A Foucauldian Reading of Power Dynamics in Two Afikaans Historical Novels Daleen Matthee's Fiela's Child and Micki Pistorius's Sorg

This article is an examination of the power-dynamics represented in two Afrikaans novels set in the Little Karoo region of South Africa; they are Dalene Matthee's Fiela's Child (1985) and Micki Pistorius's Sorg (2006). Both novels are set during the latter years of the nineteenth century, but were written and produced during the late-apartheid and early post-apartheid years. As a result, the novels reflect more of the socio-political concerns of the time in which they were produced than those of the time in which they are set. In telling of the ignoble events of history – small fictionalised stories of simple people and unrecorded, near-forgotten or whispered events – rather than the grand narrative of history, the novels lend themselves to a foucauldian reading of the depiction of docile bodies and the resistance to power: that is, to what Foucault called “an analytics of power”.