Dreaming of Freedom in South Africa
Literature Between Critique and Utopia
Format:Hardback
Publisher:Edinburgh University Press
Published:17th Dec '19
Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back
Assembles for the first time the many different texts imagining the future after the end of apartheid Explores the history of how the future in South Africa after the end of apartheid was imagined Provides the first literary-cultural history of South African speculative fictionStudies the literary-political cultures of the five major traditions of South African anti-colonial/ anti-segregationist/ anti-apartheid thought Focusing on well-known and obscure literary texts from the 1880s to the 1970s, as well as the many manifestos and programmes setting out visions of the future, this book charts the dreams of freedom of five major traditions of anti-colonial and anti-apartheid resistance: the African National Congress, the Industrial and Commercial Workers Union, the Communist Party of South Africa, the Non-European Unity Movement and the Pan-Africanist Congress. More than an exercise in historical excavation, Dreaming of Freedom in South Africa raises challenging questions for the post-apartheid present.
Johnson’s innovative, meticulously-researched book, full of surprises, explores South Africa’s marginalized literary and political traditions, thus enriching our understanding of the freedom struggle in all its complexity and diversity. * Allison Drew, University of York and University of Cape Town *
By analysing a wide variety of political and literary texts, this study exposes the dead ends of liberal ideology and recovers alternative traditions of Marxism and working class struggle written out of nationalist and Stalinist historiography. * Benita Parry, University of Warwick *
Professor Johnson’s book is rigorous, analytical, closely-argued, and almost forensic in its interrogation of a chosen collection of South Africa’s ‘literary dreams and political visions’. -- Bill Nasson * LitNet *
Johnson’s book constitutes a benchmark for the history of freedom in South Africa and offers a refreshing conceptual and intellectual analysis of the South African left. -- Kasper Braskén, Abo Akademi University * Twentieth Century Communism *
Johnson’s book constitutes a benchmark for the history of freedom in South Africa and offers a refreshing conceptual and intellectual analysis of the South African left. -- Kasper Braskén, Abo Akademi University * Twentieth Century Communism *
ISBN: 9781474430210
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: 496g
232 pages