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" Postmodernist Mythic Sexual Narratives in Zakes Mda’s The Whale Caller "
Henri Oripeloye
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AL
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| Record Number
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1076718
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| Doc. No
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LA120347
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| Call No
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10.1163/18757421-04801005
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| Language of Document
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English
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| Main Entry
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Henri Oripeloye
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| Title & Author
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Postmodernist Mythic Sexual Narratives in Zakes Mda’s The Whale Caller [Article]\ Henri Oripeloye
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| Publication Statement
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Leiden: Brill
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| Title of Periodical
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Matatu
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| Date
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2016
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| Volume/ Issue Number
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48/1
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| Page No
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49–60
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| Abstract
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Zakes Mda’s The Whale Caller is easily identifiable as a narrative that projects the newness of South Africa in terms of literary transition. The radical shift in this novel resides in its preoccupation with the excessive passion a man has for a whale and this interest creates an unusual space for this work in contemporary African fiction; its mapping of perverted sexuality clearly sets it outside the mainstream of African prose narrative. In the universe of this socio-cultural text, the actions, characters, and signifiers are constructed to reflect a stasis of frustration or disjunction in the apprehension of psycho-social forces that favour the dismantling of cultural expectations that sexuality be recognized as sacrosanct. This essay focuses on postmodernist mythical expression in The Whale Caller, which is used to valorize the process of cultural rupture. With intense self-reflexivity, Mda sends signals about the cultural and ecological stultification characterizing the new South Africa. The Whale Caller underpins two realms of readability; its tragic tones point, on the one hand, to the neglect of ecological concerns. In the other realms of meaning, the Whale Caller as a defamiliarizing object becomes a metaphorization of cultural transformation. Zakes Mda’s The Whale Caller is easily identifiable as a narrative that projects the newness of South Africa in terms of literary transition. The radical shift in this novel resides in its preoccupation with the excessive passion a man has for a whale and this interest creates an unusual space for this work in contemporary African fiction; its mapping of perverted sexuality clearly sets it outside the mainstream of African prose narrative. In the universe of this socio-cultural text, the actions, characters, and signifiers are constructed to reflect a stasis of frustration or disjunction in the apprehension of psycho-social forces that favour the dismantling of cultural expectations that sexuality be recognized as sacrosanct. This essay focuses on postmodernist mythical expression in The Whale Caller, which is used to valorize the process of cultural rupture. With intense self-reflexivity, Mda sends signals about the cultural and ecological stultification characterizing the new South Africa. The Whale Caller underpins two realms of readability; its tragic tones point, on the one hand, to the neglect of ecological concerns. In the other realms of meaning, the Whale Caller as a defamiliarizing object becomes a metaphorization of cultural transformation.
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| Descriptor
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ecology
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gender
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man/animal relationship
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myth
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post-apartheid
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sexuality
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zoophilia
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| Location & Call number
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10.1163/18757421-04801005
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