Accounting for Language: Narrative Ethics and Economic Reparations in Antjie Krog's Country of My Skull

摘要

This essay begins with the observation that critics who attempt to adjudicate the ethical status of Antjie Kroga??s Country of My Skull have tended to couch their inquiries in the idiom of accountability. Since the semantic ambiguity of the word a??accounta?? allows it to straddle the conceptual domains of narrative and economics, its deployment in the criticism of Country of My Skull, and in the broader rhetorical ambit of South Africaa??s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), risks conflating an abstract, discursive ethics of acknowledgement with materialist, economic conceptions of reparative justice. This essay offers a corrective to this tendency by reading Country of My Skull as advancing its own reflexive, diacritical theorization of the constitutive connection between narrative ethics and the material imperatives of economic reparations. Paying close attention to the pecuniary metaphors that suffuse Kroga??s text, this essay argues that they insist on the South African statea??s fulfilment of its reparative obligationsa??to victims of apartheid as a necessary condition for the accreditation of the TRCa??s enabling fiction of an egalitarian public sphere. Along the way, this essay also participates in broader debates about the status of literary non-fiction in post-apartheid South Africa by critiquing the exportation of deconstructive notions of a??literarya?? indeterminacy and non-closure into the domain of reparations, which tend to militate against the imperatives of reparative justice rather than advocate on its behalf.View full textDownload full textKeywordsAntjie Krog, Country of My Skull, South Africa, TRC, ethics, reparations, deconstruction, economicsRelated 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/10.1080/17533171.2011.642592