Andrew Foley

South African education and the dilemmas of multilingualism

The origins of this article may be traced back at least as far as 2 February 1990, when F. W. de Klerks landmark speech set South Africa on the path to political emancipation, which in turn precipitated debates around the question of language and language-in-education in the new South Africa. It is worth remembering that there were indeed debates about the number and status of official languages in the country, not least in the English Academy of Southern Africa conferences of 1992 and 1995. In the end, however, South Africa opted for the wholly unprecedented idea of deciding on eleven equal official languages in the country, a decision which may well have had more to do with political strategy than linguistic practicality. As a result, South African educators are confronted by the unique problem of meeting the needs of eleven different mother tongue student cohorts in a variety of bilingual and multilingual combinations. One could be forgiven for regarding the task as not just Herculean but Sisyphusian. The task of this article, then, is to identify and explore some of the central dilemmas arising out of this situation, and then to suggest some possible solutions.

The Principle of the Principal as Principal: Narratorial Identity and Perspective in Alan Paton’s Diepkloof Stories

Abstract Alan Patons short fiction remains a neglected area in South African literary studies. Apart from ephemeral reviews, only a handful of critical works have paid any attention to Patons stories, and most of these have tended to regard the stories as slight and fragmentary. It is my contention, however, that there is much of interest and value in Patons stories, not only as literary works, but for what they reveal about Patons response to the historical era in which they were produced. This article focusses on the “Diepkloof stories”, which explore his experiences as Principal of Diepkloof Reformatory. Though set at the time of his principalship in the 1930s and 1940s, they were written in the 1950s – after the publication of Cry, the Beloved Country, and, importantly, during the first decade of the National Partys implementation of apartheid. Viewed as a contemporaneous reaction to the unfolding events of the time, they represent a perspective different from that of Cry, the Beloved Country and of his non‐fictional writing, one that is bleaker, more sombre, even pessimistic. The stories hover between the genres of autobiography and fiction, participating in the conventions of both but never fully committing themselves to either category. The tension between Patons public identity as writer and social activist and his multivalent role in the stories as author, narrator, main character and source material, marks the stories as unique in South African literature, and raises intriguing narratological questions about the status of the texts.

Liberalism in the New Millennium: Ian McEwan's Saturday

Summary This article focuses on Ian McEwans recent novel, Saturday (2005), in which he explores a number of the dilemmas facing the contemporary liberal, such as how to accept ones involvement in the world without compromising ones individual autonomy; how to balance personal freedom and personal responsibility; and how to manage ones private life in the context of urgent global issues. Saturday returns to the fundamental liberal concern of the individuals right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, but it does so in the altered circumstances of a globalised world in which those very values of life, liberty and happiness are seen to be under threat from a number of new hostile forces, ranging from radical Islamic terrorism to casual violence on city streets. Written in the shadow of 9/11, and set on Saturday 15 February 2003 – the day of international protest against the proposed invasion of Iraq – the novel takes the form of a day-in-the-life narrative, following surgeon Henry Perowne around London as he considers the peculiarly modern burden of life in the new millennium. Saturday has been described as one of the most serious contributions to post-9/11 literature, most notably for the skill and careful ambiguity with which the evidence and arguments are distributed throughout the text.

Allegories of freedom: Individual liberty and social conformity in Ken Kesey's one flew over the Cuckoo's Nest

Summary This article examines Ken Keseys novel, One Flew Overthe Cuckoos Nest (1962), not as a straightforward allegory, but as a complex series of allegories of freedom. These allegories are seen as exploring and articulating the cardinal democratic principle of individual liberty ‐ and testing its limits ‐ in the face of the restrictive demands of social and moral authority and conformity. The article demonstrates how the novel draws on numerous sources from the fields of politics, psychology, mythology and religion as background theories, or symbolic frameworks, or inter‐textual narratives, in order to clarify and amplify its central thematic preoccupations. These sources include liberal democratic political philosophy; the humanist psychological paradigm, the psychological theories of Freud and Jung; the myth of the waste land and the legend of the Fisher King; and the story of Christ. They serve in a mutually reinforcing way not only to broaden the narrative perspective but also to affirm the validity of the books fundamental vision and message.

Power, Will and Freedom: Mario Vargas Llosa's The Feast of the Goat

Summary This article seeks to explore and elucidate the liberal values and principles underpinning Mario Vargas Llosas work by offering a careful reading of his recent novel, The Feast of the Goat (2000). Having critically examined in several of his earlier novels what he regards as the inevitable destructiveness of socialist utopianism, Vargas Llosa turns his attention in The Feast of the Goat to the equally destructive force of right-wing authoritarianism, manifested in this case by the brutal thirty-one-year dictatorship of the Dominican Republics Rafael Leonidas Trujillo. Unlike other versions of the so-called Latin American dictator novel, which tended to utilise allegorical and even magic-realist techniques, The Feast of the Goat focuses in meticulously researched historical detail upon the very real figure of Trujillo in order to consider the tensions between the eternally antagonistic human aspirations of power and freedom. While providing a vivid if harrowing account of the dictators grim tyranny and corruption, the novel goes on to reveal, more pertinently perhaps, how people are all too often and too easily prepared to forfeit their liberty for some other putative social or economic good, only to find themselves becoming complicit, voluntarily or otherwise, in their own oppression. Finally, through the characters of a number of Trujillos victims, as well as his eventual assassins, the novel presents an alternative vision of a truly free and open society.

Postmodern Liberal Literature: Richard Rorty's “Liberal Ironists”

Summary This article explores the notion of postmodern liberal literature through the filter of the political theory of Richard Rorty. It is generally assumed that the rival claims to validity of liberalism and postmodernism are mutually contradictory and therefore irreconcilable. Rortys work, however, is characterised by the attempt to accommodate the most valuable insights of postmodern theory within the political ideals of liberalism. For Rorty, it is perfectly possible to be both a political liberal and a postmodern sceptic, or “ironist”, at the same time: hence his coinage of the term “liberal ironist”. Rorty argues further that the figure of the liberal ironist is best represented by writers of literature, in the narrow sense of poets, dramatists, and especially novelists. Ironist writers are, in Rortys view, primarily interested in the private goals of self-creation and redescription within the context of an acute awareness of the contingency of their belief system. Nevertheless, in so far as their work also concerns itself imaginatively with issues of human pain and suffering, it will have utility within the public sphere of political action, and so influence moral progress. Even if Rortys ambitious project is ultimately unsuccessful as a political theory per se, many of the insights which he provides may nonetheless be shown to have great value and significance for contemporary cultural and literary studies. To demonstrate this, the article will consider a number of writers, from a variety of backgrounds, whose work displays the characteristics, on Rortys terms, of liberal ironism.

Liberal politics and liberal literature

Summary This article argues that neither Marxism nor poststructuralism (deconstruction) offers a viable means of conceptualising the relationship between politics and literature in the 1990s. It suggests, instead, that liberalism, properly understood ‐ both as a political philosophy and as a foundation for literary activity ‐ does provide a potentially successful way of approaching this interrelationship. The article begins by offering a liberal critique of Marxism and deconstruction at the levels both of their fundamental theoretical assumptions and their practical political and literary implications. It then attempts to clear up some of the confusion and misconceptions which continue to surround liberalism today by presenting a careful account of contemporary liberal political philosophy. Finally, the political analysis is related to the literary domain: a particular purpose is to consider how some of the key principles and concepts which inform modern‐day liberal political thought may have pertinent a...

Poetry of Departures: The Endings of Philip Larkin's Poems

This article focuses on a characteristic structural and stylistic device which Philip Larkin employs in much of his poetry. I argue that in many of his poems a shift occurs in the last stanzas or lines, signalled by a marked change in the diction, register and tone, which modifies the original or ostensible viewpoint. These changes may serve to intensify the initial meaning of the poem or to qualify it quite severely or even to subvert it altogether, so that one is compelled to deal with unexpected multiplicity or alterity or ambiguity. Although some critics have noted the change that takes place in one or other particular poem, what has not been sufficiently recognized is just how frequently this happens, in various ways, throughout Larkins poetry. These changes are also not limited to minor poems; they occur in some of his best-known and most significant work. It is these shifts, these departures from conventional expectation, which allow Larkin to move from commonplace observation to much deeper and keener perception, and to explore some of the most important and perplexing questions of human life.

The first page of Cry, the beloved country

Abstract Alan Patons Cry, the beloved country remains among the best known and most influential novels to have emerged from the canon of South African literature, and yet the novel has been subjected over the years to some extremely antagonistic criticism. This article argues that Cry, the beloved country in fact represents a profoundly insightful exploration of the core problems – social, political, economic – confronting South Africa at the time. It takes the form of a detailed examination of the famous first page of the novel, in order to demonstrate Patons ability as a social analyst to identify precisely the root causes of many of South Africas ills, and his implicit determination, right from the outset, to suggest the means, both practical and theoretical, of addressing such ills. In doing so, the article focuses in particular on what may be termed the politics of land and a theology of freedom. The examination of the page will include some consideration of what the characteristics of Patons handwritten first copy reveal about his thematic intentionality, and to what extent this is actualised in the text which follows.

Multiple levels of meaning and liberal existentialism in Athol Fugard's Boesman and Lena

(i) A number of critics have, from a variety of ideological and theoretical paradigms, discussed Athol Fugard’s use of language in his dramatic work (see, inter alia, Du Preez 1985; Hauptfleisch 1978; Kavanagh 1985; Orkin 1991; Vandenbroucke 1986). Despite such critical scrutiny, however, there are some aspects of his language usage which remain relatively unexamined and which require clarification. For example, how is it possible for Fugard to explore questions of the most profound philosophical or political kind through the often severely limited basilectal vocabulary and frame of reference of the characters who typically populate his plays? How, more particularly, is Fugard able to convey his own unique, highly complex worldview through the dialogue of such characters? The intention of this article, therefore, is to focus on one special feature of Fugard’s distinctive linguistic practice: his creation of plausibly naturalistic dialogue which is nevertheless capable of expressing several different, though interconnected, levels of meaning simultaneously.