"The Rediscovery of the Ordinary: Some New Writings in South Africa"
by Njabulo S. Ndebele
I found Ndebele's discussion about the spectacle on a social level much more compelling than his discussion of literature. When I first read the article and the novel, I was very confused by the different centralisation of the "ordinary" in the two works. It's interesting that the writers that Ndebele pointed towards as models for future literature in the article are not studied anymore. I'd be interested to read some of Ndebele's earlier work to see how he treated the "ordinary."
The discussion in class shed a lot of light on why there was a disconnect between Ndebele's ideas of the ordinary in this article and in The Cry of Winnie Mandela. In "Rediscovery of the Ordinary," Ndebele defines the ordinary as "sobering rationality" and "the forcing of attention on necessary detail" (53). I think that his novel, as an experiment, is actually more captivating than what he mentions in the article. By inserting the "ordinary" into the spectacular framework, Ndebele is able to bring focus to the women's lives in very interesting way. That being said, I agree with others in the class who thought that the novel was reductive at points.
Some passages:
"...the ordinary daily lives of people should be the direct focus of political interest because they constitute the very content of the struggle, for the struggle involves people not abstractions" (57).
"Literature cannot give us lessons, but it can only provide a very compelling context to examine an infinite number of ethical issues which have a bearing on the sensitisation of people towards the development of the entire range of culture" (55).