Incomplete histories: Steve Biko, the politics of self-writing and the apparatus of reading
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Date
2004
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Southern African Literature and Culture Centre, UKZN
Abstract
This paper gathers together deliberations surrounding Steve Biko�s I Write What I Like
as it simultaneously registers the critical importance of the text as an incomplete history.
Rather than presupposing the text as a form of biography or following a trend of
translating Biko into a prophet of reconciliation, I argue that the text leads us towards the
postcolonial problematic of self-writing. That problematic, I argue, names the encounter
between self-writing and an apparatus of reading. The paper stages the encounter as a way
to make explicit the text�s postcolonial interests and to mark the onset of an incomplete
history. This, I argue incidentally, is where the postcolonial critic may set to work to
finish the critique of apartheid. Incomplete histories call attention to how that which is
unintelligible in a text makes an authoritative reading difficult.
Description
Keywords
Steve Biko, Self-writing, Reading, Postcolonialism
Citation
Lalu, P, (2004). Incomplete histories: Steve Biko, the politics of self-writing and the apparatus of reading. Current Writing: Text and Reception in Southern Africa, 16 (1): 107-126