Narrating Violence: Cultural Memory and History in Three Short Stories by Gordimer, Vladislavić, and Magona

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Contents

Introduction ...

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1. The Modern Short Story: A Short View of Genre Theory Parameters and Postcolonial Perspectives ... 10

1.1. The Short Story’s Status ... 10 10

1.2. The South African Short Story ... 18 18

1.2.1. Drum Magazine ... 18 18

1.2.2. The District Six Reality ... 21 21

1.2.3. White Writings ... 23 23

1.3. The Writer and the Short Story – Contextualizing “The Flash of Fireflies” by Nadine Gordimer ... 26 26

2. Culturing Violence ... 36 36

2.1. Institutionalised violence or violence as a cultured occurrence ... 36

2.1.1. Control: literary culture and censorship ... 44

2.1.2. Consequences ... 62

2.2. Subjectivity & Society: the facing of history, archives and the “story” of Violence ... 66

2.3. Social and Individual Memory: testimony as narrative and the role of the author ... 74

3. “Narrating Apartheid” ... 99

3.1. Nadine Gordimer ... 100

3.1.1. Jump and Other Stories ... 108

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3.2. Ivan Vladislavić ... 125

3.2.1. Propaganda by Monuments and Other Stories ... 131

3.2.2. “The WHITES ONLY Bench” ... 134

3.3. Sindiwe Magona ... 142

3.3.1. Push-Push! and Other Stories ... 147

3.3.2. “Comrade Heal Yourself!” ... 150

Conclusions ... 161

Bibliography ... 166