(Un)settled states: Indian Ocean passages, performative belonging and restless mobility in post‐apartheid South African fiction

摘要

A number of post‐apartheid literary works revisit nineteenth‐ to early twentieth‐century Indian Ocean passages. Bringing into visibility South Africa’s other ocean - until recently largely occluded by the conceptual bedazzlement of the black Atlantic - they unsettle some of the paradigms through which it has been imagined. This article explores five such novels, which articulate or critique various citizenship claims through a poetics of (un)settlement. One strand from this cluster employs rhetorical strategies such as an ‘Atlantic register’ to translate oceanic routes into territorial roots, mobility into autochthony; the other registers a more unsettled state as it scrutinises the gendered politics of home‐making and national belonging, and issues a retort to the multicultural imagination.View full textDownload full textKeywordsIndian Ocean, post‐apartheid South Africa, diaspora, Aziz Hassim, Ronnie Govender, Imraan Coovadia, Shamim SharifRelated var addthis_config = { ui_cobrand: "Taylor & Francis Online", services_compact: "citeulike,netvibes,twitter,technorati,delicious,linkedin,facebook,stumbleupon,digg,google,more", pubid: "ra-4dff56cd6bb1830b" }; Add to shortlist Link Permalink http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02533952.2010.492712