Talks by Nedine Moonsamy
Journal Articles by Nedine Moonsamy
Manuscripts should be typed in 1.5 spacing (including notes, references and quoted matter), and s... more Manuscripts should be typed in 1.5 spacing (including notes, references and quoted matter), and should be arranged to conform with the system for parenthetical documentation set out in the MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers (seventh edition, 2009, NOT the eighth edition). Contributors are urged to familiarize themselves with the conventions of this style, and to note that the Editor reserves the right to return any manuscript accepted for publication to its author for re-formatting. Submissions are reviewed anonymously by members of English in Africa's Editorial Board and other prominent scholars.
Looking at two short stories from Dilman Dila's critically acclaimed short story collection, A Ki... more Looking at two short stories from Dilman Dila's critically acclaimed short story collection, A Killing in the Sun (2014), I explore the controversial use of DDT in rural Uganda as a site of ecoambiguity. My close reading of "The Leafy Man" and "The Yellow People" illumines various paradoxes around the consumption of internationally sponsored insecticide and its subsequent cost to local society. These paradoxes contradict the Manichean thinking of earlier forms of postcolonial nationalism and self-determined nativist thought. I argue that by identifying ecoambiguity as a more appropriate tenor for insecticide usage in Uganda, Dila's short stories grapple with the realities of the neoliberal African state that must remain open to ambiguity and reconfigurations of the human, as it attempts to come to terms with, and potentially alleviate, local ecodegradation in a global economy.
J.M. Coetzee’s Summertime has been widely explored – both for its controversy and merits – as eng... more J.M. Coetzee’s Summertime has been widely explored – both for its controversy and merits – as engaging in “acts of genre” where the inscription of an autobiographical narrative simultaneously serves as a metatextual and ideological critique of its form. Similarly, this article is intrigued by generic instability, but our terrain lies further afield, exploring how the narrative lapses from the lofty ideals of romance to the baser “truth” of chick-lit. In Summertime, all the female characters besmirch Mr. Vincent, the biographer, for wanting to cast John Coetzee in the role of a romantic hero. Yet, their resistance results in a series of romantic failures which then situates Summertime in the generic ambit of chick-lit. In embodying a spirit that is as playful as it is critical, we suggest that Coetzee offers an opportunity to cast aside a literary critical tradition of suspicion and, in doing so, passes critical comment on how we approach a popular genre like chick-lit.
Alex Latimer's The Space Race deploys the fairly conventional science fiction narrative where hum... more Alex Latimer's The Space Race deploys the fairly conventional science fiction narrative where humans travel to the moon in search of a new home and, set in a post-apartheid context, the progressive possibilities of this search are exciting to consider. Yet, I argue, this future-oriented opportunity is -somewhat unwittingly -squandered in favour of a more nostalgic focus. Latimer uses the trope of space exploration to revisit the broken dreams of the Afrikaner volk whose goal of finding a home in South Africa has finally been thwarted by the post-apartheid era thus leading to a covert plan to colonise the moon. Latimer, wants us to laugh at the longings of the volk but the humour misfires, instead producing an uncomfortable state of disavowal that ultimately restores the nostalgic dreams of the volk by turning it into a science fiction prophesy.
Given the centrality of utopia to the African literary and postcolonial imaginary, science fictio... more Given the centrality of utopia to the African literary and postcolonial imaginary, science fiction by African writers offers a unique opportunity to explore and critique the sociopolitical salience of imagined African futures. Through a close reading of three short stories in the Afro SF: Science Fiction by African Writers Vol I (2012) anthology, I illustrate how generic science fiction utopias prove to be much too sterile when applied to an African context and thus do not amount to a viable and sustainable future. Making use of tropes of contagion, there is a clear desire to demonstrate that the human impulse is, in many ways, contrary to the objectives of neat utopias and these stories subsequently seek to 'contaminate' the notion of utopia itself. Overall, I suggest that this is indicative of a shifting postcolonial landscape that needs to more carefully weigh the price of its utopias. Pretoria. She is currently writing a monograph entitled A Country Out of Time: an examination of nostalgia and nationalism in contemporary South African Fiction and launching a research project on Science Fiction in Africa.
English Studies in Africa Volume 58, Issue 1, 2015
Many cultural and literary theorists have noted how post-apartheid nationalism relied on progress... more Many cultural and literary theorists have noted how post-apartheid nationalism relied on progressive appraisals of history, producing an archive that has consistently allied itself with the future to the detriment of the past. Yet as I aim to illustrate in this article, representations of historical contingency in contemporary literary output serves as an expression of vulnerability in this regard – an indication that the national and literary imaginary has lost the ability, or the need, to read the past according to progressive historical modalities. Through a close reading of Marlene Van Niekerk’s Agaat, Imraan Coovadia’s High Low In-between and Anne Landsman’s The Rowing Lesson, I illustrate how disillusionment proves tragic for certain characters, leading to an apocalyptic rendition of historical events. These characters, however, are portrayed as merely reactionary, casting events in a deliberately dystopian light in order to justify their convictions about a future apocalypse. Yet in these texts there are other characters who provide comic renditions of the apocalypse and thus appropriate historical contingency to form part of a different historical modality that can accommodate both failure and progress.
'Journal of Literary Studies' 31: 1, 2015
This article explores representations of time and temporality in two contemporary South African n... more This article explores representations of time and temporality in two contemporary South African novels in order to examine the salience of the Derridian contretemps in relation to contemporary South African society. As defined by Jacques Derrida, the contretemps is an experience of time and space that is essentially “out of joint” and is often used to represent anomie in a particular context. My close-reading of Imraan Coovadia's High Low In-between (2009) and Marlene van Niekerk's Agaat (2006) thus reveals how the contretemps is employed to not only provide a sense of time gone awry, but also to outline how these narratives explore the contretemps as a potentially ‘new’ temporal modality for contemporary South Africa.
English Studies in Africa Volume 57, Issue 2, 2014
In this article I analyse the structural representations of death in a selection of contemporary ... more In this article I analyse the structural representations of death in a selection of contemporary South African novels. In my chosen texts, characters are brought into a close relation to death by having to bear witness to the passing of a parent or relative. Instead of placing emphasis on processes of mourning, these novels utilise melancholic frameworks to mark a discursive shift towards spectrality. I argue that this shift is representative of a ‘post-transitional’ ideology that no longer views itself in terms of radical alterity – as the emphasis on the ‘new’ in early post-apartheid South Africa did – but which instead allows for more fluid appraisals of national development and civil hospitality.
Book Chapters by Nedine Moonsamy
Routledge Handbook of African Popular Culture, 2022
Postgraduate Research Projects by Nedine Moonsamy
Arts and Culture by Nedine Moonsamy
Set in 2023, Lauren Beukes's Afterland captures the devastating effects of a global viral pandemi... more Set in 2023, Lauren Beukes's Afterland captures the devastating effects of a global viral pandemic. About three years prior, a highly contagious virus, called the human culgoa virus (HCV), induced terminal prostate cancer and killed around four billion men. Steeped in grief after the abrupt loss of fathers, husbands, brothers, and sons, coupled with the gaping holes left behind in previously male-dominated industries, the remaining female population have not recovered from the blow. Society is in a state of disrepair, and with no cure in sight, women are barred from further procreation. The few males who have proven immune against HCV have become hot commodities for various agendas, so the odds are stacked against Cole in her bid to return home to Johannesburg with her young son, Miles. Cole has also lost her husband, leaving them stranded in America with no support system. They are forced into a quarantine facility so that the government can conduct experiments on Miles (who possesses the HCV-resistant gene). Cole is relieved when her sister, Billie, shows up to help them break out. But, ever duplicitous, Billie has been enticed by the value of black-market sperm, and the escape soon turns into a nail-biting crosscountry manhunt. Enduring the worst of familial bonds with Billie, who puts a bounty on the head of her sister's son, Cole must do everything to protect her one remaining source of love: her child. Following this duo, readers are taken on a wild American road trip, carried along by their wish to return to South Africa where, it is rumoured, the population fared much better in the wake of this global disaster. Where were you when it happened? Where were you when you were first exposed? But how do you draw a line in the sand between Before and After? The problem with sand, Cole thinks, is that it shifts. It gets muddy. (Beukes 2020, 28
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Talks by Nedine Moonsamy
Journal Articles by Nedine Moonsamy
Book Chapters by Nedine Moonsamy
Postgraduate Research Projects by Nedine Moonsamy
Arts and Culture by Nedine Moonsamy