Sol Plaatje's Native Life in South Africa

Melancholy Narratives, Petitioning Selves and the Ethics of Suffering

Bibliographic Data

ID9003470
AuthorsBrennan Peterson (0000-0001-7919-0967, University of the Witwatersrand, corresponding author), Bhekizizwe Peterson (University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa)
Year2008
Volume43
Issue1
Pages79-95
Publication date2008-02-25
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueThe Journal of Commonwealth Literature (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0021-9894 • E-ISSN: 1741-6442
PublisherSAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/0021989407087826
OpenAlexW2121783903
LanguageEN
Citations received5

Using Sol Plaatje as a representative figure and his Native Life in South Africa as its primary text, this article explores the political and ethical imperatives that informed the act of writing amongst the first generation of African writers in South Africa. Native Life in South Africa was written as an appeal to the British government and public to denounce the passing of the Land Act of 1913 and the book is a fascinating manifestation of the layered aims, ambiguities and paradoxes that inhere in petitioning. The article examines the petition as a genre that allows Plaatje to inscribe his imagined multiple readers of the text and their mutual obligations to each other. The act of petitioning also allows Plaatje to engage in modes of self-definition that include a critique of colonial modernity and laying claim to his status as a modern African

Aesthetics · Appeal · Art · Colonialism · Government (linguistics · Life writing · Literature · Media studies · Modernity · Narrative · Political science · Politics · Sociology · African cultural and philosophical studies · Gender Studies · History · Law · Philosophy · Postcolonial and Cultural Literary Studies · South African History and Culture

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