CITIES IN FLUX: Urbanization and Societal Change in South African Literary Texts, 4 December 2009

The English department hosted an international workshop on CITIES IN FLUX, on Friday 4 December. Prof. Therese Steffen and her doctoral students Christine Giustizieri and Jan Sollberger invited Prof. Gerald Gaylard from the University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg and his doctoral Student Kirby Mania. Sherlock Fortuin from the University of Berne gave an additional presentation on urban space in Ways of Dying.

The inspiring workshop started with an opening address by Prof. Therese Steffen in which she cordially welcomed everyone and presented the programme. The first four talks were all about novels by Ivan Vladislavic – Potrait With Keys: Joburg & what-what and The Restless Supermarket –, while Sherlock Fortuin who is a major in social anthropology led  over to the round table where two historians, Prof. Patrick Harries (African Studies Basel) and Prof. Nigel Worden (University of Cape Town), as well as a ethnologist/ social anthropologist, Prof. Till Foerster (University of Basel). Prof. Ina Habermann’s welcome address followed in which she presented our university’s focus on natural and human sciences. Within the latter field, she founded the Centre of Competence Cultural Topographies which she briefly introduced. This workshop perfectly fits into the Centre’s concerns, as cities and urbanization in South African novels were its theme.

Let me briefly introduce all the thought-provoking and simulating papers we could enjoy that day:

Prof. Gerald Gaylard started with his Keynote Address on Migrant Ecology in the Postcolonial City in Ivan Vladislavic’s Portrait with Keys: Joburg & what-what. His talk was devoted to Vladislavic’s construction of place, rootedness and specificity of place when depicting Joburg. He sees a nostalgia, a sense of belonging and to feel at home, as well as a discovery of the ordinary in Vladislavic’s writing. In a second step Gaylard talked about the effect of ecology and nature and a postcolonial ‘hauntology’. Joburg is a virtual city, entirely humanly created, without a natural water source. Despite this artificial environment, Gaylard sees a strong natural element and devotes his third part to the consciousness of nature. In South African literature there is a strong sense of pastoral tradition, but Vladislavic writes a kind of anti-pastoral. Nevertheless, there is nature in Vladislavic’s depiction of Joburg and consequently nature in the anti-pastoral. We will never find “this is nature”, despite constant peelings. It is a kind of simulacrum and transculturality involved in the depiction of nature. It was especially fascinating to listen to Gaylard’s experiences in and impressions of Johannesburg and Vladislavic whom he seems to know quite well.

Christine Giustizieri ‘s presentation had the title: Locks, alarmed houses and gorillas: a literary analysis of fear and security (devices) in recent South African novels. Due to the time limit, she focused on Portrait with Keys. To see very different aspects in that novel and a totally different angle of Joburg, was very exciting. In a breathtaking Power Point Presentation, Christine Giustizieri showed us pictures she took when she arrived in Joburg as a greenhorn. The visual inputs helped to better imagine the scenes Vladislavic describes in his novel. The manifold meanings of Gorilla both fascinated and amused the audience, and those of us who had not yet read Portrait with Keys certainly added it as one of the favourites on their reading list, after that presentation.

Jan Sollberger entitled his presentation “An Outbreak of Error vs. Signs of Ingenuity” Narrating the transforming city in the slippage of modernity in Ivan Vladislavic’s The Restless Supermarket. The Restlessness of the supermarket and the transforming city in Vladislavic’s novel were compared to Plans of Le Corbusier (1925, 1963), and Minoru Yamasaki (1954-1972). Zygmunt Bauman’s Modernity and Ambivalence (1991) and Homi Bhabha’s Nation and Narration (1990) were further secondary readings Jan Sollberger draw on to analyse passages in the novel like The Proofreader’s Derby. The transforming city and the slippage of modernity were very well depicted by pictures and quotations from Vladislavic’s semi-autobiographical novel.

Kirby Mania had a similar thesis as her PhD adviser Gaylard in that she sees Joburg as a simulacrum. Interestingly, they have not talked about their presentations beforehand. However, Kirby Mania asks Joburg: the Simulacrum or the Palimpsest? After a dense presentation a lively discussion emerged and questions were discussed.

Sherlock Fortuin’s presentation Dealing with urban space in “Ways of Dying”: When the periphery from the past becomes the centre in the present cleverly linked time and space – two concepts that cannot be analyzed apart from one another. As a major of social anthropology, Fortuin brought in literary as well as other aspects from the social sciences and nicely linked the presentations to the final Round Table in which the field was open up to historians and a social anthropologist.

In the Round Table the focus shifted not only in terms of different disciplines that focus on the topic of urbanization, but also on the place on which was talked about. Our horizons were broadened as Harries and Worden took us to Cape Town and its differences from Joburg. Till Foerster then took us to various cities in Africa, including the two South African cities, as he is comparing various African cities in a current project. Interestingly, Harries and Warden explained that the boundaries between academic history and literary fiction are blurring in South Africa at the moment. A kind of FACTION emerges and the two disciplines converge. Historians dig in the archives and novelists write exciting stories about historical events. There is an overlap and both literary critics and historians are interested in the outcome of these works of historical discourse and literary production.

After a stimulating day of literature, culture, and history, the international cooperation as well as the interdisciplinary exchange once again proved very rewarding. We all benefited from one another’s presentations and questions and it certainly proved helpful, thought-provoking and highly absorbing for everyone present. Let me thank the Centre of Competence Cultural Topographies, Prof. Steffen, Christine Giustizieri and Jan Sollberger for organizing this unique event and all the presenters – especially the South African ones that crossed the continent to share their thoughts with us – who came to broaden our horizons. Finally, let me also thank the people in the audience whose lively discussions I enjoyed very much and without whom such an event would only be half as good as it finally was. It was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for me to listen to all those presentations and find a link between history, literature and cultural studies that proved helpful and will certainly change my own research for the better.