Lektürekurs Postcolonial Trauma Contemporary Novels from the New South Africa Coetzee's Disgrace Wicomb's Playing in the Light Gordimer's No Time like the Present

Last year South Africa celebrated the 20th anniversary of the end of apartheid, the country’s first race-all elections and Nelson Mandela’s becoming South Africa’s first black president. Mandela’s death the previous year and Nadine Gordimer’s death last summer were also occasions to take a look at present-day South Africa and evaluate the achievements and shortcomings of this country after apartheid. In this course I want to discuss four postapartheid novels, each of which focusses in one way or another on life in the new South Africa. Coetzee’s highly controversial and booker-prize-winning novel Disgrace depicts university Professor David Lurie who has to witness the rape of his daughter Lucy by a group of black men as an act of revenge. Dangor’s Bitter Fruit was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2004 and centres on the black couple, Silas and Lydia, and the aftermath of Lydia’s rape by a white cop during apartheid and the birth of her son Mikey as a result. Twenty years later the individual family members are haunted by the incident and its consequences. In Wicomb’s Playing in the Light Marion has to realize that her life – void of politics – has been a lie, and the South African situation is very much intertwined with her personal history. Ultimately, Gordimer’s No Time like the Present depicts a black and white couple, who struggle to find a place in this new South Africa which ceased to be simply black and white. Each of the novels deals with aspects of guilt, trauma and coming to terms with the past. But more importantly, they all inquire into a future after apartheid, and in this course we will analyze the authors’ individual approaches to writing for and writing about this new South Africa. Please purchase J.M. Coetzee, Disgrace (Vintage, 2000); Achmat Dangor, Bitter Fruit (Grove Press 2005); Zoë Wicomb, Playing in the Light (New Press, 2008); Nadine Gordimer, No Time Like the Present (Bloomsbury 2013); Since we will be doing quite a lot of close reading, working with these editions will be easiest for you. But if you should already have a different edition of any of these texts, there is no need for you to buy another one. Please prepare Disgrace for the first session. We will be working on the other texts in order of publication. Leistungsnachweis B.A.-Nebenfach SLK Diese Veranstaltung entspricht in WP 2 dem Kurstyp -Begleitkurs zu Themen der Literaturwissenschaft m/n/o/p- (WP 2.0.14/16/18/20). Sie erhalten 3 ECTS, wenn Sie entweder eine Klausur (30-60 Min.) schreiben oder eine mündliche Prüfung (15-30 Min.) ablegen oder ein Thesenpapier (3.000-6.000 Zeichen) oder Übungsaufgaben (3.000-6.000 Zeichen) fertigen. Die Prüfung muss benotet sein. Die Wahl der Prüfungsart liegt beim Dozenten. Anmeldung Prüfungsanmeldung (über LSF): 22. Juni - 3. Juli 2015 Department III - Anglistik und Amerikanistik B.A.-Nebenfach SLK Diese Veranstaltung entspricht in WP 2 dem Kurstyp -Begleitkurs zu Themen der Literaturwissenschaft m/n/o/p- (WP 2.0.14/16/18/20). Sie erhalten 3 ECTS, wenn Sie entweder eine Klausur (30-60 Min.) schreiben oder eine mündliche Prüfung (15-30 Min.) ablegen oder ein Thesenpapier (3.000-6.000 Zeichen) oder Übungsaufgaben (3.000-6.000 Zeichen) fertigen. Die Prüfung muss benotet sein. Die Wahl der Prüfungsart liegt beim Dozenten. LMU München SoSe 2015 Zander Laura Anina