Nadine Gordimer: Getting a Life after Apartheid

Abstract

Prior to 1990, Gordimer’s prominent anti-apartheid views – on the platform and in her fiction – earned her a reputation as a public intellectual. (Indeed, her Nobel recognition in 1991 was partly posited on her public profile.) Since the coming to power of the ANC, however, she has ceased to challenge key national issues. Has Gordimer – to quote Castells (1997) – become a “legitimising intellectual”, a silent praise singer of the new government? Or has she found – in her fiction – new ways to express her social concerns? I suggest the latter and investigate what I see as a significant shift in her most recent work: what Coetzee (2007) has identified as a “spiritual turn in her thought”.