Publications, in progress & just published
Since returning from Brussels and the Elias conference, there has been some renewed work on the analysis of pronouns and personal names (for which pronouns are proxy) in the Forbes diary and all the Forbes letters for 1871. This is a belt and braces kind of thing, to make absolutely certain that the details of the analysis we put forward, and the resultant way of modelling what figuration is that we advance, are fully correct. On Saturday we will have a lengthy Skype meeting to confirm the tables and charts that we have produced. Then it will be no more than a couple of hours work before we have a completed article ready to be sent to a journal in the new year. ‘Tis the season to be jolly!
There is also more cause for jolliness, because three new WWW articles have just been published in an ‘online first’ way on journal websites. These are in the Journal of Southern African Studies, and the Journal of Commonwealth Literature. The details now follow, with a ‘Merry Christmas to you all’ message.
Liz Stanley 2018 ‘Protest and the Lovedale Riot of 1946: ‘Largely a Rebellion against Authority…’ Journal of Southern African Studies, Online First
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03057070.2018.1533301
Abstract: Protests occurred at many black educational institutions in South Africa before the usual dating of such occurrences from the 1970s on. Among these, a riot and related protests at Lovedale Institute in 1946 are explored here using archival material from extensive inquiries made contemporaneously by its authority figures, including its principal, staff, council and a committee of enquiry, with the voices of students and parents barely audible in these. The connections between the Lovedale protests and those in other educational institutions in 1946 are also indicated. The conclusion reviews features seen as characterising post-1976 protests, outlined in the introduction, in the light of the 1946 Lovedale protests.
Keywords: coercive authority, Lovedale, political protest, social change, student riots, white authority
Liz Stanley 2018 ‘Before: The avant-textes of “From Man to Man” and Olive Schreiner’s writing practices’, Journal of Commonwealth Literature, Online First
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0021989418787843
Abstract: The “warts and all” transcriptions of two early Olive Schreiner draft manuscripts of parts of what was later published as From Man to Man are examined in detail. They are analysed by treating them as avant-textes and using a genetic criticism approach. Doing so, different aspects of her writing practices come into view around the distinction she made between her “ordinary writing”, which encompassed “in the moment” additions, deletions, and amendments, and what she described as “overworking”, the after the event activities usually termed editing. Although coexisting on the manuscript pages, these are shown to be distinct sets of practices exerting different pressures. Some problems of emplotment and narrative continuity arose through attempting to combine both, so she contemplated having recourse to an earlier version of the manuscript, with hints in letters raising the possibility that this had a different narrative structure.
Keywords avant-textes, editorial practices, From Man to Man, genetic transcription, Olive Schreiner, writing practices
Liz Stanley 2018 ‘Afterword: Writing lives, fictions, and the postcolonial’ Journal of Commonwealth Literature, Online First
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0021989418802610
Abstract: This essay reflects on the writing of lives and fictions in a South African context in light of the contents of this special issue [on biofiction and the postcolonial], and draws parallels with some of the approaches adopted by the contributors. It discusses biography, autobiography, diaries, letters, and testimonies by or about Steve Biko, Nelson Mandela, Eugene Marais, Njube son of Lobengula, Cecil Rhodes, and Olive Schreiner, and problematizes some of the key terms in thinking about postcolonial literatures. In doing so, it explores interconnections between the factual and the fictive in different forms of life writing, the expanded boundaries of biographizing, performances, and transformations of the self, the use of fictions to tell truths, issues with representation and referentiality, the appeal of a return to “the facts” in some circumstances, the position of readers, and how the relationship between “then” and “now” informs writing practices. The conclusion draws on Olive Schreiner’s literary credo to propose that an alliance between writers and readers should be part of reconfiguring the biographical impulse in postcolonial literatures.
Keywords autobiography, biofiction, biography, fictions, life writing, postcolonial literatures, South Africa, writing lives
Last updated: 20 December 2018
