Environmentally oriented literary and cultural studies, or ecocriticism for short, gained traction in the United States of America in the late 1980s. It took root in South Africa no earlier than the start of this century and has been applied to the field of Afrikaans literature only for about the last decade. At a conference in Nijmegen in 2010, the leading German ecocritic Axel Goodbody expressed concern about the slow spread of ecocriticism to non-Anglophone literatures. He highlighted the debilitating effect of the hegemony of English as medium of communication on practising ecocriticism. Goodbody warned that ecocritic debates would be poorer if they neglect the resources of theorising and critical analyses in non-English-speaking language and other contexts; and cultures that are not dominated by Anglophone traditions.Afrikaans has been part of the surge of different national voices and languages in this field. This article enters the debate about the expansion of ecocritical studies to include a more environmentally oriented world of research than the one dominated by Anglophone literatures for quite a few decades. It offers a critical-descriptive overview of how ecocritical studies centred on Afrikaans literary narratives add nuances to and amplify thematic matters of interest for ecocriticism in our country. I want to highlight the diverse and convincing contributions made by Afrikaans literary critics to "the understanding of the human relationship to the planet" (Joni Adamson & Scott Slovic, 2009: 6). These contributions are analysed in order to also evaluate the relevance of the various theoretical angles of approach in use, regarded within the broader theoretical discourse of ecocriticism.
OpsommingOmgewingsgeoriënteerde literêre en kulturele studies, of kortweg, ekokritiek, het in die laat 1980's steun verwerf in die Verenigde State van Amerika. Dit het egter eers aan die begin van hierdie eeu in Suid-Afrika ingewortel geraak en word maar sowat vir die laaste dekade in die veld van Afrikaanse literatuur toegepas. Die gesaghebbende Duitse ekokritikus Axel Goodbody het op ʼn konferensie in Nijmegen in 2010 sy besorgdheid oor die stadige verspreiding van ekokritiek na nie-Engels-sprekende literature uitgespreek. Hy het die verlammende uitwerking van die hege-monie van Engels as kommunikasiemedium op die beoefening van ekokritiek beklemtoon. Goodbody het gewaarsku dat debatte oor ekokritiek armer sal wees indien hulle die hulpbronne van teoretisering en kritiese ontleding in nie-Engels-sprekende taal-en ander kontekste, en kulture wat nie deur Engelssprekende tradisies oorheers word nie, verwaarloos.
ECOCRITICAL CONCERNS IN SELECT AFRIKAANS NARRATIVE WORKS: … 85Afrikaans was deel van die oplewing van verskillende nasionale stemme en tale in hierdie veld. Hierdie artikel sluit aan by die debat oor die uitbreiding van ekokritiese studies, om ʼn meer omgewingsgeoriënteerde wêreld van navorsing in te sluit as die een wat vir ʼn hele paar dekades deur Engelssprekende literature oorheers is. Dit bied ʼn kritiese-b...
