Reading through a Cold War Lens: Apartheid-Era Literature and the Global Conflict

Reading through a Cold War Lens: Apartheid-Era Literature and the Global Conflict

Author: 
Popescu, Monica
Publisher: 
Taylor & Francis Group
Date published: 
2012
Record type: 
Region: 
Journal Title: 
Current Writing: Text and Reception in Southern Africa
Source: 
Current Writing: Text and Reception in Southern Africa, Vol. 24, No. 1, May 2012, pp. 37-49
Abstract: 

This article argues that apartheid-era literature was shaped by the Cold War cultural and political landscape. With genres and narrative structures shared with Western literary traditions (such as spy fiction) or Eastern Bloc literatures (such as socialist realism), apartheid-era literature nonetheless retained its local concerns and features. Starting from three initial topoi (the border as a real and mental topography, political and individual secrets, and narratives of revolution and transformation), this article contends that South African literature, like other cultural productions from the global South, brings an important contribution to a new and more nuanced understanding of the Cold War as a global conflict.

Language: 

CITATION: Popescu, Monica. Reading through a Cold War Lens: Apartheid-Era Literature and the Global Conflict . : Taylor & Francis Group , 2012. Current Writing: Text and Reception in Southern Africa, Vol. 24, No. 1, May 2012, pp. 37-49 - Available at: https://library.au.int/reading-through-cold-war-lens-apartheid-era-literature-and-global-conflict-3