from Writing South Africa: Literature, Apartheid, and Democracy, 1970-1996.
(Cambridge University Press, 1998)
by Zoe Wicomb
I read this article for ENGL 352 for the first time. It was interesting to read it again after actually reading My Son's Story. Since reading the novel, Wicomb's focus on the body becomes so much more interesting. In Gordimer's story, the body is an overwhelming image. I like how Gordimer uses the body in several ways: as a form of shame (being coloured and mistrusted); as a way of connecting (particularly through sex); as sacrifice (the dead at the funeral); and the list goes on.
Shame and the body have always been closely connected in Western tradition, and mainly policed through religious means. I'm very interested now in the attitudes towards the body in different African people before and after colonisation. The underlying force of Christianity is something that really grabs my attention when I engage with these texts, and through class discussions and films. Wicomb describes the identity of Saartje Baartman as a "Hottentot Venus," and then a symbol of postcolonialism, and then as someone who deserves a "decent Christian burial in her own country. I would love to read more about the connections between the body and spirituality and shame in postcolonial Africa.
I really like Wicomb's writing style. Her focus on the connections between the body and the text is really poignant. Although this isn't a new idea, I couldn't help but connect the "text" to the notion of text as something that exists as a process when it is interpreted. The body as text has a lot of implications in a country that institutionalised a certain reading of the body and used that reading for political and ideological means.