Tydskrif vir letterkunde

Desmond T. Cole (1922—2018)

2023-09-14T05:17:47+00:00

No abstract

Dolf van Niekerk (1929—2022)

2023-09-14T05:25:10+00:00

No abstract

Dolf van Niekerk (1929—2022)

2023-09-14T05:27:01+00:00

No abstract

Slow beauty: Refocusing Oliver Hermanus’s Skoonheid through a slow cinema lens

2023-09-12T16:34:08+00:00

Oliver Hermanus’s Skoonheid is often read as a representation of South African queer realities and political progressiveness both during and since the dissolution of apartheid. Consequently, Hermanus’s contribution to the aesthetic of slowness in Skoonheid has gone largely unnoticed in the broader context of slow cinema. In this article, I examine how Hermanus, through the slow cinema conventions, urges the viewer to contemplate issues of crucial importance to human behaviour, thereby putting Skoonheid’s meditative qualities on display. Drawing on Ira Jaffe’s concept of expressive minimalism, Emre Çağlayan’s poetics of slow cinema, and Thomas Elsaesser’s observations on the virtues and demands of slow cinema, I analyse the narrative and aesthetic strategies deployed in Skoonheid within the purview of slow cinema and beyond a representation of queer sexuality. This analysis reveals that Skoonheid represents a mode of narrative-formal expressiveness distinct from, yet in dialogue with, slow cinema in its emphasis on contemplation. Principally, Hermanus finds a way to testify to some of the most urgent concerns in contemporary society through the film’s contemplative approach, which draws the viewer’s attention to the mystery and ambiguity of human experience. Skoonheid’s contemplative approach is informed by the film’s processes and experiences of alienation, incommunicability, and existentialism.

Queer, Christian and Afrikaans: the libidinal, sexuality and religion in Kanarie and Skeef

2023-09-13T05:09:28+00:00

Religion is often viewed as incompatible with queer sexualities and genders. In the Afrikaans-speaking communities of South Africa, Calvinist doctrine and dogma have been used to marginalise and ostracise those sexual and gender identities that stray from the heteronormative scripts sanctioned by cultural and religious practices. In this article, I examine how the libidinal is central to the way in which queer and faith communities interact in Afrikaans-speaking communities in two films: Kanarie and Skeef. The two films represent different filmic genres with Kanarie a fictional feature film and Skeef being a documentary. The two films, despite their different genres, broach the difficulty of being queer and religious. At the same time, the films show that it is possible to rethink religions/faith communities. Such rethinking creates accommodative spaces within faith communities in a way in which queerness is not viewed as a deviance or an abomination. I read these Afrikaans-language films against the conceptualisation of the libidinal offered by Keguro Macharia together with the ideas of queer agency proposed by Adriaan van Klinken. This queer agency marks not just a transgression of heteronormative Christian norms but also engenders expansive ways of understanding human sexuality and gender identities.

The post-heroism of Stuur groete aan Mannetjies Roux and Verraaiers

2023-09-13T05:13:54+00:00

There is much scholarship on the linkages between Afrikaner nationalism and South African (Afrikaans-language) filmmaking. Within the context of a sustained post-apartheid renegotiation of Afrikaans or Afrikaner nationalism in the popular imagination, in this article we argue that two feature film historical dramas from the production company Bosbok Ses Films, Stuur groete aan Mannetjies Roux (2013) and Verraaiers (2013), resonate thematically and aesthetically with Thomas Elsaesser’s notion of post-heroic cinema. While a number of pre-1994 Afrikaans-language films celebrated Afrikaner nationalism as personified in the figure of the hero, this article positions and uses Elsaesser’s post-heroism as a critical lens through which to demonstrate the ways in which these two films call attention to a post-hero whose actions and behaviour (often inadvertently) renders a productive renegotiating of the hero figure within a post-apartheid cinematic context. To supplement Elsaesser, we also draw on Johan Degenaar’s writing on political pluralism. In this article, we find that an Elsaesserian post-heroic approach to the two films allows the following constitutive components of post-heroic cinema to surface: atemporality as opposed to linear narrative time, parapraxis (productive failure) as opposed to traditional iterations of heroic acts and valour, and conceiving of the film screen as a surface in flux as opposed to the screen as a mirror. The article’s contribution to existing scholarship on contemporary Afrikaans-language cinema is three-fold: it is the first to utilise an Elsaesserian approach to Afrikaans film and as such to foreground and investigate the figure of the post-hero, it provides a critical account of two independently-made feature films that remain underresearched in current South African film scholarship, and it contributes to discourse around the ways in which popular media inform and respond to the renegotiation of Afrikaans (or Afrikaans) identity.

“It’s easy to just be normal”: Performative masculinities in Die stropers

2023-09-13T05:23:36+00:00

In post-apartheid South Africa, the representation of queer identities in Afrikaans-language films have become increasingly prominent. However, many such films focus on past contexts or serve as comedic depictions, failing to confront the complex issues faced by individuals in contemporary Afrikaner communities. Etienne Kallos’s 2018 coming-of-age film Die stropers (The Harvesters) candidly depicts the challenges faced by adoptive brothers Janno and Pieter, who must negotiate desire and gender in a conservative, Afrikaans farming community. Drawing on Judith Butler’s notion of gender performativity and recent reformulations of Raewyn Connell’s notion of hegemonic masculinity, we examine the discursive (re)production of hegemonic Afrikaner masculinity within the boys’ adoptive family and community. We investigate how the protagonists strategically deploy performative masculinities to achieve belonging and acceptance as heirs, even if the ideals they emulate oppress and restrict them. We propose that the protagonists’ strategic deployment of performative masculinities represents their claiming of agency in contexts where gender and desire are aggressively policed. Furthermore, their navigation of hegemony in this white, Afrikaner community through resistance and consent might point to a claiming of space for queer identities and the continued transmutation of hegemonic masculinity.

New Afrikaans-language cinemas / Nuwe Afrikaanstalige rolprentrigtings

2023-09-12T16:25:34+00:00

No abstract

African(a) Queer Presence: Ethics and Politics of Negotiation

2023-09-13T05:40:19+00:00

No abstract

Mobilities and Cosmopolitanisms in African and Afrodiasporic Literatures.

2023-09-13T05:45:23+00:00

No abstract

Can Themba: The Making and Breaking of the Intellectual Tsotsi, a Biography.

2023-09-13T15:57:45+00:00

No abstract

Foundational African Writers: Peter Abrahams, Noni Jabavu, Sibusiso Nyembezi & Es’kia Mphahlele

2023-09-13T16:07:55+00:00

No abstract

Lesser Violence: Volume 1.

2023-09-13T16:14:23+00:00

No abstract

Bot.

2023-09-13T16:20:41+00:00

No abstract

Die kapokdokter

2023-09-13T16:25:49+00:00

No abstract

Doolhof

2023-09-13T16:30:30+00:00

No abstract

Hou jou oë oop

2023-09-13T16:36:04+00:00

No abstract

Eugene

2023-09-13T16:54:22+00:00

No abstract

Moederland.

2023-09-14T05:01:20+00:00

No abstract

Op pad na Moormansgat

2023-09-14T05:03:22+00:00

No abstract

Don Jadu

2023-09-14T05:05:26+00:00

No abstract

Narreskip

2023-09-14T05:08:22+00:00

No abstract

Plunder

2023-09-14T05:10:17+00:00

No abstract

Sanctum.

2023-09-14T05:12:13+00:00

No abstract

an/other pastoral

2023-09-14T05:14:21+00:00

No abstract

Tydskrif vir letterkunde

Desmond T. Cole (1922—2018)

Dolf van Niekerk (1929—2022)

Dolf van Niekerk (1929—2022)

Slow beauty: Refocusing Oliver Hermanus’s Skoonheid through a slow cinema lens

Queer, Christian and Afrikaans: the libidinal, sexuality and religion in Kanarie and Skeef

The post-heroism of Stuur groete aan Mannetjies Roux and Verraaiers

“It’s easy to just be normal”: Performative masculinities in Die stropers

New Afrikaans-language cinemas / Nuwe Afrikaanstalige rolprentrigtings

African(a) Queer Presence: Ethics and Politics of Negotiation

Mobilities and Cosmopolitanisms in African and Afrodiasporic Literatures.

Can Themba: The Making and Breaking of the Intellectual Tsotsi, a Biography.

Foundational African Writers: Peter Abrahams, Noni Jabavu, Sibusiso Nyembezi & Es’kia Mphahlele

Lesser Violence: Volume 1.

Bot.

Die kapokdokter

Doolhof

Hou jou oë oop

Eugene

Moederland.

Op pad na Moormansgat

Don Jadu

Narreskip

Plunder

Sanctum.

an/other pastoral