Research Articles (English Studies)

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Common/wealth: Contested commons and proleptic critique
(SAGE Publications Ltd, 2024) van der Vlies, Andrew
In May 1917, two South African feminist friends and critics of empire then in London sent a telegram to Field Marshal Jan Smuts, the union of South Africa’s defence minister and delegate to the Imperial war cabinet, in response to his early proposal for a commonwealth of nations. It read simply: “Your speech was fine”. Whether intended sincerely (as in “very fine”) or as faint praise (“fine as far as it goes, but”) is not known, but the ambiguity is fitting for an association and description with such contested associations – and one that, by some accounts, originated in the colonies (from an idea proposed by Canadian Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King and South Africa’s then-Prime Minister J. B. M. Hertzog). It is fitting, too, that one of the cable’s authors was Olive Schreiner (1855-1920), leading novelist of the “new woman”, advocate of sex equality, and clear-sighted critic of empire’s presumptions, rapacious designs, and gendered and ethnic biases, as well as of the race politics taking shape in South Africa at the start of the twentieth century. Even as we read Schreiner’s work today with an eye to its own prejudices and contradictions, this essay contends that it is worth considering the value of the proleptic critique it embodies for an understanding of the ongoing limitations — but also use-value — of the term “commonwealth”, as well as of any term that might replace it. The outlines of Schreiner’s critique suggest that the term might yet encode a counter-ideal that points to an ongoing latent potential for the common to be reactivated as promise of a more equal and just division of empire’s spoils.
The making of a (wild) fish
(Duke University Press, 2025) Brown, Duncan; Thom, Craig
In this article, which draws on experiences of having observed Martin Davies’s trout egg and milt collection at Thrift Dam in the Eastern Cape, South Africa, interviews with Davies himself, theoretical literature on fish breeding, genealogy, animal history, science studies, legislation on genetic manipulation, literature on notions of wildness and domestication, and actually fly-fishing at venues stocked with Davies’s fish, the article’s authors consider the possibilities and paradoxes involved in the historical-biological “making” of a fish: a fish in process for more than thirty years, described by its(co)maker as “totally wild.” The article explores the question: Can one make a “wild” fish? The question is not entirely new, as there are extensive debates in animal and environmental studies about wildness. The process of answering that question leads the article’s authors to the core of Anthropocenic debates about interspecies relationships, distinctions between the domesticated and the wild, the biology and ethics of genetic manipulation, and even the limits of the human. These issues have been well explored by many scholars, but this article’s authors engage with them from the specificities of fish and their bodies, which, with the fluidity of their environment and their inherent, elusive slipperiness, frequently evade conceptual or physical capture. In particular, the case that the article’s authors consider raises challenging questions about human and nonhuman agency: Can a body of water and its multiple constituents be actors? Can fish which cannot breed “naturally” be agents in their own remaking? Can one make a fish for and with a specific environment? Are “natural” and “human” selections necessarily irreconcilable? And so on. As Claude LéviStrauss famously said, animals are good to think with. In this case, trout disturb the waters.
Enacting worlds together: Art as catalyst for asemiotic tentacular geostories
(Taylor and Francis Ltd., 2025) Carstens, Delphi; Gray, Chantelle
In A Thousand Plateaus (1987), Félix Guattari and Gilles Deleuze argue for modes of expression that can counter reductive master signifiers. For Deleuze and Guattari the predominance of master signifiers is a central problem for knowledge production and artmaking, as well as for the human condition overall, because current dominant forms of human culture forsake imagination in favour of highly articulated and predetermined significations, affects, and intensities, many of which anthropocentrically prefigure modes of perception from the outset. In place of these, they argue for polyvocal signs which include asignifying or as-yet unarticulated semiotics that are irreducible to any given regime of signs and its inscription processes. Keeping these threads in mind, we argue in this article that the arts hold the potential to disrupt and challenge the semiotic coordinates of human exceptionalism. Our aim is thus to think about how such asemiotic encounters can be provoked, which we do with reference to recent work on 4E (embodied, embedded, enactive, and extended) cognition and enaction. Looking specifically at 0rphan Drift’s cephalopods and other “myth-science” avatars, we argue that they provide us with precisely such alternative enactive “fictionings” for the delineation of fabulatory praxes that can engender a tentacular ethics in opposition to all-too-human stories and histories.
An un/timely re-reading: the first South African by Fatima Dike
(Taylor & Francis Group, 2025) Flockemann, Miki
It has been suggested that re-staging iconic performances from the 1970s and 1980s over the last three decades has become a way of reflecting on the ‘now,’ and recouping previously desired futures that have failed to materialize. Local audience responses to the 2022 revival of Fugard’s The Blood Knot, 60 years after its first production noted how it still spoke powerfully to the present. But instead of seeing this familiarity as a stark indictment of the entrenched legacy of racialiszd identity politics, the play was described as potentially ‘hopeful.’ This apparently counter-intuitive response uncannily brought back to mind a character from another less well-known family drama from the late 1970s, provocatively titled, The First South African by Fatima Dike. Despite similarities in their broad thematic focus on apartheid identity politics within intimate settings, the two works use very different performance aesthetics. The primary aim here is thus to return to Dike’s The First South African in order to explore whether the earlier assessments of a sense of historical ‘stuckness’ evoked in her play can be challenged by paying attention to what can be described as the polyphonic modality employed in the text. Moreover, I shall explore how the representation of the bi-racial white–black protagonist’s psychic break speaks to the concept of ‘political death’ when looking at the play again from the vantage point of the present.
Hit by the machine: reading a local protest poem on the island of Symi, 120 years later
(Routledge, 2024) Martin, Julia
The poem ‘Χϵιμϵρινός όνϵιρος,’ or ‘Winter Dream,’ by Metrophanes I Kalafatas, was written in 1903 in the hope of influencing the Ottoman Sultan Abdul Hamid Han II to ban the new deep-sea diving suits which had recently started to be used in the Aegean sponge industry at a devastating cost to both individuals and the social body. 120 years later, the poem’s bold rage against modernity and the Machine seems poignantly ineffectual and nostalgic. Yet its lyrical account of the non-commodifiable qualities of life on Symi before the arrival of the skafandro still offers a positive image for the contemporary renewal of sustainable eco-social community on the islands
Hit by the machine: reading a local protest poem on the island of symi, 120 years later
(Routledge, 2024) Martin. Julia
The poem ‘Χϵιμϵρινός όνϵιρος,’ or ‘Winter Dream,’ by Metrophanes I Kalafatas, was written in 1903 in the hope of influencing the Ottoman Sultan Abdul Hamid Han II to ban the new deep-sea diving suits which had recently started to be used in the Aegean sponge industry at a devastating cost to both individuals and the social body. 120 years later, the poem’s bold rage against modernity and the Machine seems poignantly ineffectual and nostalgic. Yet its lyrical account of the non-commodifiable qualities of life on Symi before the arrival of the skafandro still offers a positive image for the contemporary renewal of sustainable eco-social community on the islands
Flirtations with eros from a black-eyed squint: romantic love in the oeuvre of ama ata aidoo
(Indiana University Press, 2024) Moolla, Fatima Fiona
What’s love got to do with it? Everything—suggests Ama Ata Aidoo, whose oeuvre, virtually without exception, foregrounds romantic love as part of a woman’s well-being, obstacles to which constitute a decidedly feminist concern. Throughout Aidoo’s career, her fiction highlights romantic love as the human relationship that has the greatest potential to achieve social justice, since it often transgresses boundaries of ethnicity, race, class, and various social taboos. At a personal level, union through love represents a reconciliation of broader political differences. In this sense, as in a range of others to be considered, the personal is shown to be political. Romantic love in Aidoo’s project, furthermore, has the catalytic potential to transform and bring into congruence disjunct social relations, which, in a postcolonial context, disproportionately impact the lives of African women. The earliest recognition of the significance of eros in Aidoo’s meditation was an unconscious one, where she echoed the dominant assumption of the African literary scene at the time, which saw love as a trivial personal concern. In a provocative self-critique, Aidoo reverses her earlier position when she acknowledges her own preoccupation with love across her career. A careful study of Aidoo’s work suggests, however, that despite its power, romantic love finally is beset by obstacles to its realization, which leave social barriers in place and patriarchal structures untransformed. This black-eyed squint clearly does not see the world through rose-tinted glasses.
The right of indigenous people to communal land
(2009) Choma, Hlako; Makulana, Walter
The component of indigenous culture is founded on the concept of having responsibilities to the collective rights than simply enjoying the rights. The Indigenous people have an essential element of the relationship to nature as such indigenous concepts are not confined to human beings only, however include all living things. The collective rather than individualistic nature of Indigenous society, thus define the individual and collective rights. The human rights, in some ways share certain parallels or philosophical strains with the general practices, custom, and value of Indigenous societies . Land is the foundation for the economic substance of Indigenous people and for the continued survival of their cultures. One major problems faced by Indigenous people is the disposition of their traditional lands and territories.
Antigone’s return: when a once-told story is not enough
(African Journals Online (AJOL), 2022) Marika Flockemann
Encountering an old story in a reimagined way is sometimes deliberately more unsettling than pleasurably familiar in its new guise. A case in point is a recent revisioning of Sophocles’ Antigone, arguably the most frequently recalled story from the classical canon, which has seen several local it erations over time – most notably in The Island by Athol Fugard, John Kani and Winston Ntshon a (1973). The focus here is how the re-enactment of the Antigone story, Antigone (not quite/quiet) at the Baxter Theatre in Cape Town in 2019, produced as part of a project on Re-imagining Tragedy in the Global South, generates a multi-layered reading experience within the affect-laden and communal atmosphere of a live performance event. Reading here encompasses several dimensions: apart from reading the re-envisioned performative response in relation to its much-translated ‘original’ version, there is the experience of reading as an embodied, affective encounter in the context of the live performance event. In addition, this invites a process of reading around classic texts, which as I argue, can revitalise the intersections between current and apparently forgotten texts in one’s own reading history. In reflecting on Antigone (not quite/quiet) for instance, in relation to the contemporary need for ‘stark fictions’ of the past in developing an ethics of responsibility, I was struck by an unbidden recollection of Thomas Hardy’s preoccupation with tragedy in late nineteenth-century Victorian England. As I shall show, Hardy’s frequent rebuttals in response to often somewhat dismissive accusations of his over-determined pessimism reveal his fore sight in understanding the necessity of a tragic sensibility, which in hindsight now makes sense ‘differently’ and even anticipates some current debates on there velatory and critically urgent aspects of a tragic consciousness.
Longing for Love: Eros and National Belonging in Three Novels by Rayda Jacobs
(Unisa Press, 2022) Moolla, Fatima Fiona
The female Muslim descendant of Cape slavery is a key figure in the work of South African writer, Rayda Jacobs. Three of her novels, in particular, seem to track the social and political genealogy of the female Muslim descendant of slaves, namely, Eyes of the Sky (1996), The Slave Book (1998), and Sachs Street (2001). These novels trace, through the subjectivity of the female Muslim slave, the emergence of the South African nation from its origins at the Cape, through the hinterland, to its contemporary borders. The novels foreground the personal relationship of romantic love, which, of all the personal relationships, is the most volatile and dynamic, producing unexpected transformations. Love, which produces a child from the erotic encounter in Eyes of the Sky, and social union through marriage in The Slave Book, is presented as having the potential to transcend racial, class and religious boundaries in the colonial state. We see in the declining apartheid state presented in the third novel, Sachs Street, that the national allegorical potential of eros finally is not fully realised, leading to a reconceptualisation of romantic love in a transnational frame, centred nonetheless in Cape Town, South Africa. As much as these novels are historical, since they are written post-1994 reflecting the contemporary concerns of its author, they present a singular vision of the place of the female Muslim descendant of slaves in the South African nation, where the postcolonial nation is implicitly conceptualised as a white dominated derivative European nation-state.
It has a purpose beyond justifying a mark: Examining the alignment between the purpose and practice of feedback
(Taylor and Francis Group, 2020) van Heerden, Martina
Research has shown that written feedback is important for studentlearning and development. However, the messages embedded in feed-back may lead to students being misled about what they need to learnor how they need to develop. This article reports on a small-scale inves-tigation into the messages embedded in feedback. Legitimation CodeTheory was used to first conceptualise the often-hidden purpose of adiscipline (English Studies), and concomitantly of feedback within thediscipline, and second to analyse actual comments given to first-yearstudents on their assignments. It was found that there is a clear mis-alignment between the purpose and practice of feedback, thereby sug-gesting that students are receiving misleading messages about whatthey need for success within the discipline. This may have implicationsbeyond merely passing the module. A suggestion is made to activelyconsider, and develop, feedback as a discipline-specific literacy.
Faded mountain
(Taylor and Francis Group, 2022) Moolman, Kobus
A faded mountain at the edge of a threadbare field. Smoke and dust trudging the last rungs of a sky. And now a narrow dirt road that twists between snatches of shivering trees and snatches of shadow. Then a gasping river, and cattle and goats and children running across an empty yard, yelling into the wind.
Kingsbury Hospital � ICU
(Taylor and Francis Group, 2022) Moolman, Kobus
into the night the hospital sails noisy as an aircraft * and just as miraculous * somewhere beyond is a world bigger than this shining needle point but no window may be opened lest the weight of everything outside overwhelm * the inside of here now is all the inside left of me all open at the back like a gown and dragging drips and drains
Drawing the dark
(Taylor and Francis Group, 2022) Moolman, Kobus
Day and night, night after night, deep in his prayer, he deliberated whether it was possible to draw the dark without ever looking at it.He had his head in his hands.His hands covered his eyes. His breath caught onwords that tasted like ash.Day and night, night after night,he dragged his slow feet across the frozen lake of memory. It was dark always there beneath that bright layer of appearances; a darkness he trusted, the way a child trusts his mother to recognise him in the rush after the bell.
Faded mountain
(Taylor and Francis Group, 2022) Moolman, Kobus
A faded mountain at the edge of a threadbare field.Smoke and dust trudging the last rungs of asky.And now a narrow dirt road that twists betweensnatches of shivering trees and snatches of shadow.Then a gasping river,and cattle and goats and children running across an empty yard,yelling into the wind.
Chapter 12 imagination and the eco-social crisis (or: why I write creative non-fiction)
(Brill, 2020) Martin, Julia
Green Matters reflects on the �unique cultural function� of literary texts with regard to environmental and ecological concerns. Another way of putting this is to ask: what do literary texts enable us to say or do in relation to the eco-social crisis that is not so readily expressed in other forms of discourse? I�d like to explore this question with regard to my own practice. After some years of writing fairly conventional journal articles and conference papers about literature and ecology, I now find myself among those practitioners in the Environmental Humanities who have been prompted by the urgency of the present crisis to reconsider the modes of our academic expression. This means that I wish to extend the reach of my writing beyond the limited readership of traditional academic discourse, and to admit such radical modes of knowing as may only be expressed through literature.
Desert ethics, myths of nature and novel form in the narratives of Ibrahim al-Koni
(University of Pretoria, 2015) Moolla, Fatima
This broadly comparative essay contrasts environmentalism in the fiction in English translation of the Libyan writer, Ibrahim alKoni, with dominant trends in contemporary environmentalism. An analysis of three of the most ecocritically pertinent of the novels in English translation suggests that the natural world is viewed through the lens of the mythical, encompassing the religious worlds of both Tuareg animism, as well as monotheism represented by Islam and early Christianity. The novels to be considered are The Seven Veils of Seth, Anubis and The Bleeding of the Stone. Unlike environmental approaches which derive from the European Enlightenment of procedural rational disenchantment, human beings in Al-Koni�s work are accorded a place in the sacred order which allows non-parasitic modes of existence within the framework of a sacred law.
Canine embodiment in South African lyric poetry
(University of Pretoria, 2018) Woodward, Wendy
This article discusses South African lyric poetry in English including translations since the 1960s. Rather than being private statements, South African lyrics, like all lyrics, are essentially dialogic�in relation to the philosophical, the political or the psychological. The poems examined here are in dialogue with dogs, their embodiment, their subjectivities, their contiguities with humans. This article considers how trans-species entanglements between human and canine, whether convivial or adversarial, manifest poetically in myriad ways in gendered and/or racialised contexts and analyses how the vulnerabilities of both humans and dogs are made to intersect. Ruth Miller portrays dogs as divine creations who are uncertain and �embarrassed�. Ingrid Jonker�s poems intertwine human and canine, foregrounding gendered vulnerabilities. Where dogs are figured metonymically, entanglements of human and dog break down binary categorisations, in Jonker�s poems as well as in those of other poets.
The road not travelled: Tracking love in Frank Anthony�s the journey: The revolutionary anguish of Comrade B
(2023) Moolla, Fatima Fiona
The Journey (1991) is a virtually unknown �struggle� novel by Frank Anthony (d. 1993), a senior member of the African People�s Democratic Union of Southern Africa (APDUSA), who was incarcerated on Robben Island for six years. The novel and its author have been elided from South African history as a racialized literary establishment and the defensiveness of the resistance organization of which he was a member reinforced each other in tacit censorship. Anthony�s novel presents revealing insights into the repression of the personal in the anti-apartheid movement, which reflected the �liquidation� of love in leftist discourse of the period. The importance of love, especially romantic love � the highly volatile emotion which is often boundary-breaking and radically transformative � has been recognized in contemporary post- Marxism and critical race theory. Blindness to the potential of love in dominant struggle politics is reflected in the protagonist of The Journey, whose passion for social justice leads, paradoxically, to repression of the empowerment and emancipation of self(lessness) through other(s), enabled by eros. A final version of this article appears in English in Africa 50.1 (Apr 2023): 73�98, DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.4314/eia.v50i1.4
Oceans
(Routledge, 2021) Pancham, Kershan Vikram
One day, long ago, a little boy was killed. He was used up, and discarded, and thrown away, left for secret dumping, the nameless dead, floating in a sea of sinking secrets.

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