Department of Modern Foreign Languages

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Browsing Department of Modern Foreign Languages by Author "Croeser, Chantelle Claire"

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    Queerly uncanny Afrikaner nationalism(s) : an affectively attuned queer reading of selected twentieth-century uncanny Afrikaans short stories
    (Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2023-12) Croeser, Chantelle Claire; Viljoen, Louise; Du Toit, Catherine (Professor); Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. Dept. of Modern Foreign Languages.
    ENGLISH ABSTRACT : In this dissertation I apply an affectively attuned queer comparative and close reading to selected uncanny Afrikaans tales that emerged as some of the first of their kind in written Afrikaans. The characters in the stories, the manner in which the stories are told, and the spaces in which they are set create an uncanny affective environment and can be productively (re)read at a queer angle. To explore these elements, I sketch the historical landscape and socio-political context in which these stories emerge. I situate my exploration within a bricolage of methodology and/as theory framework which consists of queer, affect, and Gordonian spectrality theory. For my consideration of the affective role of setting, I traverse the various haunted houses, land- and farmscapes in Eugène Marais’ “Die huis van die vier winde” and “Isaak Slyk” (1927), and C.J. Langenhoven’s “Volksraadlid Duiwenal se verhaal: Die bouval op Wilgerdal” (1972/1924). Staying with spaces I turn my body toward the queer characters that populate these spaces by looking at C. Louis Leipoldt’s “Die Koranna se kopbeen” (1927), C.J Langenhoven’s “Ds. Enkeldoorn se verhaal: Die hangende gedaantes” (1972/1924), and Eugène Marais’ “Isaak Slyk” (1927). I then consider the queer manner in which these stories are told by comparing “Die huis van die vier winde” and C.J. Langenhoven’s “Die hangende gedaantes” (1972/1924) to the embedded structure of Guy De Maupassant’s “Mother of Monsters” (2004/1883), and Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher” (1960/1839). I also compare the selected tales to the /Xam tales “Nag en duisternis en hulle drie dogters”, “Vlakte is die tweede dogter”, “Hoe B— stories vertel”, “Berge is die oudste dogter” (2009/1919) as well as “Kraai se vernedering”, and “’n Kommando teen B—” (2010/1921) as retold by G.R Von Wielligh. In particular, I show that the selected Afrikaans tales queer the embedded storytelling modes by incorporating elements of /Xam stories, situating themselves within Southern African storytelling traditions rather than purely Western uncanny traditions. I conclude my study by showing that the ghosts who speak affectively through these stories are all born from the terror enacted by the establishment and expansion of Afrikaner identity as imagined by Afrikaner nationalists. These ghosts signal that these authors and their contexts were haunted by the white Afrikaner’s tenuous relationship with the land (most prominently in the form of the plaas); the survival of the Afrikaner family unit as means to maintain ownership of the land through the heteronormative marriage’s successful continuation of the Afrikaner lineage; the violent construction of borders that attempt to isolate the Afrikaner (family) physically, culturally, and linguistically from Black and Brown people under of the guise of protection; the brutal and genocidal enforcement of the denial of the central role of indigenous people in the creation of the Afrikaans language and culture; and the very affects that are involved in, shape, and through which each of these operate. Finally, I speculate about and show the ways in which these ghosts continue to haunt Afrikaners today.