Abstract
The writings of the sixties autobiographies take us back from Mphahlele’s ultimate understanding of the connection between culture, power and discourse to one of his much earlier stages, where the urge to protest was interwoven with the urge towards self-discovery. Before there can be an identification of discourse with power, writers have to confront themselves and take the measure of their own identity, while at the same time providing the structural framework for the reader, and the community at large, to go through the same process. There can be no analysis of the distribution and manipulation of power through culture before the participators in the culture have deconstructed its naturalising processes and reconstructed their alienated identities upon which control and manipulation had originally depended.
who am i
lost like this
broken like this
weary like this
who am i
Mongane Serote: No Baby Must Weep1
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsPreview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
Mongane Serote, No Baby Must Weep (Johannesburg: Ad Donker, 1975) p. 29.
Northrop Frye, ‘Specific Continuous Forms: The Novel’, in Robert Murray Davies (ed.), Modern Essays in Criticism (New Jersey: Prentice Hall Inc., 1961) p. 34.
The association of black skin with an inbred tendency to steal is astonishingly bedrocked in the minds of many white South Africans — see Sipho Sepamla’s ‘The Bookshop’, Hurry Up To It (Johannesburg: Ad Donker, 1975), pp. 13–14 and Oswald Mtshali’s ‘Always a Suspect’, Sounds of a Cowhide Drum (London: Oxford U. P., 1971) p. 28.
Frantz Fanon, Black Skin White Masks (London: MacGibbon & Kee, 1968) p. 118.
N. Chabani Manganyi, Looking Through the Keyhole (Johannesburg: Ravan, 1981) pp. 59 & 61.
Roy Pascal, Design and Truth in Autobiography (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1960) p. 177.
Ian Watt, The Rise of the Novel (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1963) p. 78.
See Dugmore Boetie, Familiarity is the Kingdom of the Lost (London: Barrie & Rockcliff, The Cresset Press, 1969).
See Todd Matshikiza, Chocolates For My Wife (Cape Town, Johannesburg: David Phillip, 1982).
Quoted in the Foreword by A. J. Polley to Peter Wilhelm and James Polley (eds), Poetry in South Africa, Selected Papers from Poetry 74 (Johannesburg: Ad Donker, 1976) p. 8.
Bloke Modisane, Blame Me On History (London: Thames & Hudson, 1963) p. 73.
Ezekiel Mphahlele, The Wanderers (London: Macmillan, 1971) p. 279.
Alfred Hutchinson, The Road To Ghana (London: Gollancz, 1960) p. 131.
Ibid.
Noni Jabavu, Drawn in Colour: African Contrasts (London: John Murray, 1960) p. 3.
Ibid., p. 188.
D. J. Enright, Memoirs of a Mendicant Professor (London: Chatto & Windus, 1969) p. 11.
Another work which conveys the shortcomings of South African legal trials without didactic comment, by allowing the police and prosecution witnesses to convict themselves, is the play The Biko Inquest by J. Blair and N. Fenton (London: Rex Collings, 1978).
N. Chabani Manganyi, Exiles and Homecomings: A Biography of Es’kia Mphahlele (Johannesburg: Ravan, 1983) p. 7.
Ibid., p. 6.
Ezekiel Mphahlele, Down Second Avenue (London: Faber & Faber, 1971) pp. 158–9.
Copyright information
© 1989 Jane Watts
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Watts, J. (1989). Autobiographical Writings. In: Black Writers from South Africa. St Antony’s/Macmillan Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-20244-7_4
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-20244-7_4
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-20246-1
Online ISBN: 978-1-349-20244-7
eBook Packages: Palgrave Literature & Performing Arts CollectionLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)