Reading the South Atlantic

Chile, South Africa, the Cold War, and Mark Behr'sThe Smell of Apples

Datos Bibliográficos

ID2137677
AutoresKerry Bystrom (University of Connecticut, autor de correspondencia)
Año2012
Volumen71
Número1
Páginas1-18
Fecha de publicación2012-04-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessNo
TipoARTICLE
RevistaAfrican Studies (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0002-0184 • E-ISSN: 1469-2872
EditorialInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/00020184.2012.668290
OpenAlexW2000407661
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas1
Referencias citadas26

This article focuses on the often-ignored figure of the Chilean general at the heart of Mark Behr's (in)famous post-apartheid novel The Smell of Apples (1995). It asks the question: What can a Latin American general mean to the protagonist of the novel and to South Africa more generally? Analysing the forms of mimicry and doubling at play in the text, it argues that the Chilean general serves as an uncanny double whose representation helps to reveal the psychological mechanisms of acknowledgement and repression that underpinned Afrikaner support for apartheid's military regime. It further argues that Behr's concomitant use of Pinochet's Chile as an uncanny double for apartheid South Africa points to Cold War anti-communist military and political networks – routed through the United States but also existing bi-laterally between Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay, and South Africa – that allowed for the circulation of both technologies and cultures of state-sponsored terror, and which later opened into shared modes of democratic transformation. The article ultimately poses Behr's text as a call for further readings of the South Atlantic as a zone of transit and transfer between Southern Africa and South America

Democracy · Geopolitics · Latin Americans · Literature · Political science · Politics · Sociology · State (computer science · Uncanny · Communism, Protests, Social Movements · Gender Studies · Historical and Contemporary Political Dynamics · History · Law · South African History and Culture