Mirroring Nostalgia in Fractured Coherence: The ‘Home Visit’ in Zoë Wicomb’s October

Abstract

With a focus on Zoë Wicomb’s novel, October (2014) – the title signalling an ‘aesthetic’ elevation of the events of a journey home – I explore the trope of the ‘home visit’ as a catalytic moment of insight into the protagonist’s dislocated life. In October, the syntagmatic chain of events (the plot) yields a paradigmatic resonance: the transitional month of the year embodying the tenuousness of a temporary homecoming. I draw on the concept of ‘home visit’ from the fields of mobility and destination studies, where it indicates a recently established research niche, variously referred to as “personal memory tourism” (Marschall 2017) or “visiting home and familiar places” (Pearce 2012). The object of such investigation concerns the temporary home visit by first-generation migrants, as triggered by both sensory experiences and cognitive processes of searching for personal redefinitions of what it means to be at home in a place. I draw also on Heidegger’s reflections on the concept of home beyond conventional understanding: home as conceptual “dwelling” and as a process of “home-making” (2001 [1954]).