The Struggle Over the Sign: Writing and History in Zoë Wicomb's Art

Autor: Dorothy Driver
Rok vydání: 2010
Předmět:
Zdroj: Journal of Southern African Studies. 36:523-542
ISSN: 1465-3893
0305-7070
DOI: 10.1080/03057070.2010.507536
Popis: Although Zoe Wicomb's four works of fiction deploy realist techniques, they show a deep and increasingly self-conscious interest in using the strategies of textualism, in which the real is seen to be grounded in discourse, materiality is inscribed in allegorising ciphers or signs, and the presented world has the status of textuality rather than being representational. Her short stories and novels address, adjust and re-imagine history – not simply by interrogating the intersecting discourses by means of which certain historical concepts are conventionally managed and understood but also by undoing the apparent opposition between history and text. These strategies constitute what is, in effect, a struggle over the sign. In the process, Wicomb's fiction moves in what may be called a double aesthetic and political direction. Her fiction yearns for a writing released from ‘history’ and ‘meaning’ and yet directed to truth-telling about varieties of subordination; it also yearns for a world in which human subje...
Databáze: OpenAIRE
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