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Periodical article | Leiden University catalogue | WorldCat |
Title: | 'Naturally these stories lost nothing by repetition': Plaatje's mediation of oral history in 'Mhudi' |
Author: | Mpe, Phaswane |
Year: | 1996 |
Periodical: | Current Writing: Text and Reception in Southern Africa |
Volume: | 8 |
Issue: | 1 |
Pages: | 75-89 |
Language: | English |
Geographic term: | South Africa |
Subjects: | literature oral history |
About person: | Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje (1876-1932) |
Abstract: | 'Mhudi' (1978) has largely, and rightly, been read as a medium through which Sol T. Plaatje holds a dialogue with the official history of South Africa and with that of the Barolong, which, as Plaatje indicates, tends to dismiss the Ndebele as barbaric, unthinking brutes. What critics have not paid much attention to is that through its utterances as well as its silences, 'Mhudi' is equally occupied with holding a dialogue with itself. More specifically, it is concerned with the manner in which historical knowledge is created and mediated. The critical framework in the present article is informed by the work of James Young (1988) on the link between historical and literary truths. Young's argument suggests a number of closely related issues: the writer's consciousness, his/her ideology and cultural background, his/her projected readership and so on, all of which influence what is narrated and how it is narrated. The article tries to understand how Plaatje mediates oral history in the novel on the basis of a close reading of certain sets or clusters of narratives, which not only question and reflect on each other, but also give 'Mhudi' an overall sense of self-reflexiveness. This self-reflexiveness reveals ambiguities of representation in oral history, and in written texts which use such history as a narrative strategy. Bibliogr., notes, ref. |