Abstract
The article concentrates on the growing multilingual and multicultural diversity which Ivan Vladislavić’s protagonist reads as impinging chaos. The fear of intelligibility enhances his efforts to defend the ordering standards associated with the English language. Indicating the conventional and arbitrary nature of standards indispensable for the protagonist’s understanding of the world, the article traces their cultural limits. Further, it points to the fact that the protagonist must transcend his predilection for closure in order to respond to the multilingual environ. Finally, the article argues that, paradoxically, the discernible nostalgic undercurrent pervading South African literature and culture may facilitate the acceptance of a necessary disruptive, self-reflexive epistemology. Dwelling on the ambivalences of longing and belonging, travelling between the individual and the collective, between the present and the prospective future—the article proposes—nostalgia may become a screening device, a mediator that performs a comforting function.
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Notes
- 1.
Tearle’s approach is mediated by codes and conventions and therefore his reading, Marais writes, is neither direct nor immediate (p. 102).
- 2.
Helgesson refers to a spectrum of figurative meanings the term conveys. The minoritisation of English in (post)Apartheid South Africa is essential (p. 778). However, devolution refers also to the process of handing over and delegating powers of decision concerning, for instance correctness and propriety, to the new “owners” of the language. Towards the end of the discussion, I refer to this passing of ownership in regard to memory.
- 3.
All in-text references to The Restless Supermarket by Ivan Vladislavić use the following abbreviation: RS.
- 4.
The terms are not precise. Kruger explains that street lingo, e.g. Flaaitaaal which combines Afrikaans morphology with lexical elements from Bantu is spoken by Black males (p. xx) and therefore emphasis is put on the black versus white. Mesthrie, whose study focuses on geographically specific communities, points to the fact that the component of Africaans is characteristic of Coloured communities rather than Black (p. 97), which involves much greater diversity. Urban vernaculars are used by young people. The sense of confusion and difficulty in classifying the eruptions of linguistic activity is reflected in Vladislavić’s writing. In The Restless Supermarket he classifies as a lingo-user someone who speaks “isi-Sotho or whatever” (RS, p. 29).
- 5.
Helgesson refers to Coetzee as a writer “operating in the twilight of the romantic era” (p. 781) and its deconstructor. Vladislavić bypasses such projects and instead of focusing on the expression “of the inner self” (p. 782), he focuses on the materiality of the sign.
- 6.
The “whites only” bench appears in several texts. Manase refers to them as the “iconography of segregation” (p. 55). The bench becomes the subject and title of one of the short stories, “The WHITES ONLY Bench” included in Vladislavić’s Propaganda by Monuments where its replica furnishes a fake museum exhibit. The false exhibit triggers off painful memories of Apartheid (Vladislavić, 1996, p. 66). Vladislavić retains the ambiguity and diversity of memories due to a whole spectrum of perceptions converging around false heritage.
- 7.
As observed by Kruger, Vladislavić skillfully maintains the tension between “an ironic and a loving treatment” of the city and its “sober documentation” avoiding in that way the explicitly political “barbs” so prominent in the writing of, for example, Salman Rushdie, to whom Vladislavić is often compared (Kruger, p. 188).
- 8.
In urban vernacular, the “jungly flatland” becomes a term for “dense apartment districts in Johannesburg inner city” (Kruger, p. xx). The area is hilly. Once again a simple reference to the Apartheid past and colonial imagery is misleading.
- 9.
In The Restless Supermarket debates on multiculturalism, nativism and cosmopolitan liberalism form an undercurrent deserving a separate discussion. The desire for a difference-blind system (Citrin & Sears 2014, p. xviii) and the market as index of democratic reform are often though humorously proposed. For the same reason the title uses the metaphor of a supermarket open round-the-clock.
- 10.
Vladislavić makes it clear that Mandela’s life-story has been treated as fetish. However, the proofreader remembers with a pinch of irony that Mandela on leaving the detention place was given a good suit but bad glasses, which gives rise to Tearle’s etymological speculations as well as comments on Madiba’s myopia (RS, pp. 185–86).
- 11.
Ostalgia is a form of nostalgia experienced by people who lived in the Democratic German Republic. It concerns aspects of social life but is often revealed in an effort to preserve local customs, brands and products which become precious souvenirs. Vladislavić makes references to the process of unification and its consequences drawing analogies between Germany and South Africa. The idea of selling Joburg’s rubble as souvenirs comes from Berlin.
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Kębłowska-Ławniczak, E. (2017). Fear of Multilingualism and the Uses of Nostalgia in Ivan Vladislavić’s The Restless Supermarket . In: Mydla, J., Poks, M., Drong, L. (eds) Multiculturalism, Multilingualism and the Self: Literature and Culture Studies. Second Language Learning and Teaching(). Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-61049-8_1
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