Andreas Eckl, Essen
Wolfram Hartmann, Windhoek
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Bruno Arich-Gerz, Cologne
Christo Botha, Windhoek
Greg Cuthbertson, Pretoria
Tilman Dedering, Pretoria
Gregor Dobler, Basel
Dag Henrichsen, Basel
Andre du Pisani, Windhoek
Chris Saunders, Cape Town
Jake Short, Athens (USA)
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Eoin Ryan
Carol Kotze
Jennifer Perry
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Otjivanda.Presse Essen
Dammannstr. 64
45138 Essen, Germany
info@namibian-studies.com
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| Encodings of society in Namibian literature
Volker Winterfeldt and Helen Vale
Abstract
This article examines a selection of contemporary Namibian prose and poetry. In Brian Harlech-Jones’s A Small Space (1999) and To Dream Again (2002), the embodiment of socio-cultural experience and its subjective adaptation, in the Bourdieuvian sense of a class-typical imprint of the individual’s habitus, can be traced in the development of the novels’ main protagonists. In Breaking Contract (1974), Vinnia Ndadi’s autobiographical account of the transition of a migrant worker from peasant to colonial wage slave and, eventually, to party official, is not accompanied by evidence of a marked cultural transformation that would reflect the experience of different social worlds. Contemporary Namibian poetry, on the other hand, presents the most outspoken portrait of social reality, both of postcolonial conditions and of the authors themselves. From a sociological perspective, the paper investigates the aesthetic encoding of the social world of the authors and their work. The realities of anti-colonial resistance and postcolonial realignment of society are reflected in the fictional identities of protagonists. The paper understands the fashioning of narratives as the creative process of re-enactment of the ‘real’ that takes place within the literary field.
Journal of Namibian Studies, 9 (2011): 85 - 108
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