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Periodical article Periodical article Leiden University catalogue Leiden University catalogue WorldCat catalogue WorldCat
Title:Forging a new South Africa: plagiarism, ventriloquism and the 'black voice' in Antjie Krog's 'Country of my skull'
Author:Highman, Kate
Year:2015
Periodical:Journal of Southern African Studies (ISSN 1465-3893)
Volume:41
Issue:1
Pages:187-206
Language:English
Geographic term:South Africa
Subjects:truth and reconciliation commissions
writers
About person:Anna Elizabeth Krog (1952-)ISNI
External link:https://doi.org/10.1080/03057070.2015.991595
Abstract:This article returns to the controversial topic of Krog's alleged plagiarisms in her highly acclaimed account of South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), Country of My Skull, and connects Krog's borrowings with a less-noted feature of that work, that is her heavy editing (arguably, fictionalisation) of some of the testimonies reproduced by her in that book. Most critics read the testimonies presented in Country of My Skull as faithful versions of those given at the hearings, edited only for punctuation and readability (as Krog insists was her method), and many critics offer commentary on the TRC based on Krog's rendering of it. Catherine M. Cole1 has noted, though, in her book Performing South Africa's Truth Commission, that the changes are more substantive. Tracing these alterations alongside Krog's obscuring of authorship via various borrowings, the author argues that the two phenomena work in tandem to 'forge' an indigenous South African voice, which Krog casts as specifically 'black'. These observations the author frames within a larger argument about the pressures of national authorship, and transcultural accountability and literary honour. In so doing, she discusses previously un-noted borrowings by Krog - from the sociologist Pierre Bourdieu and from the anthropologist Julian Pitt-Rivers. Notes, ref., sum. [Journal abstract]
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