This text seeks to rethink the relationship between literature and the gendered construction of national boundaries. It does so by proposing a reconsideration of the terms singularity, difference and literariness while analysing two talked-about and best-selling postcolonial novels, Disgrace (1999) by J.M. Coetzee and Agaat (2004) by Marlene van Niekerk.
Attridge, Derek ( 2004) The Singularity of Literature. London and New York: Routledge.
2.
Attridge, Derek ( 2005) J.M. Coetzee and the Ethics of Reading. Scottsville: University of Kwazulu Natal Press.
3.
Bakhtin, Michael ( 1982) The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays. Austin: University of Texas Press.
4.
Bal, Mieke, Jonathan Crewe and Leo Spitzer, eds ( 1999) Acts of Memory: Cultural Recall in the Present. Lebanon, NHUniversity Press of New England.
5.
Banville, John ( 2000) ‘Review of J.M. Coetzee, Disgrace’, The New York Review of Books 20 January: 23-5.
6.
Barthes, Roland ( 1980) La Chambre claire. Paris: Gallimard.
7.
Benjamin, Walter ( 1974) ‘Das Kunstwerk im Zeitalter seiner technischen Reproduzierbarkeit’ , pp. 471-508 in Gesammelte Schriften. Unter mitwirkung von Theodor Adorno und Gershom Scholem, Vol. 1, Part 2. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag. (Orig. pub. 1935.)
8.
Boehmer, Elleke ( 2002) ‘Not Saying Sorry, Not Speaking Pain: Gender Implications in Disgrace’, Interventions4: 342-51.
Buikema, Rosemarie ( 2006) ‘Literature and the Production of Ambiguous Memory: Confession and Double Thoughts in J.M. Coetzee’s Disgrace’, European Journal of English Studies10(2): 187-99.
11.
Butler, Judith, John Guillory and Kendall Thomas, eds ( 2000) What’s Left of Theory? New Work on the Politics of Literary Theory. New York and London: Routledge.
12.
Cixous, Hélène ( 1975) ‘Le Rire de la Meduse’, L’Arc (Simone de Beauvoir)61: 39-54.
13.
Coetzee, Carli and Sarah Nuttall, eds (1998) Negotiating the Past: The Making of Memory in South Africa. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
14.
Coetzee, J.M. ( 1988) White Writing: On the Culture of Letters in South Africa . New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press.
15.
Coetzee, J.M. ( 1992) Doubling the Point: Essays and Interviews. Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press.
16.
Coetzee, J.M. ( 1999) Disgrace. London: Secker and Warburg.
17.
Culler, Jonathan ( 1981) The Pursuit of Signs. London: Routledge.
18.
Culler, Jonathan ( 1983) On Deconstruction: Theory and Criticism after Structuralism . London: Routledge.
19.
Culler, Jonathan ( 2000) ‘The Literary in Theory’, in Judith Butler et al. (eds) What’s Left of Theory? New Work on the Politics of Literary Theory. New York and London: Routledge .
20.
Gorra, Michael ( 1999) ‘ "After the Fall". Review of Disgrace, by J.M. Coetzee’, The New York Times 28 November; at: www.nytimes.com/books/99/11/28/reviews/991128.28gorrat.html
21.
Jansen, Ena ( 2005) ‘Ek het maar net saam met die meisies gebly. Die representasie van vrouebediendes in die Suid-Afrikaanse letterkunde’ , STILET March: 102-33.
22.
James, Wilmot and Linda van de Vijver, eds (2001) After the TRC: Reflections on Truth and Reconciliation in South Africa. Claremont /Athens: David Philip/ Ohio University Press.
23.
Kristeva, Julia ( 1974) La Revolution du language poetique. L’Avantgarde a la fin du 19e siecle. Paris: Editions du Seuil.
24.
Krog, Antjie ( 2004) ‘Reading with the Skin: Liberalism, Race and Power in Age of Iron and Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee’, in Kader Asmal (ed.) In His Own Words. Boston, MA: Little, Brown and Company.
25.
Mamdani, Mahmood ( 2001) ‘A Diminished Truth’, pp. 58-61 in Wilmot James and Linda van de Vijver (eds) After the TRC: Reflections on Truth and Reconciliation in South Africa. Claremont/Athens: David Philip /Ohio University Press.
26.
Minow, Martha ( 1998) Between Vengeance and Forgiveness: Facing History after Genocide and Mass Violence. Boston, MA: Beacon.
27.
Morrison, Toni ( 1992) Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination . Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
28.
Postel, Gitte ( 2006) Unheimlich moederland. (Anti-)pastorale letteren in Zuid-Afrika . Leiden: Leiden University Press .
29.
Rossouw, Johann ( 2005) ‘O moenie huil nie, o moenie treur nie, die jollie bobbejaan kom weer’., Vrye Afrikaan; at: vryeafrikaan.co.za/lees.php?id=105
30.
Sage, Lorna ( 1994) Flesh and the Mirror: Essays on the Art of Angela Carter . London: Virago.
31.
Sontag, Susan ( 1964) Against Interpretation. New York: Dell Publishing.
32.
Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty ( 1985) ‘Three Women’s Texts and a Critique of Imperialism’ , Critical Inquiry12(1): 243-62.
33.
Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty ( 2003) Death of a Discipline. New York: Columbia University Press.
34.
Van Heusden, Barend ( 2001) Literaire Cultuur. Nijmegen: SUN.
35.
Van Niekerk, Marlene ( 2004) Agaat. Jeppestown: Jonathan Ball.
36.
Van Niekerk, Marlene ( 2007) Agaat, trans. Michiel Heyns. Jeppestown : Jonathan Ball.
37.
Visagie, Andries ( 2005) ‘Agaat as kultuurdokumentasie vir die toekoms’ , LifNet February; at: www.litnet.co.za/cgi-bin/giga.cgi?cmd=cause_dir_news_item&news_id=17768&cause_id=1270
