Postmodernisme in resente Afrikaanse romans

Abstract

In Umbetto Eco's The name of the rose ( 1984) William of Basketville warns Adso at the end: Fear prophets, Adso, and those prepared to die for the truth, for as a rule they make many others die with them, often before them, at times instead of them. Jorge did a diabolical thing because he loved his truth so lewdly that he dared anything in order to destroy falsehood (Eco, 1984:491). William continues that 'the truth' is not only dangerous, but should be laughed at: Perhaps the mission of those who love mankind is to make people laugh at the truth, to make truth laugh, because the only truth lies in learning to free ourselves from insane passion for the truth (Eco, 1984:491). Distrust towards any claims of truth is a distinct characteristic of postmodernist texts. These texts often show that "truth", ethic norms and high ideals are merely smoke screens for practices enhancing power and self-interest. Laughter fends off any dogmatic claim to truth. This "laughter at the truth" also characterizes the philosophical and theoretical discourse on postmodernism. Celebration of resistance to all centres is evident in postmodernist fiction. At the same time it is also the celebration of the individuals creative power that uses aesthetics, rather than Reason, to shape an ever-changing and uncertain world, while staying self-conscious of the uncertainty of this "shape". This study is in the first place aimed at investigating the challenge of Truth and Reason, as this challenge is manifested in recent Afrikaans novels. I argue that postmodernist texts reveal the emptiness of the modem value of progress through parody, metafiction and other techniques that characterize these texts. In the first section the work of theorists (amongst others Bettens & D'haen, Hutcheon, Waugh, Fokkema, Lodge, McHale and Hassan) is discussed (Chapter 2) while cettain philosophical works (especially the work of Lyotard, Denida, Foucault, Nietzsche and Rorty) is also taken into account (Chapter 1). Against this background, postmodernist strategies and styles are investigated in specific novels in Section 2. In this section (consisting of scientific-polemical articles published in journals) recent Afrikaans novels are taken as point of departure but comparisons are also made with texts from other literatures. The third section is an integration of the manifestation of postmodernism in Afrikaans novels and a demonstration of how postmodernism could be used as heuristic instrument. Each of the four novels discussed in this section, in its own way undermines centres of reason and is thus "laughing at the truth". In completely different ways, ranging from 'extreme' postmodernist metafictional strategies2 to much subtler undermining of the subject or language3 , any unitary vision of truth is rejected. However, this laughter is not merely cynically destructive, in an ambiguous way it also indicates that there is hope that, through rejection of a single truth, totalisation can be avoided. This hope escapes verbal definition, is continuously non-presentable, rejects fixed norms of language and genre; of narratological concepts, of mimesis, and of the masternarratives of history. The concepts we use to understand and describe reality (time, space, subject, language) are shown to be restrictive conventions. In the end we are left with a laughter at the truth determined by final descriptions and rational concepts like subject, time and space.