Finding My Way: Reflections on South African Literature by Duncan Brown (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Finding My Way: Reflections on South African Literature by Duncan Brown Werner Labuschagne Finding My Way: Reflections on South African Literature BY DUNCAN BROWN U of KwaZulu-Natal P, 2020. x + 202 pp. ISBN 9781869144494. Duncan Brown’s Finding My Way surveys and comments on the state and history of South African literary criticism from the vantage point of 2020. It aims to provide more productive in-roads to approaching emerging and established South African literature. This is especially salient regarding one of the book’s main arguments, that whereas South African literature itself has been flourishing, the contemporary criticism thereof has been lagging behind. As the title suggests, Brown employs his own personal experience as a career academic to add credence to his perspective of where he believes the discipline could be more fruitful. This more flexible and individualized tone works as a counterpoint to the rigidness of contemporary criticism. In the book, Brown attempts to untangle some of the limiting aspects of the conventional, institutionalized approach. In the opening chapters, Brown explains that a central issue in studying South African literature is whether a South African literature exists in the first place. Early on, Brown outlines the shortcomings of most major studies and expansiveness of South African literature, especially highlighting their failure to definitively categorize and unify a concise South African literary canon. In terms of post-apartheid criticism, the problem of a unified criticism seems even more apparent. Brown references Leon de Kock to make the point that, during apart-heid, “writers [and critics, I would add] could take on a sense of grave importance by virtue of writing in and about one of the great crisis points in the world” (50). Literary criticism in the country has, arguably, not found another stable unifying point since. While, in contrast, the literature and readership itself has flourished. Regarding the state of current criticism, Brown posits that there is too much focus on utilizing theory, rather than reading into the literariness of the texts themselves. Brown presents a thesis that argues for a literary scholarship that “deploys theory as it is useful, rather than . . . using ‘theory’ to discipline ‘literature’ . . . a scholarship that is less monumental and institutionally proclaimed . . . that is less sure about its own grounds of working and its aims” (46). Brown argues that critics attempt to fit their predetermined frameworks onto texts, rather than reading “with” the text. In the chapters succeeding these establishing points, Brown visits various South African texts that fall somewhat outside of the traditional literary scope [End Page 173] (especially considering the usual emphasis on novels), in readings that emphasize their literariness. That is to say, reading “with” the text, rather than establishing a framework to fit onto the text. For example, Brown analyzes the Christian izibongo (praise poems) of Nontsizi Mgqwetho, which were originally published in the 1920s, but only rediscovered in the 2000s. In his own reading, Brown places his emphasis on her African-Christian beliefs, in order to “read through the textures and timbres of her poetic and prophetic address” (86). Brown then places the same emphasis on reading into belief in his study of Adam Ashforth’s nonfiction texts, Madumo: A Man Bewitched (2000) and Witchcraft, Violence, and Democracy in South Africa (2005). Here, Brown argues for writing “credibly, sympathetically and yet critically about beliefs that we may not share” (89). As mentioned before, Brown studies sites outside of fiction for their literary merit. He makes the claim that creative nonfiction has, in a sense, become the most major literary genre of South African writing. The significance of the genre is discussed in his interview with Antjie Krog, who has written landmark works in nonfiction such as Country of My Skull (1998). Brown and Krog speculate the current surge in popularity and literary merit that nonfiction in South Africa enjoys. Krog notes that a history of “apartness” could be the cause, in that we “can perhaps not begin to value each other’s fantasies or fictions, if we don’t understand the realities that gave rise to them” (109). Brown further moves to the outside of the conventional literary texts to advocate for the studying of oral...