Years ago, during my first years as a hired hand in academia, I was more careful about doing The Right Thing. I’d read JM Coetzee’s Waiting for the Barbarians as a student, and something clicked for me – the colonial mentality, the hopeless fantasies of each successive militarised ‘civilisation’ – in a way that no amount of theory had done. I became an instant acolyte of the Master’s writing. In 2005, attended my first JM Coetzee conference, at Royal Holloway: the university for those sons and daughters of the wealthy who didn’t make it to the Oxbridge universities (this according to a friend who went to Oxford on scholarship).
Anyhow, it was an all-white affair. I was the token brown person there, except for a British Indian student who flitted in and out of a few sessions. (Another academic leaned over and said, conspiratorially, that this young man sends him “fawning emails”. Right. Not only was I being handed the ubiquitous racist caricature of the arse-kissing Indian, but I was being invited into the ‘club’: my sarcasm had permitted me to leap over the Indian hurdle, and into white acceptability. Goody for me.) During a couple of sessions, when some students from continental Europe were presenting (albeit somewhat poorly constructed papers), the UK-and South Africa-based white academics trashed them publicly, right there during the session. This was not a place to come to be informed, gently directed, or invited to an ongoing conversation, but a location in which territory was reinforced, and the ‘right’ of the few to belong staked out.
At the end of the conference, everyone gathered in the large auditorium to take a group photo. I didn’t get in on that. Someone asked me why I didn’t want to be in the picture, and I said that it was because I’d lose my Coloured People’s Credentials. Weirdly enough, though my own paper was quite rubbish (it was my first year as an academic, and I spent a lot of time writing drivel), I was invited to send in a revised version for a collection of essays, compiled from that conference. I never could get motivated to do it. I guess I realised, even then, that I was being asked to be the Sole Brown Representative in a book of essays about JM Coetzee. I couldn’t do it.
Instead, I wrote about how that experience taught me a thing or two about the reification of ‘white’ culture by scholars of Southern African literature, via the objectification of JM Coetzee – using his person, as well as his writing. I presented that paper at a Chimurenga Session in 2009, in Cape Town. It was a liberating experience.
Hilariously, the South African writer, Sandile Dikeni, turned up with Nicole Turner, and rose up to defend JM. “Where are you from?” Dikeni asked, as a way of opening a line of inquiry that basically consisted of stating, “If you are not from here, how dare you criticise our most famous writer?” Of course, I began by asking Sandile “Where are you from?” before proceeding to an explanation: in a critique of how the person, persona, and writing of Coetzee have been used to reify a troubling aspect of white supremacy, as well as the protectionism of such views behind fine language and theory, my level of ‘locatedness’ in South Africa has no bearing. Afterwards, over drinks, Dikeni was more gracious: it was like he didn’t know what came over him, when he leapt to defend JM. But he was still troubled by my critique.
So when JM Coetzee compiles a list of “winning stories”, African Pens 2011: New Writing from Southern Africa, and people like Kavish Chetty (in Mahala) point out that this collection – which includes no black writers – promotes a problematic view of writing from Southern Africa, I worry about how gentle Chetty is being.
“I do think there’s something both strange and remarkable about an anthology of Southern African writing which omits black authors. Their absence here draws attention to itself: are black people simply not committing ink to paper? Or perhaps, more interestingly, are they simply not producing anything of value in the eyes of lavished adjudicator, Monsieur JM Coetzee?”
The man who wrote the definitive book of essays analysing on ‘European’ writing in South Africa (the excellent White Writing), the man who is protected from valid critique (not the idiotic politically-motivated nonsense) includes no black writers? I’m hardly shocked. The politeness evident in this Chetty’s critique indicates the level of tiptoeing one is obliged to do, whenever approaching the circle of protection around Coetzee. As Chetty points out, “I think we have a puzzle on our hands here. Is it possible to compile a volume called African Pens without (strictly speaking) an African anywhere in the process” (“let’s not get started on what ‘African’ actually means”, Chetty adds), when there are “fifteen SADC countries all eligible for these awards” and when there were over 500 entries?
The stranger thing is complicity of the editor and publisher, who agreed to continue to permit such a lopsided selection. While Coetzee’s name on the cover means that there will be good sales, this selection also endorses the view that no black people can write well enough to be selected by The Master. Apparently, none of them read Chimurenga or Kwani?
By the way, I still read Coetzee, and remain a fan of (some of) his writing and analysis.
I find the fact that there are no black writers in the new anthology of Southern African writing simply incredible. Is there a link to Neelika Jayawardane’s 2009 paper so I can do further reading?
Pam Allara
visiting researcher, Boston University
Pam,
It’s still unpublished, but I can send it to you (maybe this will light a fire under me and I will send it off to a journal that will not blacklist me). Send me an email.
Hello, Neelika,
THank you for starting this outstanding dialogue! I was at dinner with South African-born writer Rose Moss, who is Coetzee’s age and a member of Pen, and she said cynically that she was not surprised that he did not include any black writers in his edited anthology. By the way, I just found out that it is already out of print!!
If you do have time to send me your paper, I would be grateful. My email is:
Allara@brandeis.edu. Many thanks!
Thanks for this. As you point out, the responsibility for the annihilating effect of the Coetzee blitz on South African and African letters more broadly, largely belongs to critics, editors and academics worldwide. It is a shame that his fascinating oeuvre doesn’t provoke these same people to read beyond the confines of his one African position to learn about others, and a further “disgrace” that this new book also dissuades them from doing so.
A couple of things warrant mentioning here:
The rules of the PEN/Studzinski Literary Award require that writers include “[n]o name, address, or other identifying mark… on the typescript other than the
title of the story on each page”. Further “[the] identity of authors will not be revealed to judges… All entries will be judged without author identification. SA PEN will ensure that the name of the author does not appear on material submitted to readers or the editorial board. Identity will be recorded by means of a confidential coding system”.
Coetzee himself only selects the prizewinners for first, second and third place. An “editorial board” selects those writers included in the anthology.
One would also presume Coetzee is forwarded a shortlist of writers by the editorial board, and that he does not read every entry.
I suspect self-selection, more than implicit prejudice, played a more significant role in shaping the applicant pool and, by implication the anthology. Chetty alludes to this in the original blog post (of the 500 applicants, all but two were South African).
see rules at http://www.scribd.com/doc/27777451/PEN-Studzinski-Literary-Award-Rules-of-Entry-2011
There are many, many ways to figure out an author’s self-identity besides a name on their manuscript. Content is quite revealing, even among works that are not autobiographical in nature.
The only thing that this supposed anonymity proves is that the literary sensibility behind the selection process was racist. In fact, this is even more horrifying to me because it bears witness to a white supremacy that reigns over literary style and form itself.
Neelika,
Hitting “return to sender” on that question (“where are you from?) punctured the empty pose of power, the sort of power whose privilege is so entrenched it does not question itself, its positionality, and the pecking order of the structure that sustains it (with Coetzee on top, maybe?).
I’ve never read Coetzee. I’ve never tried. I’ve never thought of trying. (The waters around him see too murky). Just like American writers at some point have to confront and vanquish the Ernest Hemmingways of their world, I think African writers have to confront the JM Coetzees.
Maybe the Chimurengas and Kwanis can do a better job of producing inclusive literary collections.
@ Jonathan: Anonymously judged? Absolutely, as all writing competitions are (supposedly). And winnowed down for JM? For sure. But ‘self selecting’? That places the responsibility back on the submitters/writers, rather than the committee/judges/editors. South African hardly need to be told that all sorts of things (social class, education, geographical location/history of that place, and being trained to write in the ‘classical form’ i.e. ‘European’ forms of writing) enter how/what one writes. And how people judge ‘good’ writing is equally changeable, according to those same markers. A proactive committee/set of editors would have taken a step in the right direction: a few emails distributing the invitation to submit to key journals (such as the two I mentioned) would have guaranteed a deluge of wonderful fiction.
If the same had happened in the music industry (Music from SADCC turns up nada back musicians!) imagine the riot (I’m being ironic here – know the social history of black involvement/reward for music is different. But imagine if only those who were doing ‘classical’ music were considered). Even the ivory towers of art based in South Africa wouldn’t dream of not including black artists in this day and age.
@Kweli: precisely why in other parts of the world, people began their ‘own’. Sadly, resources go to establishment/famous names, so it’s a difficult step.
Wow, shocking and depressing that there are no black authors included. I truly can’t even believe it made it to publishing like that without any serious outcry. Seems rather racist to me. I’ve not yet read anything by Coetzee but perhaps some day…
If black authors weren’t given the chance to apply, then it is racist. If black authors simply did not apply, then it is not racist. One cannot make others write papers.
I am an enthusiastic buyer of books and I have read almost all of JM Coetzee’s books. I reached with enthusiasm of this anthology when I saw it on the bookshelves and when I managed to reposition my lower jaw, I left it there. It is outrageous that anyone would associate themselves with such regression and that any publisher could think it is ok.
How interesting that Mogane Serote gave a brilliant talk to the PEN audience at the New York Public Library at the same time that this anthology was being released. What can possibly be the explanation for this insanity? Has Coetzee lost it?
More than half a century ago, Chinua Achebe was moved to write Things Fall Apart owing to the colonial mentality of those who, thieves, sailed away from their sparse resources in Europe to take over other people’s land and their resources, and to impose their culture as superior. We are still dealing with that double standard as to who the thieves and criminals really are!