THE CLASSROOM AS A SITE OF MISSION: POST-APARTHEID SOUTH AFRICAN LITERATURE IN THE FORMATION OF SOCIAL CONSCIENCE
THE CLASSROOM AS A SITE OF MISSION: POST-APARTHEID SOUTH AFRICAN LITERATURE IN THE FORMATION OF SOCIAL CONSCIENCE

Summary/Abstract: In contexts where structural violence is a defining characteristic of the society that literature remains one of the most potent means for humanization to be realized, for the marginalized and dehumanized to become conversational partners with those who represent the powerful forces of a given society. Indeed, South African authors who have been able to chronicle the havoc wrought by apartheid, such as Sindiwe Magona and Zakes Mda, have also been able to conceive of the process of renewal that could lead to the transformation of society. Through the portrayal of the inner turmoil suffered by a black South African woman while she is coming to terms with the fact that her son has killed a white American student, Magona, in Mother to Mother, offered a quite honest representation of the condition of that mother by the novel which was also a social critique that deconstructed the stereotypes of victims and evildoers.

• Details
• Contents