Writing the Interregnum: Nadine Gordimer’s July’s People

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

A writer who has charted the historical journey of South Africa from its apartheid years to freedom and democracy, Nadine Gordimer has written at length about the significance of the interregnum in her fictions and essays. Her quintessential interregnum novel, July’s People, examines in meticulous detail the assumptions and misunderstandings that underlie the colonial hegemony of apartheid. The novel is a vivid, detailed study of inverted subject positions in a crisis situation. Putting a white family’s survival into the hands of their black servant in an imagined moment of revolution, it explores the possibility of a meaningful cross-racial connections while exposing the illusory nature of trust and dependency between the races. The novel makes abundantly clear that both whites and blacks living in the interregnum of apartheid have become entrapped within a system that perpetuates structures of material inequalities and personal injustices. The sympathetic white liberals are particularly censured for their complicity in the structures that hold blacks in servitude to the whites. The novel’s intention is ultimately to formulate a destabilization of an accustomed world to make the emphatic point that whites have to redefine themselves to prepare for radical changes if they wish to share in the new collective life of a future with the black race. By reversing the relationship of dependency between mistress and servant, the novel forces a rethinking about the underlying inequalities and internalized codes that define and sustain the interregnum.

참고문헌 (Reference)

1 Pearsall, Susan, "‘Where the Banalities Are Enacted’: The Everyday in Gordimer’s Novels" 31 (31): 95-118, 2000

2 Medalie, David, "‘What dignity is there in that?’: The crisis of dignity in selected late-twentieth-century novels" 20 (20): 48-61, 2004

3 Bodenheimer, Rosemarie, "The Later Fiction of Nadine Gordimer" Macmillan 108-120, 1993

4 Gordimer, Nadine, "The Essential Gesture: Writing, Politics and Places" Penguin 1988

5 Clingman, Stephen, "The Cambridge History of South African Literature" Cambridge UP 633-651, 2012

6 Gordimer, Nadine, "The Black Interpreters: Notes on African Writing" Spro-Cas/Ravan 1973

7 Ndebele, Njabulo, "Redefining Relevance" 1 (1): 40-51, 1989

8 Lovesey, Oliver, "Postcolonial Apocalypse and the Crisis of Representation in July’s People" 130-145,

9 Pettersson, Rose, "Nadine Gordimer’s One Story of a State Apart" Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis 1995

10 Nicholls, Brendon, "Nadine Gordimer’s July’s People" Routledge 2011

11 Head, Dominic, "Nadine Gordimer" Cambridge UP 1994

12 Newman, Judie, "Nadine Gordimer" Routledge 1988

13 Temple-Thurston, Barbara, "Madam and Boy: A Relationship of Shame in Gordimer’s July’s People" 28 (28): 51-58, 1998

14 Gordimer, Nadine, "July’s People" Penguin 1981

15 Brink, André, "Complications of Birth: Interfaces of Gender, Race and Class in July’s People" 21 (21): 157-180, 1994

16 Folks, Jeffrey J., "Artist in the Interregnum: Nadine Gordimer’s July’s People" 39 (39): 115-126, 1998

17 Erritouni, Ali, "Apartheid Inequality and Postapartheid Utopia in Nadine Gordimer’s July’s People" 37 (37): 68-84, 2006

18 Caminero-Santangelo, Byron, "African Fiction and Joseph Conrad: Reading Postcolonial Intertextuality" State U of New York P 2004

19 Lazar, Karen Ruth, "A Writing Life: Celebrating Nadine Gordimer" Penguin 19-48, 1998