Apartheid in Post-Apartheid South African Literature

In this course, we explore the political stances that contemporary South African writing articulates towards the apartheid regime. We bring particular attention to the textual emergence of queer subjectivities. During apartheid (1948-1994), South Africa became a global symbol of racial injustice, and several South African writers became famous for their anti-apartheid literary production. Since 1994, critics have looked for new frames in which to analyze a “new” literature. In the search for “newness,” however, we may forget to consider how the “old”–apartheid–reappears in post-apartheid literature. Authors include Zackie Achmat, K. Sello Duiker, Phaswane Mpe, and Zoe Wicomb.