African-Language Literatures. Innocentia Jabulisile Mhlambi
applied in the study of its literatures. These preferred theoretical models (including Structuralism and New Criticism) have consciously precluded certain cultural forms as ‘low-brow’ and negated their significance as constituting statements of ‘proper sensibilities.’ Consequently, the African-language literary tradition has a narrow view of what constitutes indigenous literary writing, focusing on formal oral and written literatures and excluding radio drama, emerging popular narratives, theatre, television and film. With waning interest in formally written literatures in indigenous languages and the rise in the quantity and significance of other forms of artistic production, this tradition in South Africa has experienced a paralysis. A fresh approach to African-language literatures is needed and this is what I hope to introduce in this book.
Works in the African-language literary tradition, with its neatly categorised genres, have been, and still largely continue to be, perceived either as imitations or carbon copies of Western literary models of bourgeois origin or as offshoots of traditional literature. Yet these literatures which have emerged under conditions only remotely similar to those of the Western bourgeoisie and completely different from those which gave birth to traditional literature, shuttled to and fro between the past and the contemporary to articulate certain imperatives. These imperatives, recreated through powerful narratives, poetics and discursive idioms capturing African life experiences, were neither fully traditional nor modern but highlighted the dynamic, multiple, cultural matrix which was forever growing and unfolding into the recesses, crevices, holes, twists and bends of modern life. As Africans flowed with the tide of modernity, responding, interpreting and re-ordering past social orders according to modern demands, other supplementary or complementary forms of expression emerged, responsive to the demands, setbacks, aspirations and outlooks shaped by lived experiences in particular localities. I argue in this book that all artistic expressions of different cultural workers that have emerged through time embody ‘authentic proper sensibilities’ of Africans in South Africa.
The position I take in this book contrasts with earlier studies in the field both in the view taken of African-language literatures and in the theoretical model applied. The popular arts paradigm I follow allows for critical exploration of a wide spectrum of art products produced by different art workers from different levels of African society. Furthermore, in this approach artistic forms in indigenous writing are not categorised into the oral and the written, rather the focus is on the significance and relevance of repetitions, anecdotes, jokes, allusions, parody, overlaps and the migrations and recycling of textual elements in particular contexts. It is these textual elements that comprise popular discourses and invariably make these texts popular arts. ‘Popular arts’ is a loose category comprising old and emerging cultural forms that can constitute anything from African traditional discourses to those of the modern African elite. The styles are highly mixed, drawing from local and international influences in their attempt to code and comprehend changing demands in local settings. Contrary to earlier approaches that looked at tradition as in various stages of disintegration and therefore requiring preservation in the face of modernity, the popular arts paradigm privileges a focus which emphasises how this disintegration is re-invoked and continuously re-inscribed by the masses in modern times. This approach is inclusive of all art forms produced since the historical process of contact began. In this book, I draw on elitist cultural products in indigenous languages to demonstrate that the writings of the mission-educated, that set the pattern for later writing, drew heavily on popular culture and this tradition has not changed. This kind of writing, therefore, is firmly located in the popular arts.
There are more commonalities than differences between South African indigenous forms of writing and popular fiction from elsewhere in Africa and in Jamaica. South African indigenous-language writing, together with popular arts from further afield in Africa, is characterised by a specific discourse marked by syncretism, hybridism and creolisation in form and content. Although these concepts have different etymologies involving theology or religion, biology and linguistics respectively, the commonality between them is that they are all marked by a blending of formally discrete traditions or cultures to form new identities. The thematic repertoires of these art forms reflect the life-experiences and consciousness of the masses. These repertoires, focusing on African cultural desires, aspects of religiosity and modernity, and African nationalism, firmly ground these literatures within popular discourses. In addition, plot structures and characterisation strategies are firmly grounded within local realities and are, therefore, familiar. The integrative perspective provided by the popular arts paradigm is a logical solution to constraints imposed by former theoretical models as it allows for a systematic study of a variety of social variables and their interconnectivity with popular art forms. In this book I draw on a variety of contexts: sociological, historical and ideological and bring them to bear on the eclectic mix of tradition and modernity, the local and the international, and the rural and the urban making up the thematic thrust of texts.
Probably a contributory factor to problems posed by conventional theoretical approaches is the wholesale transposition of European cultural perceptions of certain artistic forms as highbrow or lowbrow. These perspectives implied a one to one alignment of the lifestyles and imperatives of the South African black intelligentsia, as cultural brokers, to those found in European societies. However, even a casual glance at the nature of stories churned out by indigenous-language intelligentsia right from the earliest years of this literary form, reveals that their stories were mostly about ordinary people in ordinary local and familiar places, living their ordinary lives. These concerns have shaped the stylistic and thematic repertoire of indigenous-language writing up to this day. Even the forms used by the broadcast media that were to emerge in the mid and later twentieth century based their thematic repertoire on the everyday issues of ordinary people.
During the early years of indigenous-language written literatures, the representation of everyday life allowed the African intelligentsia to express their anguished response to colonial modernity. The narrative genre, which draws simultaneously from traditional and modern discourses to articulate the complexities of modernity and contemporaneity through displays of ordinary lives in ordinary settings, has remained a cornerstone of this literary tradition. As the last century wore on, the African intelligentsia did not remain the only major source of literary output in this tradition as more and more people, drawn from different sections of society, started to reflect, in writing, on what animated their everyday life. So, in this book I have also drawn from post-apartheid authors whose intellectual contexts have not been shaped by the erudite cultures that informed earlier writers in the literary tradition; authors who, by the late twentieth century, had recused themselves from the erudite European high culture. These later authors have been shaped by a variety of contexts and have been exposed to a more complex, eclectic culture which has drawn from the numerous cultures of those races that make up the South African nation.
A fundamental view I express in this book is that the exclusive focus on the assimilated elites’ response to colonial and apartheid pressures and constraints denied the parallel existence of the vibrant but less vocal response of the masses whose lives animated most, if not all, of the narratives of the elites. In the context of this writing, lived experiences are drawn upon not as a way of showcasing the plight of the wretched ‘others’, but as a way of imprinting morals and worldviews, underscored by African middle class sensibilities, which the ‘others’ have to apply to their life experiences outside the narrative contexts. This will become apparent in the discussion of post-apartheid novels in the first three chapters of this book. Within the contextual framework of the popular arts paradigm, the intense focus on the ordinary reveals explosive energies underpinning and shaping ‘micro-worlds’ (Jones, 2002: 8), giving a sense of historical reality to lives that were normally ignored or neglected, and provides a number of insights. But more significantly the focus on everyday life shows that ‘ordinariness’ is neither simple nor banal. The analysis of everyday life makes it possible to uncover the ‘microphysics of power’, foster awareness of ambiguities and undermine the master narratives of progress, rationality and modernisation (Jones, 2002). The act of drawing from everyday issues by the African-language literary tradition presupposes inclinations that are aligned with popular arts and popular culture thereby highlighting and transcending the foreign constraints that have resulted from theoretical models which have not been informed by local life experiences.
Limits