Abstract
This paper explores the implications of uses of the word ‘we’ in post-apartheid South African fiction. ‘We’ in these novels is typically a contested linguistic site – which tells of the loss of inherited communities, and reflects the ethically complex negotiations of a ‘we’ perhaps still to come. Yet if the internal narratives assert a loss of community, each event of the novel’s being-read inaugurates a new ‘community’ of readers. The paper considers the ethical implications of the act of reading a literary text in post-apartheid South Africa. In the course of the argument, I draw links between African philosophies of community, and Jean-Luc Nancy’s proposition that ‘I’ does not precede ‘we’. Thus I suggest some ways in which philosophies from Africa contribute towards current debates about ‘we’ in contemporary continental philosophy.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
The term, ‘rigid designation’ is used by Saul Kripke in his Naming and Necessity (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1972). Arguing against the ‘theory of descriptions’ made famous by Bertrand Russell, Kripke provides an alternative ‘causal theory’ of reference: a rigid designator designates the same referent in every possible world, regardless of the contingent descriptions we might use to identify that referent in the first place (see especially p. 48).
D. Schalkwyk, Speech and Performance in Shakespeare’s Sonnets and Plays (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 24.
The classic distinction between constative and performative uses of language was first set out by J.L. Austin in the 1955 William James lectures at Harvard University. See Austin’s, How To Do Things With Words (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1965).
J.-L. Nancy, The Inoperative Community, P. Connor, L. Garbus, M. Holland and S. Sawhney, trans. (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1991), 6.
I. Vladislavić, The Restless Supermarket (Cape Town: David Philip, 2001), 6.
Ibid.
Supra n. 5, at 9. I speak about contemporary South African fiction and the changing urban landscape of Johannesburg in another article: ‘Visible and Invisible: What Surfaces in Recent Johannesburg Novels?’ Moving Worlds 5/1 (2005), 84–97.
Supra n. 5, at 154.
(Translation mine): ‘We, watse stront!’ M. van Niekerk, Triomf (Cape Town: Queillerie, 1994), 43.
(Translation mine): ‘mekaar’ [is] te min om van te lewe.’ Supra n. 9, at 117.
(Translation mine): ‘It’s all in the family. Gemeenskapsbou in die ware sin van die woord. / En dis net hulle luck, of hulle lot, hang af hoe jy daarna kyk, lat hulle Benades by hierie gemeenskap van Gemeenskapsbou ingereken geraak het.’ Supra n. 9, at 244. For the most part, Leon de Kock’s translation of Triomf is excellent: M. van Niekerk, Triomf, L. de Kock, trans. (Johannesburg: Jonathan Ball, 1999). But at least in some instances it has been necessary to provide my own translations. In this particular instance, for example, the last sentence I have quoted here does not appear in de Kock’s English translation at all.
J.M. Coetzee, Disgrace (London: Secker & Warburg, 1999), 202.
For a rigorously detailed historical and philosophical account of various appropriations of the term, ‘African Philosophy’, see chapter 5 of V.Y. Mudimbe’s, The Invention of Africa: Gnosis, Philosophy, and the Order of Knowledge (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1988). See also Kwasi Wiredu’s, ‘How Not to Compare African Thought with Western Thought’, in E.C. Eze, ed., African Philosophy: An Anthology (Oxford: Blackwell, 1998), 193–199.
K. Wiredu, ‘The Moral Foundations of an African Culture’, in P.H. Coetzee and A.P.J. Roux, eds., Philosophy from Africa: A Text with Readings (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 308–309.
Cited in K. Gyekye, ‘Person and Community in African Thought’, Philosophy from Africa: A Text with Readings, ibid., at 318.
O. p’Bitek, ‘The Sociality of Self’, African Philosophy: An Anthology, supra n. 13, at 74. My emphasis.
Supra n. 4, at 6.
Supra n. 4, at 15.
Supra n. 4, at 58.
Sincere thanks to Sikhumbuzo Mngadi, Manie Groenewald and Ebenezer Shoko for their assistance here.
P. Mpe, Welcome To Our Hillbrow (Pietermaritzburg: University of Natal Press, 2001). I have discussed the question of identity in Mpe’s novel more extensively in another article: C. Clarkson, ‘Locating Identity in Phaswane Mpe’s Welcome To Our Hillbrow’, Third World Quarterly 26/3 (2005), 451–459.
A pejorative term for a black person who is not South African.
Supra n. 21, at 18.
Supra n. 5, at 53.
Supra n. 5, at 129.
J.-L. Nancy, Being Singular Plural, R.D. Richardson and A.E. O’Byrne, trans. (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000), 5.
Ibid., at 65.
E. Benveniste, Problems in General Linguistics, M.E. Meek, trans. (Coral Gables, Florida: University of Miami Press, 1971), 202.
J.M. Coetzee, Elizabeth Costello (London: Secker & Warburg, 2003), 40.
Ibid., at 40–41.
Supra n. 4, at 15.
Supra n. 28, at 202.
In Being Singular Plural, and in a different context, Nancy presents the ‘on behalf of’, that comes with a speaking position, in positive terms: ‘The speaker speaks for the world, which means the speaker speaks to it, on behalf of it, in order to make it a “world”. As such, the speaker is “in its place” and “according to its measure”’. Supra n. 26, at 3.
This part of the paper owes much to memorable conversations I had with Emilios Christodoulidis, Bert van Roermund, Johan van der Walt, Scott Veitch and Andrew Schaap in Cape Town in December 2004. See E. Christodoulidis, ‘The Objection that Cannot be Heard: Communication and Legitimacy in the Courtroom’, in A. Duff et al., eds., The Trial on Trial (Oxford: Hart, 2005), 179–202, and B. Van Roermund, ‘First-Person Plural Legislature: Political Reflexivity and Representation’, Philosophical Explorations 6/3 (September 2003), 235–252. More specifically, see Christodoulidis, idid, at 200, reading van Roermund at 240–241.
Supra n. 28, at 218.
Supra n. 34, at 235.
Supra n. 34, at 200.
Supra n. 34, at 240.
J.M. Coetzee, Slow Man (London: Secker & Warburg, 2005), 193.
I use Willem Bleek’s spelling and diacritical marks as far as typesetting allows. The symbol, “!” denotes a cerebral click; “~” (which originally appears above the dash of the second ‘a’) a nasal pronunciation of the syllable, and the reversed c under the second a, under the vowel, a ‘rough, deep pronunciation.’ See W. Bleek and L. Lloyd, Specimens of Bushmen Folklore (Cape Town: Struik, 1968), viii.
Ibid., at 237.
Supra n. 26, at 1.
Supra n. 26, at 2.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
My first and ongoing thanks are to Peter Fitzpatrick. At his invitation I first presented this paper at the CLC in Johannesburg in 2003. I owe much to Peter’s rigorous intellectual generosity.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Clarkson, C. Who are ‘we’? Don’t make me laugh. Law Critique 18, 361–374 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10978-007-9017-3
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10978-007-9017-3