Plunging into the Mire of Corruption and Pleasure”
Niq Mhlongo’s Way Back Home
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 14962000 |
|---|---|
| Authors | A Yolisa Kenqu (0000-0002-3039-9628, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2019 |
| Volume | 31 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 155-165 |
| Publication date | 2019-07-03 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Current Writing (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1013-929X • E-ISSN: 2159-9130 |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/1013929x.2019.1618092 |
| OpenAlex | W2969989545 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 3 |
| References cited | 4 |
This article presents a close reading of Niq Mhlongo’s Way Back Home, particularly its representation of the post-apartheid nation-state as a place of excess or, indeed, what James Ogude might call a “a site of eating”. To begin, I locate Mhlongo’s oeuvre within the long and rich tradition of black-centred artistic expression that is preoccupied with black masculinities and the politics/performance of ‘hustling’. Turning to Way Back Home specifically, I argue that the novel functions as a critique of the excesses, including the kleptocracy, of the ruling elite. I show that the novel ultimately reveals the underside of South Africa’s euphoric discourse of the ‘Rainbow Nation’. I wish to evoke not only his novel’s interrogation of the notions of home, belonging, desire and the unheimlich in post-apartheid South Africa, but also the sense in which failure is always already a certainty in postcolonial states which adopt and function within structures that were never designed for African progress
Aesthetics · Art · Elite · Interrogation · Pleasure · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Wish · African history and culture studies · Gender Studies · Law · Postcolonial and Cultural Literary Studies · Psychology · South African History and Culture
| Unique citing works | 3 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,13 |
| Citation span | 2003 - 2024 (22) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 3 |