Reading nostalgia and beyond: the hermeneutics of suspicion and race; and, learning to read, again, with Zoë Wicomb

Abstract

Nudged into a new interpretive approach by a comment in her most recent novel, this essay presents an account of reading Wicomb's fiction that seeks to move beyond what Ricoeur describes as a "hermeneutics of suspicion," and that responds to it rather as a gathering in which reader and text are mutually composed. Informed by Sedgwick's distinction between "paranoid" and "reparative" reading, Best and Marcus's "surface reading" and, particularly, Felski's "postcritical" and Barthes's earlier "expressive" reading, it follows Nuttall in locating questions of "how we read now" in a South African context that is framed by race. Drawing on Fanon and Latour, it thus charts how Wicomb's fiction dislodges race from a "matter of fact" by moving readers to respond to it instead as a "matter of concern" that, for all its fabrication, does things, and thus demands our care. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] Copyright of English in Africa is the property of Institute for Study English in Africa and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract.