Print, Text and Book Cultures in South Africa. Andrew van der Vlies
PRINT, TEXT AND BOOK CULTURES IN SOUTH AFRICA
PRINT, TEXT AND
BOOK CULTURES
IN SOUTH AFRICA
EDITED BY Andrew van der Vlies
Published in South Africa by:
Wits University Press
1 Jan Smuts Avenue
Johannesburg
Published edition © Wits University Press 2012
Compilation © Edition editor 2012
Chapters © Individual contributors 2012
First published 2012
ISBN 978-1-86814-566-9 (Print)
ISBN 978-1-86814-593-5 (Epub)
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the written permission of the publisher, except in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright Act, Act 98 of 1978.
Cover images: Death of a Typewriter and Abamfusa Lawu by Willem Boshoff
Edited by Alex Potter
Cover design and layout by Hothouse South Africa
Printed and bound by Creda Communications
CONTENTS
1.1Print, Text and Books in South Africa
ANDREW VAN DER VLIES
2.PRINT CULTURES AND COLONIAL PUBLIC SPHERES
2.1Metonymies of Lead: Bullets, Type and Print Culture in South African Missionary Colonialism
LEON DE KOCK
ISABEL HOFMEYR
2.3Textual Circuits and Intimate Relations: A Community of Letters across the Indian Ocean
MEG SAMUELSON
3.LOCAL/GLOBAL: SOUTH AFRICAN WRITING AND GLOBAL IMAGINARIES
3.1Deneys Reitz and Imperial Co-option
JOHN GOUWS
3.2“Consequential Changes”: Daphne Rooke’s Mittee in America and South Africa
LUCY VALERIE GRAHAM
3.3Oprah’s Paton, or South Africa and the Globalisation of Suffering
RITA BARNARD
4.THREE WAYS OF LOOKING AT COETZEE
4.1In (or From) the Heart of the Country: Local and Global Lives of Coetzee’s Anti-pastoral
ANDREW VAN DER VLIES
4.2Under Local Eyes: The South African Publishing Context of J. M. Coetzee’s Foe
JARAD ZIMBLER
4.3Limber: The Flexibilities of Post-Nobel Coetzee
PATRICK DENMAN FLANERY
5.QUESTIONS OF THE ARCHIVE AND THE USES OF BOOKS
5.1Colin Rae’s Malaboch: The Power of the Book in the (Mis)Representation of Kgaluši Sekete Mmalebôhô
LIZE KRIEL
5.2“Send Your Books on Active Service”: The Books for Troops Scheme during the Second World War, 1939–1945
ARCHIE L. DICK
5.3From The Origin of Language to a Language of Origin: A Prologue to the Grey Collection
HEDLEY TWIDLE
6.ORATURE, IMAGE, TEXT
6.1The Image of the Book in Xhosa Oral Poetry
JEFF OPLAND
6.2Written Out, Writing In: Orature in the South African Literary Canon
DEBORAH SEDDON
6.3Not Western: Race, Reading and the South African Photocomic
LILY SAINT
7.IDEOLOGICAL EXIGENCIES AND THE FATES OF BOOKS
7.1The Politics of Obscenity: Lady Chatterley’s Lover and the Apartheid State
PETER D. MCDONALD
7.2“Deeply Racist, Superior and Patronising”: South African Literature Education and the “Gordimer Incident”
MARGRIET VAN DER WAL
7.3Begging the Questions: Producing Shakespeare for Post-apartheid South African Schools
NATASHA DISTILLER
8.NEW DIRECTIONS
8.1The Rise of the Surface: Emerging Questions for Reading and Criticism in South Africa
SARAH NUTTALL
8.2Sailing a Smaller Ship: Publishing Art Books in South Africa
BRONWYN LAW-VILJOEN
8.3The University as Publisher: Towards a History of South African University Presses
ELIZABETH LE ROUX
Contributors
Index
Acknowledgements
The following chapters are reproduced with permission:
Chapters 2.2, “‘Spread Far and Wide over the Surface of the Earth’: Evangelical Reading Formations and the Rise of a Transnational Public Sphere: The Case of the Cape Town Ladies’ Bible Association” by Isabel Hofmeyr; 3.3, “Oprah’s Paton, or South Africa and the Globalisation of Suffering” by Rita Barnard; 4.2, “Under Local Eyes: The South African Publishing Context of J. M. Coetzee’s Foe” by Jarad Zimbler; and 7.1, “The Politics of Obscenity: Lady Chatterley’s Lover and the Apartheid State” by Peter D. McDonald all first appeared in English Studies in Africa 47(1) (2004). Barnard’s, Zimbler’s and McDonald’s chapters have been revised by the authors for the present collection. All appear here by kind permission of English Studies in Africa and its editor, Michael Titlestad; Unisa Press; and Taylor & Francis South Africa.
Chapter 2.3, “Textual Circuits and Intimate Relations: A Community