The Specters of the Mendi: An Attempt at South African Hauntology
The article is an ambitious and complex study of Black response to war trauma, occasioned by the tragedy of the Mendi, a troop transport sunk with great loss of life in 1917. The majority of the victims were South African Blacks on their way to the Western Front. The tragedy inspired a very powerful...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Polish Association for the Study of English
2016-12-01
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| Series: | Polish Journal of English Studies |
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| Online Access: | http://pjes.edu.pl/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/N.-Stachura-The-Specters-of-the-Mendi-PJES-2.2-2016.pdf |
| Summary: | The article is an ambitious and complex study of Black response to war trauma, occasioned by the tragedy of the Mendi, a troop transport sunk with great loss of life in 1917. The majority of the victims were South African Blacks on their way to the Western Front. The tragedy inspired a very powerful poetic response, which the author analyses in terms of an indigenous African modernism, and which later on prepared the ground for contemporary nationalist mythopoeia in the Republic of South Africa. Although the country was part of the British Empire in 1917, the position of the Black community was reminiscent of the nations in secondary theatres of war. The recurring presence of the tragic event in South African culture has been analysed in terms of Derrida’s hauntology. |
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| ISSN: | 2545-0131 2543-5981 |