"My Mother Was a Fish": Racial Trauma, Precarity, and Grief in K. Sello Duiker's Thirteen Cents

ABSTRACT:In this article, I explore manifestations of (inter)subjectivity in relation to racial trauma and grief as portrayed through the child protagonist of K. Sello Duiker's Thirteen Cents, Azure. This discussion is informed by the representation of the black body in light of post-transitional politics, paying specific attention to Azure's connection to the historically maligned figure of Saartjie, a connection that reflects the reenactment of racial trauma in the contemporary moment. Azure's encounters with violence and loss, I posit, result in a psychic break that forms an index to the failure of recognition inherent in intersubjective relations grounded on racism. I argue that we can understand Azure's subjectivity by paying attention to the ways in which his subjectivity is mitigated by psychosocial directives on racialized existence, the symbolic potential of his repressed rage, and the transformative potential of filial connections. I contend that Azure stands as an individualized meditation on the shortcomings of the reconciliation narrative of the post-transitional period that tends to erase the more immediate consequences of South Africa's violent past for those who are most vulnerable. Ultimately, this child protagonist exemplifies the ways in which trauma and violence interfere with the most human of impulses, grief.