Wole Soyinka and Autobiography as Political Unconscious*
Susan Friedman launches a useful critique of general theories of auto/ biography that postulate it as having to do solely with a growth of individualism. She is right in arguing, counter to Gusdorf and others, that the form depends on identification, interdependence and community as means of enablement. For Friedman, &dquo;individualistic paradigms of the self ignore the role of collective and relational identities in the individuation process of women and minorities&dquo;, and she shows how particularly relevant relationality is in assessing the process of women’s self-individuation.’ Though her critique is raised mainly in the context of women’s auto/biography, she offers an interesting way of considering questions of auto/biographies in general. Yet her propositions, though useful, require qualification. In my view, the site of the development of selfhood or individualism is not an interface solely of individual selves with other selves. It is important to take account also of the fact that selfhood or individualism cannot be fully understood without reference to social and other institutions with which
Cross-Cultural Conversations: Antjie Krog's Life Writing in Begging to be Black
Antjie Krog's Begging to be Black, published in 2009, uses the word ‘conversation’ a number of times in relation to its author's personal, philosophical and political interactions with people and texts. In the author's note that appears at the beginning of the text, she refers to the book's ‘many conversations’ and to the text itself as an attempt to understand the ‘long conversation’ between black and white in South Africa. This essay argues that Krog's textualisation of interconnectedness enables her to explore the formation of self in negotiation with ‘difference’ across time, space and racial boundaries. It examines Krog's textual deployment of multiple conversations (literal and metaphorical) as a way of working through issues of postcolonial identity.
Love in the Western World
In this classic work, often described as "The History of the Rise, Decline, and Fall of the Love Affair," Denis de Rougemont explores the psychology of love from the legend of Tristan and Isolde to Hollywood. At the heart of his ever-relevant inquiry is the inescapable conflict in the West between marriage and passion--the first associated with social and religious responsiblity and the second with anarchic, unappeasable love as celebrated by the troubadours of medieval Provence. These early poets, according to de Rougemont, spoke the words of an Eros-centered theology, and it was through this "heresy" that a European vocabulary of mysticism flourished and that Western literature took on a new direction. Bringing together historical, religious, philosophical, and cultural dimensions, the author traces the evolution of Western romantic love from its literary beginnings as an awe-inspiring secret to its commercialization in the cinema. He seeks to restore the myth of love to its original integrity and concludes with a philosophical perspective on modern marriage.