André Brink's White Female Anti-Apartheid Rebels

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Periodical article

Title:	André Brink's White Female Anti-Apartheid Rebels
Author:	Diala, Isidore
Year:	1998
Periodical:	Ufahamu
Volume:	26
Issue:	2-3
Pages:	73-87
Language:	English
Geographic term:	South Africa
Subjects:	literature Literature, Mass Media and the Press
About person:	André Philippus Brink (1935-2015)
Abstract:	André Brink (South Africa) has offered a sustained insight into the Afrikaner establishment's creation of myths to justify the objectification and thus dehumanization of the black other. In the Brink oeuvre, for the white as well as for the black, the recognition of the common humanity of all men is treated as the attainment of a revolutionary political consciousness. Brink equally presents rebellion against apartheid as an affirmation of humanity. This article explores Brink's indication that the insight that leads his white females to rebel against apartheid invariably derives from the recognition of apartheid as ideological patriarchy. However, where Brink equates apartheid with male chauvinism, he also draws attention to the social irrelevance of mere deviance among the oppressed - blacks and women. Brink's ideal is dissidence as a counterhegemonic valence which in its opposition to the dominant oppressive hegemony seeks not only the liberation of the self but of all bonds of (wo)men. Bibliogr.