“Ons hele volksverhaal”
Writing Afrikaner nationalism on the periphery
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 20156790 |
|---|---|
| Authors | GUNTHER PAKENDORF (University of Cape Town, corresponding author) |
| Year | 1998 |
| Volume | 14 |
| Issue | 1-2 |
| Pages | 136-165 |
| Publication date | 1998-06-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of Literary Studies (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0256-4718 • E-ISSN: 1753-5387 |
| Publisher | Unisa Press (PUBLISHER • ZA) |
| DOI | 10.1080/02564719808530193 |
| OpenAlex | W1982106927 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 12 |
The article looks at the construction of an Afrikaner national identity in W.A. de Klerk's Die Gésel van Namaland, an Afrikaans novel for juvenile readers published in the early fifties. Dealing with the Nama uprising in colonial Namibia, the novel is fundamentally concerned with interpreting a part of Namibian history as the paradigm of the pioneering history of the Afrikaners. Mediated by an avuncular narrator, it is a tale of adventure and romance in which Afrikaner identity is given the appearance of a natural fact. National identity becomes the intertext which is reinforced by a host of subsidiary texts drawn from Afrikaner mythology and history. Like most colonising narratives the text operates with binary oppositions, but the proximity of the Nama, Afrikaans‐speaking, Christian inhabitants of the land constantly threatens the hegemony and exclusivity of the nationalist discourse. In this process, language, history and divine selection become important foci of the discourse. Yet what is disguised as a conflict between Christianity and barbarism is in effect a struggle for possession and control of the land in which nationalism is inscribed as the ideology of the dominant group
Aesthetics · Archaeology · Art · Barbarism · Civilization · Colonialism · Hegemony · Ideology · Literature · Narrative · Nationalism · Political science · Politics · Sociology · African history and culture studies · Gender Studies · History · Law · Postcolonial and Cultural Literary Studies · South African History and Culture
South-West Africa under German rule, 1894-1914.
Peter Moor's journey to Southwest Africa
Volkskapitalisme
The wild South West
Scratches on the Face of the Country; Or, What Mr. Barrow Saw in the Land of the Bushmen
Popularizing History
The Nature of Afrikaner Nationalism
Hate the Old and Follow the New
Idleness in South Africa
Let Us Die Fighting
Regions and Repertoires
The Economy of Manichean Allegory
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |