An Absent Presence

Intertextual Appropriation in Michael K by Nthikeng Mohlele

Bibliographic Data

ID20156225
AuthorsJ U Jacobs (University of KwaZulu-Natal, corresponding author)
Year2020
Volume36
Issue2
Pages33-48
Publication date2020-04-02
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of Literary Studies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0256-4718 • E-ISSN: 1753-5387
PublisherUnisa Press (PUBLISHER • ZA)
DOI10.1080/02564718.2020.1787707
OpenAlexW3044293946
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited11

Taking as point of departure Frenkel’s notion of contemporary, post-transitional South African writing as palimpsestic, and Genette’s theory of inter-/hypertextuality in terms of palimpsest, the article examines Nthikeng Mohlele’s novel Michael K as an inter- textual appropriation of Coetzee’s Life & Time of Michael K. Employing theories of intertextuality from Kristeva to Genette, Riffaterre, Frow and Hutcheon, it shows how Coetzee’s novel, which is inscribed, in turn, as hypertext over earlier source texts, or hypotexts, by Kafka and Kleist, presents the problem of textual inscrutability and resistance to authority in the intractable figure of K Mohlele addresses this textual conundrum by appropriating K and giving him two afterlives in his own novel: first as fictional character, and secondly as metafictional subject. Mohlele’s reader is left with the final image of his eponymous Michael K as a figure who, like his fictional precursor(s), resists appropriation, escapes from authority, and whose presence is paradoxically predicated on absence

Appropriation · Art · Epistemology · Hypertext · Intertextuality · Literature · Metafiction · Palimpsest · Postmodernism · African history and culture studies · Computer Science · Philosophy · Postcolonial and Cultural Literary Studies · South African History and Culture

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