Arts, Media and Popular Culture
National Trauma Work and the Depiction of Women in Two Afrikaans Historical Karoo novels: Fiela’s Child and Sorg
Fiela’s child and Sorg are two female-authored popular Afrikaans novels that entertain as
subtext dynamics of female agency in the same region and historical period, namely the Little
Karoo of the late 19th century. The two novels present a pertinent counter-discursive paradigm
to the more mainstream master narrative representations of women of the time. The novels
were written and published during the late-apartheid and early post-apartheid years, 1985
and 2006, respectively, and as a result of these dynamics of production, they also engage with
the socio-politics of this time, maybe even more so than with the British imperial colonialist
period in which the novels are set. As such, both novels step into the discursive streams that
flow in and around the trauma work that is associated with South Africa’s contemporary
engagement with its colonial and apartheid legacies and heritage. Both texts also contribute
to the creation and popularisation of new national master narratives. It is then in this context
that these texts can be seen as participating in the multivocal discursive project of new identity
construction, specifically identity construction through the writing of a new heterogeneous
national autobiography.
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