Die tyd van die triekster: identiteit in enkele hedendaagse Afrikaanse prosatekste

摘要

The time of the trickster: identity in selected contemporary Afrikaans prose textsThis article focuses on the various ways in which “identity” figures in Afrikaans novels from 1996 to 2006, particularly with reference to the way in which diasporic displacement and death can be connected to the problem of identity. The various options that are identified in the texts are connected by means of the structuralist idea that meaning is produced as “a system of differences with no positive terms”. The figure of the trickster, as it appears in one novel from this time, namely “Niggie” by Ingrid Winterbach, is used as heuristic framework for the study, and as a provisional way understanding the production of the variety of identity options in the novels.