History lives in these streets: reading place and urban disorder in three post-apartheid Johannesburg novels
Doctoral Thesis
2012
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University of Cape Town
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In the following thesis I use three post-apartheid South African novels, namely Ivan Vladislavi's The Exploded View, Marlene Van Niekerk’s Triomf and Kgebetli Moele’s Room 207, to argue for the persistence of geopathic disorders in post-apartheid Johannesburg. I use the protagonists in the novels and their intertwined relationships with setting as nodes through which to examine the complex and disordered place of this contemporary urban environment and to show how the city’s apartheid history informs the present. I suggest that these narratives portray conflicted instances of integration, inhabitation and navigation within this city because of the presences of historical forms and patterns which continue to colour the experience of life within the changing city. I argue that the past is still present within the built structures of the city and in people’s perceptions of space.
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O'Shaughnessy, E. 2012. History lives in these streets: reading place and urban disorder in three post-apartheid Johannesburg novels. University of Cape Town.