NARRATIVES OF EXILE AND ETHICAL SELFHOOD IN MDA’S THE ZULUS OF NEW YORK AND HEMON’S NOWHERE MAN
NARRATIVES OF EXILE AND ETHICAL SELFHOOD IN MDA’S THE ZULUS OF NEW YORK AND HEMON’S NOWHERE MAN

Summary/Abstract: This paper discusses the ethical aspects of exile and selfhood formation in Zakes Mda’s “The Zulus of New York” and Aleksandar Hemon’s “Nowhere Man” and how the narrative structure of each text facilitates moral contemplation in the context of displacement. The study focuses on the historical interplay/relationship, cultural fragmentation and temporal dislocation and critically analyses the ethical consciousness of the characters and the encounters of the ‘social, political and culturally different others’ they confront. While Mda’s novel underscores the collective, historical nature of ethical responsibility, Hemon privileges the interior, linguistic aspects of identity construction in exile. From a comparative, philological perspective, this study shows that exile operates both as a thematic element and a structural component, in which temporal stratification and polyphonic narration and variation of perspective/ focalization are indicative of moral struggle/ complexity. The analysis enriches the scholarship on, and contemporary post-apartheid South African and Balkan literature studies and demonstrates the intersection of migration, memory and narrative techniques to foreground the ethics of displacement.

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