Colonization, Violence, and Narration in White South African Writing

Whenever I have taught South African literature to U.S. undergraduates, I have been pleased but also disturbed by the way they were moved and shocked by the readings (for instance, by Brink's Dry White Season). It seemed to me that their strong reaction was not all good — that it had in it an element of voyeuristic and distancing horror at 'racism's last word.' My solution has always been to discuss a poem by Peter Horn ("I'm Getting Famous, Sort Of") which underlines the danger of writing political poems which audiences find 'soothingly shocking.' Professor Jolly's book addresses this danger directly. One might say her critical project is to explode the idea of the 'soothingly shocking,' and to indicate an alternative approach to reading and writing about violence: an approach which might ensure that neither the critic nor the novelist remain transfixed at the door of the 'dark chamber' of the state's most despicable secret practices.