Fictions of Anticipation: Perspectives on Some Recent South African Short Stories in English

The short story in South Africa post-2000: Critical reflections on a genre in transition

“…Criticism on the short story genre from the 1990s onwards seems divided between earlier accounts that focus largely on the short story anthology as an apt medium for the expression of democratic multiplicity and later criticism which, in contrast to these celebratory readings, highlights the genre’s performance of uncertainty and disequilibrium. Commenting on the popularity of the short story in the 1990s, Andries Walter Oliphant writes that “[i]n fluid and transitory contexts such as present-day South Africa” the short story “can be practiced to great effect” (1996: 62). For him, “[t]he fractured and discontinuous articulations which a body of short stories produces over a particular period” (1996: 62) offer the reader a multiplicity of viewpoints, defying former hegemonic narratives of the apartheid era.…”

“…Commenting on the popularity of the short story in the 1990s, Andries Walter Oliphant writes that “[i]n fluid and transitory contexts such as present-day South Africa” the short story “can be practiced to great effect” (1996: 62). For him, “[t]he fractured and discontinuous articulations which a body of short stories produces over a particular period” (1996: 62) offer the reader a multiplicity of viewpoints, defying former hegemonic narratives of the apartheid era. The palpable tension between unity and difference, centripetal and centrifugal forces, exhibited in short fiction collections or “cycles”, as Sue Marais contends, are “especially appropriate to a rendering of the tensions and possibilities inherent in a multifarious and ruptured society in the process of attempting to transform itself into a unified but culturally diverse democracy” (2014: 14).…”

“…Oliphant’s earlier-cited article similarly cautions against accounts that locate the resurgence of the short story in the 1990s in the irreducible specificities of that historical moment. Referring to the groundbreaking short stories by Bessie Head and Can Themba, he calls for a “broader framework incorporating the ongoing dialogue between past and present narratives” (1996: 62). Deeply sceptical of hasty pronouncements of “newness”, he maintains that “the new” is always imbedded in “an open-ended and unfolding narrative procss in which the short story as a genre, to paraphrase Jacques Derrida, always participates in several genres” (1996: 62).…”

“…In the South African context, where the idea of a national literature has been a vexed question in the past (Attwell and Attridge, 2012; Nkosi, 2002; Oliphant, 2004) and continues to be contested in the context of the country’s postapartheid shift towards a “transnational cosmopolitanism” (Frenkel, 2016: 4), the short story has been utilized by various population groups to claim belonging and/or express dissent with repressive political orthodoxies. 1 Most notably, however, short story criticism on apartheid as well as contemporary short story writing in South Africa has consistently emphasized the genre’s disposition to capture the fragmented realities of socio-political transitions in the country (MacKenzie, 1999a; Marais, 2014; Oliphant, 1996). In recent years, the short story, Craig MacKenzie notes, “has undergone a renaissance […] and the signs are that the form is destined to play a major role in bodying forth South Africa’s future in imaginative terms” (1999a: 143).…”

“…In recent years, the short story, Craig MacKenzie notes, “has undergone a renaissance […] and the signs are that the form is destined to play a major role in bodying forth South Africa’s future in imaginative terms” (1999a: 143). Critics have frequently observed a shift from the overtly politicized short story of the 1970s and 1980s to a return to a more literary and modernist aesthetics in the present (Oliphant, 1996; Titlestad, 2010). In this special issue, we intend to complicate this reading by mapping out other trajectories the short story has taken in recent years, which point toward the emergence of more popular subgenres.…”