick Denman Flanery for this suggestion. 76 Plomer, Turbott Wolfe, 89. 77 Wicomb, “Boy in a Jute-sack Hood,” 17. (References are to the Antigonish Review; see also in Wicomb's The One That Got Away, 9–21.) 78 Wicomb, “Boy,” 17. 79 Ibid., 24. Samuel and his father, George, live in Grassy Park (see 21–3). 80 Ibid., 24. 81 Ibid., 19. See also a reference to “the sugar-sack hood” (20). 82 Ibid., 18. 83 Ibid., 17. 84 Wicomb, The One That Got Away, 101. 85 Ibid., 108. 86 Ibid., 103. 87 Ibid., 104. 88 Ibid., 105. “Goffel,” as the story makes clear, is a derogatory term for a coloured person. Branford's Dictionary adds that it might also refer (derogatively) to “[a]n ageing prostitute” (citing an unnamed “Coloured Informant ex Cape Town June 1979” as source); see 118. It may be productive to think about the queer cosmopolitanism of the “goffel” (as used in this Wicomb story) as a subversive identity (or performance) not unlike that of the “wandering Jew,” as discussed by Daniel Boyarin, for example, that is as a productively queer term to be reclaimed (in the case of “wandering Jew,” in the wake of the macho-nationalist designs of Zionism on the term “Jew”). See Boyarin, Unheroic Conduct. I thank Rita Barnard for this suggestion, which merits further exploration. 89 Wicomb, The One That Got Away, 103. 90 Ibid., 106. 91 Ibid., 112. 92 Ibid., 110. Note that Dot thinks of Alistair as a chauvinist pig, a “vark” (108), just as TS does of his absent father in “In Search of Tommie.” 93 Munro, “Queer Family Romance,” 398. The novels discussed at some length are Gordimer's None to Accompany Me (1994) and The House Gun (1998), and J. M. Coetzee's Disgrace (1999). 94 Munro cites a 1998 speech, for example, in which Albie Sachs describes “coming out” as something that was happening to all South Africans; see “Queer Family Romance,” 427, n12. 95 Ibid., 405. 96 Ibid., 407. 97 “Come home, mama says, that Joe won’t be able to look after you forever, and it pleases him that she finally acknowledges Joe. She is old-fashioned….” Wicomb, “In Search of Tommie,” 53. 98 Ibid., 51. 99 Ibid. 100 Ibid., 54. 101 See Hunter and Mafeje, Langa, 3–4. Building at Langa started in 1923, and the “township” opened in 1927. There had been no restriction on the movement of black Africans to Cape Town before 1926. The National Party government refused to expand Langa after 1954, building Nyanga in 1957. Ibid., 6. 102 See Nelson Mandela Foundation, “KwaLanga community conversation,” online. Langa was also the name of the chief of the amaMbalu, an amaXhosa group in the Zuurveld in the late eighteenth century. Brother of the powerful chief Gcaleka, Langa led his people in the first of the conflicts with Dutch colonists on the eastern fringes of the Cape, the so-called Frontier Wars, ending in 1781. See Mostert, Frontiers, 226, 233, 244–7. The township's name thus evokes banishment or trauma, and also amaXhosa heritage, and, related to both, the discursive—and real—ramifications of borders, margins, and frontiers. 103 On the Langalibalele crisis and its significance, see Davenport and Saunders, South Africa, 117–18; Wright and Manson, The Hlubi Kingdom. 104 Lambert, “Chiefship in Early Colonial Natal,” 280. Bishop Colenso's extraordinary riposte to the semi-official published proceedings of the trials against Langalibalele and his family and retinue, which was influential in having the Colonial Secretary, Lord Carnarvon, ameliorate the chief's treatment in banishment, mentions—without contesting—the chief's description in official papers as a “rain-doctor.” See Colenso, Langalibalele, 1. Colenso felt Langalibalele had been “unfairly treated and unjustly condemned, in a tumult of popular excitement and frenzy” (ibid., ix). 105 Wicomb, David's Story, 153. Van Plettenberg was also the governor who effectively invented the notion of the Eastern Frontier during his journey of the region, the first by a sitting Cape Dutch company governor. 106 Ibid., 159. 107 Ibid., 153. 108 Ibid., 159. Wicomb cites from Jack Cope's 1968 translation of the 1921 (revised 1959) poem; see Wicomb, David's Story, ii. 109 Meyer and Olver, “Zoë Wicomb Interviewed,” 189. 110 Wicomb, “Translations,” 218. 111 Wicomb, “In Search of Tommie,” 51. 112 See Associated Press, “Rain-Queen,” online, and Wines, “Ga-Modjadji Journal,” online. 113 See Matebeni, “Blissful Complexities,” 254. The Modjadji procreates with men chosen by a royal council, but they do not become consorts. 114 Matabeni, “Blissful Complexities,” 254, 255. See Morgan and Wieringa, Tommy Boys; Nkabinde, Black Bull. 115 Wicomb, “In Search of Tommie,” 55. 116 Edelman, No Future, 31, 23. For critiques of Edelman, see Hall, Reading Sexualities, 10; Muñoz, Cruising Utopia. 117 Muñoz, Cruising Utopia, 91. 118 Munro, “Queer Family Romance,” 422. 119 See Derrida, “On Cosmopolitanism,” 20. 120 Perez, “You Can Have My Brown Body,” 185. 121 Tucker, Queer Visibilities, 16. 122 I am conscious that I am using “cosmopolitanism” in a loose sense here; I gesture towards Hiram Perez's polemical usage, referenced earlier (n68), and am reassured, too, by Pollock, Bhabha, Breckenridge, and Chakrabarty's playful suggestion that “specifying cosmopolitanism positively and definitely is an uncosmopolitan thing to do”; see their “Cosmopolitanisms,” 1. 123 Forestalled reproduction here becomes the inverse of, but no less problematically stereotypical than, abundant reproduction/reproducibility. 124 I am grateful to Patrick Denman Flanery for helping me formulate these observations. 125 Wicomb, “Translations,” 221.
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