TY - CHAP
T1 - Remembering Transition in Contemporary South African and Russian Literatures
T2 - Between Melancholia and Repair
AU - Robbe, Ksenia
PY - 2023/10/4
Y1 - 2023/10/4
N2 - This chapter outlines and conceptualizes intersections between the structures of post-transitional time and its transformations between the 1990s and the present in South Africa and Russia. It suggests that a transregional consideration of the ways in which the 1980-1990s transitions are recalled in contemporary cultures reveals the emergence of other times that interrupt the disenchanted present and differ from memories of colonial/imperial oppression or nostalgic longing. These temporalities elucidate the longue durée of current crises and invoke past hopes for emancipation while refusing teleological temporalities. By turning to works of Russophone and South African literature of the 2010s I explore the mnemonic modes through which they engage with the ‘structures of feeling’ that reflect the conditions of the post-Cold war neoliberal present, after socialist and after anticolonial visions of history as emancipatory processes mobilized in struggles for social equality. My reading juxtaposes four novels - first, Alexei Ivanov’s Nenastye (Nasty Weather) and Nthikeng Mohlele’s Small Things, and second, Nadia Davids’ An Imperfect Blessing and Daria Dimke’s Zimniaia i letniaia forma nadezhdy (Winter and Summer Forms of Hope) - and outlines two modes of memory that each pair exemplifies: melancholia and repair. Despite the difference of temporalities and affect, these texts share a structure of ambiguity in their remembering transitions as times of crisis, loss, or even trauma, but simultaneously of hope, of aspiration, and the shock of new possibilities. Thus, the chapter begins theorizing memories of transition as a possible nexus between postsocialist and postcolonial perspectives on transformation.
AB - This chapter outlines and conceptualizes intersections between the structures of post-transitional time and its transformations between the 1990s and the present in South Africa and Russia. It suggests that a transregional consideration of the ways in which the 1980-1990s transitions are recalled in contemporary cultures reveals the emergence of other times that interrupt the disenchanted present and differ from memories of colonial/imperial oppression or nostalgic longing. These temporalities elucidate the longue durée of current crises and invoke past hopes for emancipation while refusing teleological temporalities. By turning to works of Russophone and South African literature of the 2010s I explore the mnemonic modes through which they engage with the ‘structures of feeling’ that reflect the conditions of the post-Cold war neoliberal present, after socialist and after anticolonial visions of history as emancipatory processes mobilized in struggles for social equality. My reading juxtaposes four novels - first, Alexei Ivanov’s Nenastye (Nasty Weather) and Nthikeng Mohlele’s Small Things, and second, Nadia Davids’ An Imperfect Blessing and Daria Dimke’s Zimniaia i letniaia forma nadezhdy (Winter and Summer Forms of Hope) - and outlines two modes of memory that each pair exemplifies: melancholia and repair. Despite the difference of temporalities and affect, these texts share a structure of ambiguity in their remembering transitions as times of crisis, loss, or even trauma, but simultaneously of hope, of aspiration, and the shock of new possibilities. Thus, the chapter begins theorizing memories of transition as a possible nexus between postsocialist and postcolonial perspectives on transformation.
U2 - 10.1515/9783110707793-012
DO - 10.1515/9783110707793-012
M3 - Chapter
SN - 9783110707700
T3 - Media and Cultural Memory
SP - 285
EP - 311
BT - Remembering Transitions
A2 - Robbe, Ksenia
PB - De Gruyter
ER -