The search for grace: explorations in third space and writing South Africa in the 21st Century

I want to look at three novels, which explore the ‘problematics of space and identity’ so central to the South African existence. They are placed in settings, which explore the meeting point of rural and urban, of white and black of Christian and traditional African belief, of Science and Mythology, of academic research and lived realities. They portray place as an exploration of third space, of hybridity, exploring the question of whether the third space can be imagined in some concrete way, can be placed in a specific location. See More

San Folklore and Heidegger’s Great Art

‘Once at KwaFubesi’ – these words will always hold all the magic of story-telling for me. The universal opening once, which sets it in dreamtime and the unknown, strange sounding name KwaFubesi, which promises strangeness and adventure are everything the heart desires of stories, and new or different worlds.

The San do not only live in a very different part of the earth from us, they also live in a very different world - conceptually different. This difference is Derridaean because it jostles – or should jostle our conception of the world from its certainty a little, but today I just want to look at it on its own, without postmodernist hang-up of uncertainty. It is a world based on a different belief system and therefore a different relation to all that surrounds one. See More

Belonging

I have been thinking recently about confirmation. This is a ceremony, which acknowledges and establishes in public your adult membership of the church and of the wider Christian community. Confirmation is in many ways all we have left in Western Culture of initiation ceremonies marking the transition from childhood and dependence to the responsibilities of being a fully signed up adult member of the human race. See More