Table Of ContentZoë Wicomb & the Translocal
This is the first book on the fiction of Zoë Wicomb, a writer long at the
forefront of the South African canon and whose international stature
was firmly secured with the award of an inaugural Windham Campbell
prize at Yale in 2013. It brings together interdisciplinary essays from
the U.K., U.S.A., South Africa and Australia, demonstrating Wicomb’s
importance as a novelist, short-story writer and critic. The central focus
of the volume is the translocal, a term that navigates the complex and
shifting relations between disparate localities, respecting the situated-
ness of each locality within its immediate geopolitical context, while in-
vestigating the connections and contrasts that operate between them. In
Wicomb’s case, her work stems from a dual allegiance to two localities,
both in her fiction as in her life: South Africa’s Western Cape and the
west of Scotland. In tracking the relations, contemporary and historical,
between these sites, her fiction reveals a consistent interest in and inter-
rogation of home and belonging, space and place; it also offers telling
insights into questions of race and gender. The historical processes of
colonisation and migration that have produced translocal connections of
this kind are central to postcolonial studies, to which this book makes
a significant contribution. Exploring the visual and cartographical, and
extending debates on the transnational and cosmopolitan that are cur-
rently taking place across disciplines, including literary studies, geogra-
phy, history, politics and anthropology, the collection covers the range
of Wicomb’s work. It also features an unanthologised essay by Wicomb
herself, an interview and a suite of photographs by Sophia Klaase, whose
images of Namaqualand inspired Wicomb’s most recent novel, October.
Kai Easton is Senior Lecturer in English at SOAS University of London, UK.
Derek Attridge is Professor Emeritus in the Department of English and
Related Literature at the University of York, UK.
Routledge Research in Postcolonial Literatures
For a full list of titles in this series, please visit www.routledge.com.
Edited in collaboration with the Centre for Colonial and Postcolonial
Studies, University of Kent at Canterbury, this series presents a wide
range of research into postcolonial literatures by specialists in the field.
Volumes will concentrate on writers and writing originating in pre-
viously (or presently) colonised areas and will include material from
non-anglophone as well as anglophone colonies and literatures. Series
editors: Donna Landry and Caroline Rooney.
51 Sex Trafficking in Post Colonial Literature
Transnational Narratives from Joyce to Bolaño
Laura Barberán Reinares
52 The Future of Postcolonial Studies
Edited by Chantal Zabus
53 Postcolonial Comics
Texts, Events, Identities
Edited by Binita Mehta and Pia Mukherji
54 What Postcolonial Theory Doesn’t Say
Edited by Anna Bernard, Ziad Elmarsafy, and Stuart Murray
55 Postcolonial Urban Outcasts
City Margins in South Asian Literature
Edited by Madhurima Chakraborty and Umme Al-wazedi
56 Sexuality, Gender and Nationalism in Caribbean Literature
Kate Houlden
57 Zoë Wicomb & the Translocal
Writing Scotland & South Africa
Edited by Kai Easton and Derek Attridge
Zoë Wicomb & the
Translocal
Writing Scotland & South Africa
Edited by Kai Easton
and Derek Attridge
First published 2017
by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
and by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an
informa business
© 2017 Taylor & Francis
The right of Kai Easton and Derek Attridge to be identified
as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for
their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with
sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act
1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted
or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic,
mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented,
including photocopying and recording, or in any information
storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from
the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be
trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for
identification and explanation without intent to infringe.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Zoë Wicomb & the translocal: writing Scotland &
South Africa / by Kai Easton and Derek Attridge.
pages cm.—(Routledge research in postcolonial literatures; 57)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Wicomb, Zoë—Criticism and interpretation. |
Scotland—In literature. | South Africa—In literature.
PR9369.3.W53 Z64 2017
823/.914
2017031390
ISBN: 978-1-138-23741-4 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-28341-8 (ebk)
Typeset in Sabon
by codeMantra
Contents
List of Figures vii
Preface ix
Acknowledgements xi
1 Introduction 1
Derek AttriDge
2 Zoë Wicomb’s Translocal: Troubling the Politics of Location 7
Dorothy Driver
3 The Urge to Nowhere: Wicomb and Cosmopolitanism 34
AbDulrAzAk gurnAh
4 ‘No Escape from Home’: History, Affect and Art in
Zoë Wicomb’s Translocal Coincidences 49
Derek AttriDge
5 ‘Travelling Light’: Images (via Wicomb) from
the Gifberge to Glasgow 64
kAi eAston
6 Zoë Wicomb’s Telescopic Visions: You Can’t Get Lost in
Cape Town and October 83
Cóilín PArsons
7 Roamin’ the Gloamin’: Scottish Ghosts of Griqualand in
Zoë Wicomb’s David’s Story 100
shAun irlAm
8 History, Critical Cosmopolitanism and Translocal
Mobility in the Fiction of Zoë Wicomb 120
PAmelA sCully
vi Contents
9 Lost and Found: Zoë Wicomb, Thomas Pringle and the
Translocal in Scottish-South African Literary Relations 134
DAVID ATTWELL
10 Glasgow’s Empire Exhibition and the Interspatial
Imagination in ‘There’s the Bird That Never Flew’ 148
JOhN MILLER AND MARIANgELA PALLADINO
11 Scenes from Namaqualand 166
SOPhIA KLAASE
12 Unsettling Homes and the Provincial-Cosmopolitan
Point of View in Zoë Wicomb’s October 178
MEg SAMUELSON
13 My Name is HannaH: Arthur Nortje Memorial Lecture 196
ZOë WICOMB
14 Zoë Wicomb in Conversation with Derek Attridge 209
Notes on Contributors 221
Index 225
List of Figures
0.1 Untitled IV (Beeswater Series), 1989 by Roger Palmer xiv
5.1 The Gifberge by Kai Easton 72
5.2 [Seaforth Beach] Simonstown by Kai Easton 73
5.3 [Ostrich] The Cape of Good Hope by Kai Easton 74
5.4 [Table Mt] Signal Hill by Kai Easton 75
5.5 [Elephant] Falkirk by Kai Easton 76
5.6 [Piper’s Walk, Solway Firth] Galloway [via Glasgow]
by Kai Easton 77
5.7 [Union-Castle, Kokstad] East Griqualand [Museum]
by Kai Easton 78
10.1 The Doulton Fountain by Fariborz Ezzatvar 149
10.2 Statues portraying South Africa, the Doulton Fountain
by Fariborz Ezzatvar 154
11.1 Sophia Klaase 168
11.2 Sophia Klaase 169
11.3 Sophia Klaase 170
11.4 Sophia Klaase 171
11.5 (Left) Simon Olifant (Centre) Sophia Klaase (Right)
Jacobus Corjeus 172
11.6 Dalene Corjeus 173
11.7 (Left) Howard Claasen – now living in Vredenburg
(ca. 450 km from Paulshoek) (Centre) Roveida
Joseph – at school in Vredendal (ca. 250 km from
Paulshoek) (Right) Colin Corjeus – works in Vredendal
but lives in Klawer (ca. 230 km from Paulshoek) 174
11.8 These people are not known. They attended the
funeral of Mrs Magrieta Andrews and are not from
Paulshoek 175
11.9 Mrs Magrieta ‘Ou Tannie’ Andrews 176
11.10 Becky, Sophia’s aunt – now living in Garies 177
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Preface
In October 2007, the editors of this book met for a reunion lunch at the
October gallery in London, just off Southampton Row in Queen Square.
We had both returned to England some years earlier – variously from
South Africa and the United States – making new homes in Brighton
and York, respectively. Though we did not know it then, we were about
to embark on a 10-year project that would travel between England and
South Africa. Trips to Scotland were also undertaken, all in the after-
math of a conversation that circled around the remarkable fiction and
criticism of the glasgow-based South African writer, Zoë Wicomb.
Out of this October meeting, several things were immediately clear.
Not only did we share admiration for Wicomb’s writing – its ambitious
range and originality, its wit and sophistication, its concern with the
ethics and aesthetics of storytelling – but we also saw the potential of
Wicomb’s work to reinvigorate the field, bringing together several kinds
of readers across disciplines and geographical locations. A more creative
format for what eventually became a multi-sited conference series, where
the participation of Wicomb and other writers would make their mark,
was one result of our conversation; so too was a crucial engagement with
South African historians, especially in relation to the Cape.
The ideas that formed on that autumn day in the northern hemi-
sphere led to our first colloquium, ‘Zoë Wicomb: Texts & histories’,
held at SOAS, University of London in 2008, together with the Institute
of English Studies at Senate house. This event inspired further collab-
orations with the English Department at the University of Stellenbosch
(where, in fact, Wicomb was at the time Extraordinary Visiting Professor),
hosts for a major international conference in 2010 on ‘The Cape & the
Cosmopolitan: Reading Zoë Wicomb’. From these first two events, three
special issues were published in the Journal of Southern African Studies
(36.3, September 2010, edited by David Attwell and Kai Easton), Safundi
(12.3–5, August, 2011, edited by Kai Easton and Andrew van der Vlies)
and Current Writing (23.2, November, 2011, edited by M. J. Daymond
and Meg Samuelson). A third and final event, ‘Zoë Wicomb & the Trans-
local: Scotland & South Africa’, hosted by the Department of English
and Related Literature at the University of York, was held in 2012, and it
is this focus that we have chosen for this volume.1
