TY - BOOK ID - 2027055 TI - Writing my reading: essays on literary politics in South Africa PY - 1994 VL - 14 SN - 9051837232 9789051837230 9789004489646 PB - Amsterdam Rodopi DB - UniCat KW - African literature KW - English literature KW - South Africa KW - Littérature et société KW - Politique et littérature KW - Afrique du sud KW - South African literature KW - History and criticism KW - Political aspects KW - Afrique du sud dans la litterature KW - Litterature sud-africaine UR - https://www.unicat.be/uniCat?func=search&query=sysid:2027055 AB - These essays are interventions in a cultural contestation in South Africa during the Seventies and Eighties. Some of them are more general in nature and were written in the first instance as public oral interventions in debates whose outcome contributed to the founding of South Africa's post-apartheid society. Other essays are more specifically aimed at poetic practices, particularly as these have been of crucial aesthetic and ultimately ethical importance in a critical phase of South Africa's painful development. Intimate knowledge of (and personal involvement in) the commitment of literature to concrete political situations informs these succinct and spirited essays, along with Horn's measured familiarity with European traditions of political, cultural and ideological thought. The topics covered include: the social context of South African poetry; poetry and apartheid; the praise-singing tradition and the liberation struggle; German documentary theatre and South African workers' theatre; the necessity of popular culture; post-Freudian readings and feminist aesthetics; censorship and society; and essays on individual South African poets (Jeremy Cronin; Wopko Jensma; Abduraghiem Johnstone; Mzwakhe Mbuli; Mongane Serote; Ari Sitas). ER -