Indiscriminate grief and prioritizing care

Toloki’s politics of mourning in Zakes Mda’s Ways of Dying

Bibliographic Data

ID24217302
AuthorsAngana Das (Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur)
Year2026
Pages1-15
Publication date2026-09-28
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of Postcolonial Writing (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1744-9855 • E-ISSN: 1744-9863
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/17449855.2026.2718376
OpenAlexW7214626536
LanguageEN
References cited13

This article examines how Zakes Mda, in Ways of Dying (1995), creates both a “stranger” artist-protagonist, Toloki the Professional Mourner, as well as the ideal postcolonial subject, Shadrack, local political leader and businessman. It examines the implications of the novel’s didacticism being focalized through Toloki, and not the radical political intellectual. Using Judith Butler’s work on precarity, vulnerability, and grievability, the article argues that Toloki emerges as politically more prescient by supplanting retributive justice with grief, empathy, and care. His ideological premises of mourning are compared with the socio-economic aspirations of his romantic rival Shadrack to demonstrate how they challenge the individual’s hegemonic solipsism. The article further elucidates how Toloki’s creative reliance on mimesis in both his performance of mourning and his interactions with the community not only exposes the indolent acquiescence of the group but also constructs the novel’s vision of meaningful communitarian engagement and transformation for the future.

Care · Communitarianism · Didacticism · Empathy · Grief · grievability · Judith Butler · Mimesis · Mourning · politics of mourning · postcolonial subject · Precarity · Retributive justice · South African fiction · Vulnerability · Ways of Dying · Zakes Mda · Caribbean and African Literature and Culture · Literature: history, themes, analysis · Postcolonial and Cultural Literary Studies

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