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Periodical article Periodical article Leiden University catalogue Leiden University catalogue WorldCat catalogue WorldCat
Title:André Brink and the censor
Author:Coetzee, J.M.ISNI
Year:1990
Periodical:Research in African Literatures
Volume:21
Issue:3
Pages:59-74
Language:English
Geographic term:South Africa
Subjects:censorship
literature
About person:André Philippus Brink (1935-2015)ISNI
External link:https://www.jstor.org/stable/3819634
Abstract:The 1960s and 1970s saw the mounting and deployment of a comprehensive censorship apparatus in South Africa. In the forefront of opposition to this apparatus was the novelist André P. Brink. Since 1980 the grip of the official censors on 'literature' has relaxed. The first half of this essay discusses Brink's writings on censorship in what he calls the 'strydperk', the phase of more or less naked confrontation between dissident writers and censors. The second part discusses Brink's position in the 1980s. Based on Brink's two collections of essays, 'Mapmakers' (1983), and 'Literatuur in die strydperk' (1985), this article deals with the dynamic created by the presence of the censor in the field of writing by an examination of the questions: Why should the State, by conceiving the author as a rival for authority, grant him equivalence of status with itself? Why is it that the seemingly all-powerful author cannot ignore the State? Brink is not unaware of the threat of this dynamic; he sees it quite clearly. But awareness does not prove to be enough to liberate him from it. His metaphors do not stretch far enough. The problem is ultimately not one of knowing what to say about the censor, but of finding a position from which to say it. Bibliogr., notes, ref.
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