Hyper-compressions: The rise of flash fiction in “post-transitional” South Africa

Abstract

This article begins with a survey of flash fiction in "post-transitional" South Africa, which it relates to the nation's post-apartheid canon of short stories and short-short stories, to the international rise of flash fiction and "sudden fiction", and to the historical particularities of South Africa's "post-transition". It then undertakes close readings of three flash fictions republished in the article, each less than 450 words: Tony Eprile's "The interpreter for the tribunal" (2007), which evokes the psychological and ethical complexities, and long-term ramifications, of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission; Michael Cawood Green's "Music for a new society" (2008), a carjacking story that invokes discourses about violent crime and the "'new' South Africa"; and Stacy Hardy's "Kisula" (2015), which maps the psychogeography of cross-racial sex and transnational identity-formation in an evolving urban environment. The article argues that these exemplary flashes are "hypercompressions", in that they compress and develop complex themes with a long literary history and a wide contemporary currency. It therefore contends that flash fiction of SouthAfrica's post-transition should be recognized as having literary-historical significance, not just as an inherently metonymic form that reflects, and alludes to, a broader literary culture, but as a genre in its own right.

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

“…Peter Blair’s (2020) article looks to the wider short story landscape in order to address the recent efflorescence of flash fiction in South Africa, exploring its historical antecedents, the history of its inclusion in general anthologies, and its particular resonance for the South African context. Aside from noting the distinctive characteristics of “hyper-compression”, intertextual allusion, and interpretive gaps, Blair also reads flash fiction as troubling the conventional dualism of surface and depth.…”