Dennis Walder
Biographic Data
| ID | 211243 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Dennis Walder |
| GIVEN NAMES | Dennis |
| FAMILY NAME | Walder |
| SIGNATURE | WALDER D |
| AFFILIATIONS | The Open University |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 18 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 7 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 18 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1988 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2020 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
Disappointment and contemporary South African fiction
According to Andrew van der Vlies, life in post-apartheid South Africa ‘has come to be characterized, for many, by a profound experience of disappointment’. He goes on to suggest that the range of
Bart Moore-Gilbert (1952−2015)
Remembering trauma
Among Fugard's post-apartheid plays there is one that escapes the limitations of sentimental nostalgia evident in his recent turn inwards – The Train Driver (2010a). In this short play he develops a challenging sense of the country's dealings with the past by focusing upon the traumatic experience of a ‘track suicide’ remembered in morbidly excessive terms by the white driver, whose tragic story is told by a black gravedigger. The driver's hyster…
Hysterical nostalgia in the postcolony
Much of the remembering of recent years in South Africa has involved nostalgia, but a nostalgia of excess and morbidity, or what might be called hysteria. The endangered body stands as a memorial to the distortions of apartheid, and there are many manifestations in the culture of the country. Here I analyse two performative works by expatriate South Africans who in contrasting but related ways express through them a hysterical-nostalgic relation …
Little Dorrit
Dombey And Son
Alone in a Landscape”
In many colonial and post-colonial writers there is a dialectic between different forms of nostalgia that avoids the bad faith assumed by those (like Fredric Jameson) who denounce nostalgia as a de-historicizing trend. Doris Lessing, through her “African” work both fictional and non-fictional, offers a suitable example. From her first African Stories onwards, she suggests that her mythic Africa, the remembered Rhodesia of her childhood, is at onc…
Decolonizing the (Distance) Curriculum
Postcolonial theory remains part of the challenge of literary theory to curriculum development. As the author's personal history suggests, it is more than simply another way of reading and interpretation, but enables an engagement with, a bearing witness to, the gross inequalities of the world today. Drama is a good example, evidenced by the production and impact of South African Athol Fugard's work — introduced as a set text for the first time i…
A History of South African Literature (review)
Remembering Rousseau
In this paper I aim to use Douanier Rousseau's La Bohémienne (1897) as the starting point for an exploration of how personal memory intersects with cultural history, in terms of the relations between the present and the past, and the individual and the community, as complexly determined by separation, distance and exile. Literary and cultural criticism in recent years has been steadily drawn towards an exploration of boundaries, which has allowed…
How is it going, Mr Naipaul?’’Identity, Memory and the Ethics of Post-Colonial Literatures
A wide-ranging account of the general issue of the relationship between memory, writing and ethics in the post-colonial context, focusing on V.S. Naipaul's The Enigma of Arrival in particular
The Fitful Muse
Proposing a category of 'memory plays' as a new way of approaching Fugard's later plays, countering the view of them as nonpolitical or overly subjective
South African Theatre as/and Intervention
One of the most striking features of cultural life in South Africa has been the extent to which one area of cultural practice - theatre - has more than any other testified to the present condition of the country, now in transition between its colonial past and a decolonized future. But in what sense and how far does the critical force of theatre in South Africa as a mode of intervention continue? In the immediate post-election moment, theatre see…
Suffering Visions and Present Bearings
(1999). SUFFERING VISIONS AND PRESENT BEARINGS: FUGARD'S THEATRE OF THE INTERIOR. South African Theatre Journal: Vol. 13, No. 1, pp. 49-57
Italicized encounters
Writing South Africa
During the final years of the apartheid era and the subsequent transition to democracy, South African literary writing caught the world's attention as never before. Writers responded to the changing political situation and its daily impact on the country's inhabitants with works that recorded or satirised state-enforced racism, explored the possibilities of resistance and rebuilding, and creatively addressed the vexed question of literature's rel…
The Modern movement
Literary Reviews
Classic realism. The Time of the Hero. Mario Vargas Llosa. Translated from the Spanish by Lysander Kemp. London: Picador. 1986. 409pp. £4.50pb The Green House. Mario Vargas Llosa. Translated from the Spanish by Gregory Rabassa. London: Picador. 1986. 405pp. £3.95pb Colluding with darkness. Of Love and Shadows. Isabel Allende. Translated from the Spanish by Margaret Sayers Peden. London: Cape. 1987. 274pp. £10.95hb The Lizard's Tail. Luisa Valenzu…
Hysterical nostalgia in the postcolony
Much of the remembering of recent years in South Africa has involved nostalgia, but a nostalgia of excess and morbidity, or what might be called hysteria. The endangered body stands as a memorial to the distortions of apartheid, and there are many manifestations in the culture of the country. Here I analyse two performative works by expatriate South Africans who in contrasting but related ways express through them a hysterical-nostalgic relation …
Disappointment and contemporary South African fiction
According to Andrew van der Vlies, life in post-apartheid South Africa ‘has come to be characterized, for many, by a profound experience of disappointment’. He goes on to suggest that the range of
Decolonizing the (Distance) Curriculum
Postcolonial theory remains part of the challenge of literary theory to curriculum development. As the author's personal history suggests, it is more than simply another way of reading and interpretation, but enables an engagement with, a bearing witness to, the gross inequalities of the world today. Drama is a good example, evidenced by the production and impact of South African Athol Fugard's work — introduced as a set text for the first time i…
Remembering Rousseau
In this paper I aim to use Douanier Rousseau's La Bohémienne (1897) as the starting point for an exploration of how personal memory intersects with cultural history, in terms of the relations between the present and the past, and the individual and the community, as complexly determined by separation, distance and exile. Literary and cultural criticism in recent years has been steadily drawn towards an exploration of boundaries, which has allowed…
The Fitful Muse
Proposing a category of 'memory plays' as a new way of approaching Fugard's later plays, countering the view of them as nonpolitical or overly subjective
Literary Reviews
Classic realism. The Time of the Hero. Mario Vargas Llosa. Translated from the Spanish by Lysander Kemp. London: Picador. 1986. 409pp. £4.50pb The Green House. Mario Vargas Llosa. Translated from the Spanish by Gregory Rabassa. London: Picador. 1986. 405pp. £3.95pb Colluding with darkness. Of Love and Shadows. Isabel Allende. Translated from the Spanish by Margaret Sayers Peden. London: Cape. 1987. 274pp. £10.95hb The Lizard's Tail. Luisa Valenzu…
The Modern movement
Writing South Africa
During the final years of the apartheid era and the subsequent transition to democracy, South African literary writing caught the world's attention as never before. Writers responded to the changing political situation and its daily impact on the country's inhabitants with works that recorded or satirised state-enforced racism, explored the possibilities of resistance and rebuilding, and creatively addressed the vexed question of literature's rel…
South African Theatre as/and Intervention
One of the most striking features of cultural life in South Africa has been the extent to which one area of cultural practice - theatre - has more than any other testified to the present condition of the country, now in transition between its colonial past and a decolonized future. But in what sense and how far does the critical force of theatre in South Africa as a mode of intervention continue? In the immediate post-election moment, theatre see…
Suffering Visions and Present Bearings
(1999). SUFFERING VISIONS AND PRESENT BEARINGS: FUGARD'S THEATRE OF THE INTERIOR. South African Theatre Journal: Vol. 13, No. 1, pp. 49-57
Italicized encounters
The Fitful Muse
Proposing a category of 'memory plays' as a new way of approaching Fugard's later plays, countering the view of them as nonpolitical or overly subjective
How is it going, Mr Naipaul?’’Identity, Memory and the Ethics of Post-Colonial Literatures
A wide-ranging account of the general issue of the relationship between memory, writing and ethics in the post-colonial context, focusing on V.S. Naipaul's The Enigma of Arrival in particular
A History of South African Literature (review)
Remembering Rousseau
In this paper I aim to use Douanier Rousseau's La Bohémienne (1897) as the starting point for an exploration of how personal memory intersects with cultural history, in terms of the relations between the present and the past, and the individual and the community, as complexly determined by separation, distance and exile. Literary and cultural criticism in recent years has been steadily drawn towards an exploration of boundaries, which has allowed…
Decolonizing the (Distance) Curriculum
Postcolonial theory remains part of the challenge of literary theory to curriculum development. As the author's personal history suggests, it is more than simply another way of reading and interpretation, but enables an engagement with, a bearing witness to, the gross inequalities of the world today. Drama is a good example, evidenced by the production and impact of South African Athol Fugard's work — introduced as a set text for the first time i…
Dombey And Son
Alone in a Landscape”
In many colonial and post-colonial writers there is a dialectic between different forms of nostalgia that avoids the bad faith assumed by those (like Fredric Jameson) who denounce nostalgia as a de-historicizing trend. Doris Lessing, through her “African” work both fictional and non-fictional, offers a suitable example. From her first African Stories onwards, she suggests that her mythic Africa, the remembered Rhodesia of her childhood, is at onc…
Little Dorrit
Remembering trauma
Among Fugard's post-apartheid plays there is one that escapes the limitations of sentimental nostalgia evident in his recent turn inwards – The Train Driver (2010a). In this short play he develops a challenging sense of the country's dealings with the past by focusing upon the traumatic experience of a ‘track suicide’ remembered in morbidly excessive terms by the white driver, whose tragic story is told by a black gravedigger. The driver's hyster…
Hysterical nostalgia in the postcolony
Much of the remembering of recent years in South Africa has involved nostalgia, but a nostalgia of excess and morbidity, or what might be called hysteria. The endangered body stands as a memorial to the distortions of apartheid, and there are many manifestations in the culture of the country. Here I analyse two performative works by expatriate South Africans who in contrasting but related ways express through them a hysterical-nostalgic relation …
Bart Moore-Gilbert (1952−2015)
Disappointment and contemporary South African fiction
According to Andrew van der Vlies, life in post-apartheid South Africa ‘has come to be characterized, for many, by a profound experience of disappointment’. He goes on to suggest that the range of
Art (15 works) · History (13 works) · Literature (12 works) · Aesthetics (11 works) · Political science (9 works) · Sociology (9 works) · Philosophy (7 works) · South African History and Culture (7 works) · History (6 works) · Law (6 works)