Locating Gordimer

This chapter examines Nadine Gordimer’s postcolonialism in relation to modernism, realism, and the writings of J. M. Coetzee. Especially significant in this context is the “unrepresentability” of the cultural Other, a figure exemplified by the mute and mutilated figure of Friday in Coetzee’s Foe (1986). Gordimer addresses this issue in scenes in Burger’s Daughter (1979) and July’s People (1981), in which black men speak their minds to white women. Unlike Coetzee, Gordimer underscores not the impossibility of communication or representation, but a shift in power relations that enables black speech. The chapter concludes by focusing on two works that inaugurated contrasting views of postcolonialism: Coetzee’s Dusklands (1974) and Gordimer’s The Black Interpreters (1973). The former treats history as an “ungraspable” series of abyssal texts, while the latter validates critical realism within the context of European Marxism. The chapter concludes by arguing that Gordimer represents a form of “modernist realism” or “realist modernism.”