Faculteit Letteren & Wijsbegeerte
Michiel Van Ryckeghem
Perfect Memory in a Time of “National
Dysmnesia”
Trauma and Identity in Tony Eprile’s The Persistence
of Memory
Masterpaper voorgedragen tot het bekomen van de graad van
Master in de Taal- en letterkunde
(Engels - Spaans)
2011
Promotor
Prof. dr. Stef Craps
Vakgroep Letterkunde
Acknowledgements
Foremost, I would like to thank my supervisor Prof. dr. Stef Craps for proposing this interesting
field of study, and for sharing his knowledge of the topic. He has also helped considerably in the
process of writing this Master Dissertation by repeatedly editing the text and suggesting what I
could do to improve my work. Further, I would like to thank my second and third readers for
taking an interest in the topic, and in my dissertation in particular. Lastly, I would like to thank
my family for their constant support throughout the long writing process.
Table of Contents
Introduction ........................................................................................................................ 1
Part 1 – Historical Outline ................................................................................................. 9
Chapter 1. The South African Border War ...................................................................... 10
Chapter 2. Apartheid ........................................................................................................ 14
Chapter 3. Truth and Reconciliation ................................................................................ 20
Part 2 – Trauma Theory and Memory ........................................................................... 25
Chapter 4. Trauma Studies: A Genealogy ....................................................................... 26
Chapter 5. Traumatic Memory vs. Narrative Memory .................................................... 31
Chapter 6. Collective Memory......................................................................................... 36
Chapter 7. Testimony....................................................................................................... 39
Part 3 – The Persistence of Memory ................................................................................ 42
Chapter 8. Paul’s Traumatic Experiences ........................................................................ 43
Chapter 9. Perfect Memory vs. “National Dysmnesia, the Art of Rose-Colored Recall”56
Chapter 10. “Ja, ja, ja. All you Jews are Englishmen.” ..................................................... 66
Conclusion ......................................................................................................................... 75
Appendix............................................................................................................................ 79
List of Abbreviations ........................................................................................................ 80
Bibliography ...................................................................................................................... 81
iii
Introduction
With his first novel, The Persistence of Memory (2004), Tony Eprile, a Jewish South
African writer living in the U.S. joins other young South African writers in their common
cause of shaping the national memory and, thus, the development of the New South
Africa. As Eprile himself stated in an interview, the occurrence that prompted the idea for
his book was that, when he went back to South Africa in 1990 after a long absence, he
noticed that white South African people had changed their memories to fit the political
changes of the time. A small favour to a neighbour during apartheid years was easily
distorted into “a gesture of support for those in opposition to Apartheid” (Eprile,
“Interview”). Moreover, the apartheid government had succeeded in creating a mythology
for explaining the present and imposing its own version of the past. Around that time,
Eprile was reading a nonfictional account about a person with an almost perfect memory,
The Mind of a Mnemonist by A.R. Luria, which made him contemplate what would
happen to someone with a perfect memory living in a repressive society prone to
distorting the reality of past and present (Eprile, “Interview”). Thus, Paul Sweetbread, the
narrator with a perfect memory, came into existence. He tells the story of his growing up
1
in apartheid South Africa, a country where amnesia is widespread, while he himself is
unable to forget anything.
Eprile explicitly mentions in an interview for the University of California radio station
that it was a conscious choice not to give his main character the “good-fortuned, liberal,
anti-apartheid background” he himself had when growing up in South Africa (Eprile,
“Interview”). His parents were white, Jewish immigrants and were strongly anti-apartheid.
They repeatedly “pointed out the inequities of the racially stratified society [they] lived
in” (Eprile, “Interview”). Moreover, his father edited a black newspaper. This way, he had
“the unusual privilege of seeing the other side at an early age” (Eprile, “Interview”). In
contrast, Paul Sweetbread’s story is a first-person narrative presenting the coming-of-age
story of a decent, middle-class Jewish boy trying to become a good South African, trying
to find “his own sense of self largely through observation” (Eprile, “Interview”). Thus, the
novel explores how it is like to grow up without an outspoken anti-apartheid background
in the oppressive society of South Africa, and having to determine right from wrong
through one’s own experience.
The novel is divided into three parts. In each part, Paul gives an account of a particular
period in his life. Book One spans the years from his early childhood to the end of his
school-days in the all Jewish “Little Green School” (Eprile, Persistence 15), from 1968
until 1987. It is the account of a troubled childhood which shows Sweetbread growing up
as a clever, but lonely person. A particularly telling event in this part of the novel occurs
when Paul is about nine years old: the death of his father, with whom he had a very close
relationship, under unclear circumstances. He obviously suffers from this loss and is
seeing a psychiatrist, Dr. Vishinski, for guidance. At the end of Book One he starts
attending university, but is conscripted into the army and has to give up his studies.
2
In Book Two, 1987 until 1989, we first get an account of the short period just before
Paul gets his basic training. He decides to house-sit for the family of a friend when they
go on a holiday. This job turns out to be not as easy as he had expected, because he has
some awkward experiences with the black servants. After this episode, Paul does not go
on narrating his basic training, but he immediately skips to his life in an army camp on the
Angolan border. There, Paul proves incapable to fit in like a regular conscript, just as he
was incapable to blend in at school. According to Eprile, his anxiety, separateness, and
sense of being a freak are reflected by his being very large (Eprile, “Interview”). His
bulkiness also makes him unfit for the army, and he gets assigned to the kitchen by his
superior, Captain Lyddie. This gets the sergeant and the other soldiers of his back.
Because he proves to be a good cook, this job even brings him some respect in the camp.
However, one day, Lyddie invites Sweetbread to accompany him to gather some
information from a nearby tribe. When the tribal elder denies the presence of terrorists in
the area, a violent scene develops in which Lyddie tortures the chief’s child. Although
Sweetbread is carrying a rifle, he does nothing to prevent the violence, and Lyddie
confronts him with his own cowardice on the way back. Despite the confrontation,
Sweetbread cannot help feeling admiration for the Captain. However, when he gets the
chance, Paul leaves the camp to enrol in a training programme to become a filmmaker in
the army’s propaganda campaign. Book Two cuts off at the moment when Sweetbread and
Captain Lyddie meet again in the bush during a period of official cease-fire.
Book three covers the years 1990 to 2000, after Sweetbread’s military duty, which are
also transitional years for South Africa, and the era of the Truth and Reconciliation
Commission. In the first scene of Book Three we see Paul in a military hospital,
apparently traumatized. After a short period of psychological treatment he gets a
3
temporary discharge from the army so he can sit out the rest of his National Service at
home. However, the main event in Book Three is when Paul needs to testify before the
Truth and Reconciliation Commission about Lyddie’s war excesses, the same events that
left him traumatized, and which were not narrated at the end of Book Two. In his
testimony, Paul narrates, for the first time, the atrocities that left him traumatized. Paul has
to record the activities of Lyddie’s unit during the official cease-fire, but gets caught up in
the unnecessary killing of Swapo-soldiers returning from Angola. Although Paul remains
sceptic about the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, his testimony seems to help him
to get on with his life, and to find a place in South African Society at the end of the novel.
The Persistence of Memory is not a traditional Bildungsroman, but can be defined as
what Ogaga Okuyade calls an “extension of the paradigm,[…] the Postcolonial African
Bildungsroman” (3). This relatively recent variant of the genre is characterized by the
dramatization of “the arduous journey from childhood to maturity”, and emphasis on
“continuous negotiation of individual and national identity as a process without definite
endpoint” (7). The intertwining of individual and national identity means that the African
identity is never fixed: it is shaped by the postcolonial condition with its difficult relation
between past, present and future. By rewriting the genre, the authors try to “address postindependence concerns […] which are encapsulated in the burden of history –
decolonization, sovereignty, trauma, war, gender disparity and identity conflict” (7). The
concerns that are central to The Persistence of Memory are trauma and its consequences
for the functioning of memory, war, and identity conflict. Moreover, their interrelatedness
is emphasized throughout the novel. In my analysis, I will focus on how potentially
traumatic events in Paul’s life, and specific aspects of life in South Africa such as the
4
consequences of apartheid, the Border War, and relations between the Jewish population
and other ethnic groups, influence his Bildung and how this is reflected in the narration.
In the first part of my dissertation I will provide a historical outline of South Africa,
concentrating on those aspects of South African history that are relevant for the
understanding of The Persistence of Memory. Chapter One will deal with the South
African Border War, the secret war that Sweetbread gets caught up in. The brief account
will present the different parties and alliances at work in this war, as well as the roots of
the conflict, and give an overview of the most important events that took place during
wartime. Subsequently, in Chapter Two, I will describe the period of apartheid which
lasted for almost half a century and had its roots in the nineteenth century. In the third
chapter, I will discuss the most important institution at work in the transition to a
nonviolent democracy after apartheid, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
In Part Two, I will establish a theoretical framework for the analysis of the novel. The
framework that I thought most fitting to approach The Persistence of Memory is trauma
studies. Since the 1990s, the study of the psychological trauma and its consequences has
gained prominence outside the medical field, and has become an interdisciplinary research
interest. In literary studies as well it has become an important paradigm, and many literary
works are now approached from this angle. The research done in this area is assembled
under the header of trauma theory or trauma studies. I have adopted the paradigm of
trauma theory and the closely related notion of memory as a theoretical framework
because at the core of the narrative is an event that the reader only gets to know about
indirectly, a traumatic event. Sweetbread supposedly suffers from various personal
traumas, and the novel is set in South Africa, a country that even in the present day is still
suffering from the “national trauma” of the apartheid era. Moreover, traumatic events
5
have a considerable impact on the functioning of memory. Consequently, trauma studies
are particularly concerned with the mechanisms of memory, just as the author of the
novel, who scrutinizes the workings of memory through the narrative of his protagonist.
After establishing the historical background against which the novel is set in Part One
and, in Part Two, briefly outlining the theoretical framework that will be appropriated, I
will turn to the actual analysis of the novel. When Paul was about nine years old, his
father appears to have committed suicide after his affair with the maid, who is of mixed
race, had been exposed. The death of Paul’s father and the ensuing trauma shape our
understanding of the novel but are never explicitly dealt with. Moreover, this is not the
only instance of trauma. Throughout the novel, Sweetbread is exposed to three potentially
traumatizing events: apart from his father’s suicide, there is a violent scene in which his
superior in the army tortures a native child, and the killing of guerrillas that had already
surrendered. I will discuss the various traumatic experiences that Paul goes through, how
these connect to the emphasis on memory and forgetting, and how this affects his
reliability as a narrator.
However, in the novel, the emphasis is not only on the memory and forgetting of the
protagonist, but also on collective memory and national amnesia. The strong connection
between the individual and the nation that Okuyade observes in the postcolonial African
Bildungsroman (7) has been particularly true in the South African context and is certainly
present in The Persistence of Memory. Although the narrator is describing the
mechanisms of his own “poisoned gift” (Eprile, Persistence 14) most of the time, at
certain moments in the novel he also muses about the memories of his compatriots, the
memories of the nation. In his assessment of the South African condition after apartheid,
he identifies a “national dysmnesia, the art of rose-colored recall” (Eprile, Persistence 63).
6
With its lonely protagonist who, partly because of historical circumstances, partly because
of his own inability to participate in South African life, is at the margins of society, The
Persistence of Memory provides us with an indirect but critical account of South African
history and the national memory. Sometimes resulting in social satire, the novel uncovers
the attempts by the government to instil its own version of the past in the South African
people through the educational system and propaganda. I will link the individual memory
of the protagonist to manifestations of collective memory and the structures that shape it.
The author is, for example, aware of the role of narrative in the shaping of history and the
fallacies behind these narratives. Moreover, I will discuss the role of the Truth and
Reconciliation Commission and its representation in The Persistence of Memory: Paul has
to testify before the Amnesty Committee in the final chapter of the novel.
A last important factor in Paul’s Bildung and his relation with the South African nation
is his particular place in society, determined by his Jewishness. In the identity conflict(s)
in South Africa, the Jewish South African occupied a difficult position: “[I]mmigrant
Jews found themselves ambivalent parts of a social formation that left them marginalised
by the white ruling class, but social and politically privileged over black workers”
(Sherman 505). In an era of racial segregation, this ambivalent position consequently
leads to moral ambiguity, and Sweetbread cannot escape the feeling of historical
complicity. Moreover, he is a descendent of Lithuanian Jews that came to South Africa
via Great Britain. Thus, he is frequently associated with the former colonial power. In a
country where everything is black and white, he tries to maintain his liberal conscience
while at the same time trying to become a loyal, good South African. He suffers from antiSemitism and condemns the narrow-minded racism in his fellow South Africans but, from
time to time, he catches himself thinking in the same racist way. Being Jewish locates
7
Paul in a privileged position to observe the absurdity of racism in South Africa, but it is
also a major factor in his identity crisis. I will go into some specific scenes where Paul’s
problematic identity and his confrontation with racism are notable.
With my analysis I aim to open academic debate about this award winning novel.
Although it has won the Koret Jewish Book Award for fiction, and was a New York
times, Los Angeles Times and Washington Post notable book of the year, the book has not
been the subject of much literary criticism. Moreover, the bulk of this criticism does not
go further than to label it as a clever fable or social satire about a troubled country, and
ignores the presence of subtler dimensions such as the personal traumas of the narrator.
This novel deserves more profound attention from literary critics and scholars as it is an
interesting contribution to recent South African literature, and, moreover, is an appealing
object of study for trauma theorists working towards a less Eurocentric definition of
trauma and trauma literature.
8
Part 1 – Historical Outline
Chapter 1. The South African Border War
The military situation in which Paul Sweetbread, the main character of Eprile’s novel,
finds himself upon giving up his studies and enlisting in the South African Defence Force
(SADF) is part of the South African Border War. The Angolan Bush War, as the South
Africans commonly refer to it, lasted for twenty-three years but was mostly a secret war.
Given this secretive character, some background needs to be given about the conflict
which involved many parties, including the two world powers of the Cold War era.
The roots of the conflict are to be found, as is the case for most conflicts on the
continent, in colonial history. In 1884, the area of South-West Africa was colonized by
the Germans as one of the last parts of Africa (Eprile, “Afterword” 287). During the First
World War, however, the Allied Forces called on South Africa to invade the German
colony, and the territory was conquered in 1915 (Steenkamp 3). From then on, the area
was under South Africa’s military rule, and “in 1919 the League of Nations mandated that
South West Africa should fall under the control of South Africa” (Hamann 63). However,
after the Second World War, the League of Nations dissolved and South Africa was
requested to put the territory “under U.N. trusteeship with a view to eventual
independence” (Eprile, “Afterword” 288). South Africa refused, and this was the
beginning of a long legal battle with the U.N. in the International Court of Justice
10
(Steenkamp 4). From the 1960s onwards, the population itself also began to oppose South
African rule.
First, the opposition was minor and could be controlled by the South African Police
(SAP). However, after South Africa’s refusal to pass the territory to the U.N. and the
implementation of some of the apartheid laws, the struggle became more violent. The
SAP could not handle the situation anymore and the SADF got involved in the control of
South-West Africa. In 1966, the official beginning of the Border War, South-West
African People’s Organization (SWAPO) and its military wing, People’s Liberation Army
of Namibia (PLAN), started to perform raids on South-West Africa from bases in
neighbouring Zambia.
As Eprile says in his afterword to The Persistence of Memory, in 1974 another major
development took place that would get South Africa involved in a conventional war. After
the fall of dictator Marcello Cautello and the institution of a new government, the
Portuguese announced their withdrawal from Angola and the start of the transition to
independence. However, this transition became a struggle between the Popular Movement
for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) and National Union for the Total Independence of
Angola (UNITA), and South Africa, afraid of the socialist threat, covertly supported
UNITA. With Soviet volunteers and Cubans backing up MPLA and the CIA supporting
South Africa and UNITA, the Angolan civil war turned into a proxy war between the
Soviet bloc and the U.S. (288).
Because of the Angolan civil war and the presence of SWAPO fighters in Angola, the
military presence of the SADF in South-West Africa grew drastically, despite the fact that
this was an illegal occupation. Operations across the Angolan border by the SADF against
SWAPO were frequent and lasted until 1987, when South Africa suffered many casualties
11
in the battle of Cuito Cuanavale and opted for peace negotiations led by the U.N., leading
to the independence of Angola and South-West Africa, which took on the name of
Namibia (Eprile, “Afterword” 289).
However, the period of the official cease-fire at the end of the Border War was the
bloodiest period of the twenty-three years of war. Despite Namibia being under the
monitoring of U.N. peacekeeping troops, the SADF used its forces that remained to
confront returning SWAPO soldiers who were still bearing their arms. Typically, both
sides had different versions of the story. The SADF stated that SWAPO was deliberately
making use of the cease-fire to invade the territory and gain control of the northern part of
Namibia, while on the SWAPO side the guerrillas assured they would abide by the ceasefire and return unarmed (289-90).
Although it is considered one of the most telling events of the Border War, because of
its absolute inhumanity, this killing of returning guerrillas was far from the only atrocity
committed during the struggle. Like in every war, the soldiers had to face very cruel and
traumatizing events. Moreover, war crimes were frequently committed by both sides. In
addition to the physical war this was also a propaganda war. The strategic use of
propaganda was not only to misinform SWAPO leaders but also to keep the war hidden
for the South African public and the international community. Thus, soldiers were lured
into an unnecessary war started on the basis of the typical paranoia of the Cold War era.
Moreover, when they returned, they were left with their physical and psychological
traumas because they were only poorly treated by military psychiatrists and because many
South Africans never knew about SADF’s involvement in fights in Namibia and Angola.
As Eprile notes, only recently have veterans of this secret war begun to tell and write
down their stories, forming the collective memory of the events that took place between
12
1966 and 1989. The South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission also played a
considerable role in this development, as it did in the formation of South Africa’s total
collective memory. In Angola and Namibia similar actions are undertaken to shape their
national memory of the period (290).
13
Chapter 2. Apartheid
Present-day South Africa and South African literature cannot be understood without
having at least had a short introduction to the period of apartheid. The Persistence of
Memory is the story of a Jewish boy whose life, like the life of all South Africans, is
strongly determined by this period: his father’s relationship with a mixed-race
housekeeper might be at the basis of the latter’s early death, he gets caught up in an
absurd war, and is scorned repeatedly for his Jewish background. Although great progress
has been made since the 1994 democratic elections, every aspect of life in South Africa is
still pervaded by the legacy of this cruel era. Apartheid, sometimes ironically pronounced
apart-hate, was the official policy of the National Party from 1948 until 1994. It was a
system based on the so called Apartheid laws that sought to institutionalize racial
segregation. Thus, during forty-six years, power in South Africa was in the hands of a
white minority, mostly Afrikaner, and rights of blacks and coloured1 people were severely
restricted.
1
"Coloured" South Africans (the label is contentious) are a [sic] people of mixed lineage descended from slaves
brought to the country from east and central Africa, the indigenous Khoisan who lived in the Cape at the time,
indigenous Africans and whites. The majority speak Afrikaans. (“South Africa’s Population”)
14
Apartheid, however, was not the questionable invention of one political party; it was a
policy with roots in colonial times:
[I]t is evident that it was not the National Party government that introduced racially
discriminatory practices to this part of the world. Nor is it likely that the National
Party government was the first to perpetrate some or most of the types of gross
violations of human rights recorded in this report (Truth and Reconciliation
Commission 1:25).
The “racially discriminatory practices” had started from the moment that the region
was settled by Europeans in the seventeenth century and, when, in 1910, the Union
of South Africa was set up, there was no significant change. The Act of Union gave
political control to the white minority as “only white South Africans [...] were truly
citizens” (Beck 101). Given complete political control, the Union government,
mostly British, passed the Native Land Act three years later, prohibiting people of
other races, except those living in the Cape area, to buy land outside certain
reserves. “Africans lost their rights to 90 percent of South Africa’s land, and South
Africa would forever be a racially divided country” (Beck 116). Another act, with
major consequences for the social situation in South Africa, was the Urban Areas
Act:
15
Legislation, which was consolidated in the Natives (Urban Areas) Act, 1923,
entrenched urban segregation and controlled African mobility by means of pass
laws. The pass laws were designed to force Africans into labour and to keep them
there under conditions and at wage levels that suited white employers, and to deny
them any bargaining power (South Africa, Government Communication and
Information System2 26).
In 1936, “white supremacy was further entrenched by the United Party with the
removal of the Africans of the Cape Province who qualified [to vote] from the
common voters’ roll” (South Africa, GCIS 27).
The introduction of these restrictive laws fostered protest among the targeted groups.
However, this protest was relatively mild. It was the economic difficulties during the
Second World War and the post-war period that enhanced discontent. Hence, according to
the history outline in the South African government’s yearbook, the “primary appeal” of
the National Party for its supporters “lay in its determination to maintain white
domination in the face of rising mass resistance; uplift poor Afrikaners; challenge the preeminence of English-speaking whites in public life, the professions and business; and
abolish the remaining imperial ties” (South Africa, GCIS 33). In the run-up to the 1948
general elections, the Herenigde Nasionale Party already campaigned openly on apartheid
policy and, “[a]s used and developed in the course of election campaigning, apartheid
came to stand for support of the physical separation of black and white, this separation to
be achieved by legislative policies and state action” (Clark and Worger 4).When the new
government, led by D. F. Malan, implemented its policies, they were, in most aspects, a
2
Subsequently abbreviated to GCIS
16
continuation of the segregationist policies which were already in place in South Africa
(South Africa, GCIS 27).
One of the first apartheid laws was the Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act of 1949,
which prohibited marriage between members of different racial backgrounds. However,
the act brought about some difficulties in asserting which racial category one belonged to.
This problem was tackled by the Population Registration Act, which was passed in 1950,
and was “the very bedrock of the apartheid state in that it provided for the classification of
every South African into one of four racial categories” (Truth and Reconciliation
Commission 1:33). Moreover, adding to the Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act, the
Immorality Act of 1950 made interracial sexual relations illegal.
Apartheid legislation not only sought to prevent people from having interracial
relations, but also aimed to limit all contact by separating the population in space. As was
already mentioned in the discussion of the roots of apartheid, this process had started with
the Native Land Act of 1913 and the amendment of 1936. However, many people were
still living side by side in the settlements, and the authorities put an end to this with the
Group Areas Act (1950), by which “the entire country was demarcated into zones for
exclusive occupation by designated groups” (Truth and Reconciliation Commission 1:34).
The act that gave apartheid society its questionable iconic character was the
Reservation of Separate Amenities Act (1953). After the institution of this act, signboards
such as “whites only” appeared in different public areas on benches or public toilets, for
instance. The Act “[a]llowed for public facilities and transport to be reserved for particular
race groups” (Truth and Reconciliation Commission 1: 458). In addition, the Bantu
Education Act separated the education system, African schools preparing black students
for lives as servants or labourers (1:458).
17
However repressive these laws were, opposition from inside South Africa was weak
and the National Party did not have many problems suppressing it (Truth and
Reconciliation Commission 1:38). In the 1950s, the apartheid legislation engendered
“considerable political activity and campaigning” that went by a non-violence policy
(1:38). However, “[t]ime and again in the 1950s, non-violence as a vehicle of struggle was
shown to be an impotent and ineffective counter to state action” (1:38). However, even
armed struggle did not have much impact on the apartheid government. It was only in the
1980s that the government began to experience difficulties in suppressing the opposition.
By the 1980s black townships became as good as ungovernable because actions by
liberation organizations and popular protest began to form a unity (South Africa, GCIS
29). Not only did the African people unite, there was also contact between the opposing
parties:
The demonising of opponents was giving way to dialogue. There was talking,
listening and searching for ways forward. The drastic problems that needed urgent
attention were beginning to be faced within a new social context - a new kind of
relationship (Villa-Vicencio and Ngesi 270).
In addition, South Africa’s systematic and brutal segregation found itself more and
more opposed to global public opinion as “[d]evelopments in neighbouring states,
[…] left South Africa exposed as the last bastion of white supremacy” (South
Africa, GCIS 29).
After P. W. Botha’s resignation as president for the National Party, F. W. de Klerk,
who became president in 1989, unbanned liberation movements and released political
prisoners, although South Africa was still doing well economically and militarily. This
progressive action by de Klerk, considered to be a conservative pro-apartheid politician,
18
came as a surprise to many (Villa-Vicencio and Ngesi 287). The reason for this change in
policy were the international sanctions against South Africa, such as the trade embargo,
the continuous organized popular resistance, and the contact between adversaries that
began under Botha.
Following the release of Nelson Mandela, formal negotiations were started between de
Klerk and the ANC. Towards the end of apartheid, many believed in the possibility for
Mandela’s liberation movement to form the new government. Although there had already
been contact while Mandela was still in prison, the basis for negotiations was laid at a
meeting in Grote Schuur, the president’s official residence. The purpose of this
preparatory meeting was to ensure a peaceful transition of power (287). In 1991, at the
Convention for a Democratic South Africa (CODESA) talks “produced both steady
progress and bitter debate” (289). However, the ANC and the government could not reach
a compromise, and there had never been so much violence.
CODESA broke down as the ANC pulled out, holding the government responsible for
not bringing an end to the bloodshed, notably during the Boipatong massacre of June 1992
(289). However, as violence persisted, Mandela and de Klerk started negotiations again,
and in 1993 they were jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize because of their continuing
talks, which would lead to the 1994 peaceful democratic elections with universal suffrage.
The ANC won the elections and the National Party became the official opposition party.
A government of national unity was established, led by Mandela as president. Moreover,
during the period of 1990 to 1996, all apartheid laws were abolished, and in 1996 South
Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission took up its mission.
19
Chapter 3. Truth and Reconciliation
Apartheid ended in negotiations about how the transition would be made from the state as
it was under apartheid to a peaceful and stable democracy. The major concern during this
period was to negotiate a peaceful transition and prevent a civil war or the emergence of
more violence. Although public and international opinion were sceptical about the
outcome, South Africa’s transition did not bring about any such violence and the 1994
elections were commonly referred to as “the miracle of South Africa”. However, this
“miracle” was only the beginning of a long process of nation-building and the search for a
new, multicultural South Africa. A particularly important and unique phenomenon
established in the aftermath of the democratic elections was the Truth and Reconciliation
Commission (TRC). This institution also plays a great role in Sweetbread’s life because,
at the end of the novel he has to testify before the Amnesty Committee, and it seems that
this enables him to finally come to terms with himself and the South African society.
It was indeed a unique phenomenon because it was the first time in history that a truth
commission had such a wide mandate; it was, for instance, empowered to grant amnesty
and even to subpoena the current government. In this respect, the TRC’s mandate also
differed greatly from that of the Nuremberg trials after WWII, which was based on the
20
principle of victor’s justice. Another unique feature of the South African Commission, as
Desmond Tutu puts it in his introduction to the final report, was “its open and transparent
nature. Similar commissions elsewhere in the world have met behind closed doors. Ours
has operated in the full glare of publicity” (Truth and Reconciliation Commission 1: 1).
As a result of the negotiations between politicians about the interim constitution, the
legal basis for the TRC was laid in the Promotion of National Unity and Reconciliation
Act 34 (1995). According to this act, the Commission’s main goal was
[t]o provide for the investigation and the establishment of as complete a picture as
possible of the nature, causes and extent of gross violations of human rights
committed during the period from 1 March 1960 to the cut-off date contemplated in
the Constitution, within or outside the Republic, emanating from the conflicts of the
past, and the fate or whereabouts of the victims of such violations.
Moreover, the Commission was given the task of “the granting of amnesty to persons who
make full disclosure of all the relevant facts relating to acts associated with a political
objective committed in the course of the conflicts of the past during the said
period”(Promotion of National Unity and Reconciliation Act 34). This twofold task was
taken up by two different committees, the Human Rights Violations Committee and the
Amnesty Committee. The Reparation and Rehabilitation Committee, a third committee,
was established to restore the victims’ dignity and make proposals to assist with the
rehabilitation.
Thus, the nature of the Commission is very different from war tribunals like the ones in
Nuremberg or the Hague. These war tribunals seek justice by prosecuting and convicting
war criminals. South Africa’s Commission, on the other hand, sought “a restorative justice
which is concerned not so much with punishment as with correcting imbalances, restoring
21
broken relationships – with healing, harmony and reconciliation” (Truth and
Reconciliation Commission 1: 9).
Consequently, South Africa’s concern is how to deal with the past in order to
understand the present and provide the country with a better future. However, as Charles
Villa-Vicencio and S’Fiso Ngesi affirm, “[i]n South Africa today, there are perhaps as
many views on the TRC as there are people” (292). They distinguish three general
opinions. There are those who think that the past should be laid to rest and remain in the
past; according to this group, to meddle with the past would only hinder nation-building.
The second opinion they distinguish is the one held by the Truth Commission itself, which
thinks it is important to open up old wounds and start a process of proper healing. The
third line of thought is one which opposes restorative justice and argues for the
punishment of perpetrators and the release of freedom fighters (292).
The particularity of the TRC lies exactly in its way of engaging with the past and its
determination to uncover as much of the “ugly truths” as possible. What Shane Graham
explicitly lauds is its
use of conditional amnesty as a “carrot” to coax information out of perpetrators, the
balancing of the amnesty proceedings with a process sensitive to the needs of
victims, and the very public nature of the truth-finding process [which] have all
contributed to the unearthing of more information (of an admittedly narrow and
particular kind) about the past than might otherwise have been possible. (32)
According to Graham, the information obtained, however restrictive, made it very difficult
for perpetrators and white Afrikaners, directly or indirectly complicit, to deny apartheid as
such and prevented the country from going into a state of amnesia after the trauma of
apartheid (32).
22
Moreover, by collecting these different versions of the gruesome past, the TRC helped
form a national history even before the first narratives about the period were beginning to
get published. The TRC gave South Africans a chance to participate actively in the
process of democratic nation-building. Nonetheless, Graham also states that the TRC,
however valuable, was only the first step in a long process “of forging new social
memories of the past” (33).
Part of its contribution to shaping South African collective memory was possible
because of the broad media attention. The public hearings that started on 15 April 1996
were covered almost daily in newspapers and on radio and television. The TRC itself was
aware of the crucial role of the mediatization of the Commission. Gratitude can be heard
in the words of Deputy Chairman Alex Boraine:
the TRC owes a huge debt to the media of South Africa. Without coverage in
newspapers and magazines and without the account of proceedings on TV screens
and without the voice of the TRC being beamed through radio across the land, its
work would be disadvantaged and immeasurably poorer (qtd in Garman 12).
Boraine could have been right in stating that the media had a considerable influence; it
was especially welcome for the realisation of the Commission’s objective of national
reconciliation. For instance, Annelies Verdoolaege analysed Special Report, one of the
most influential TV programmes covering the Commission, and argues that the media
tried to be even-handed but were not able to maintain their objectivity throughout the long
period of public hearings. Although generally media coverage was diversified, Special
Report was so influential that it unwittingly staged its commitment towards reconciliation,
which “could have helped the TRC to achieve its main objectives” (Verdoolaege 196).
23
From this short introduction to South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, it
becomes clear that, however contested it might have been, the TRC’s work at least paved
part of the way towards reconciliation. By opting for an open approach, it brought the
creation of a national history to the public sphere and gave the South African people the
chance to participate in the negotiation of their collective past and the building of a new
democratic nation. With its strong resolution not to seek retributive justice but restorative
justice, by attempting to disclose as much of the truth as possible, and by granting
conditional amnesty, it probably helped to consolidate the “miracle” of 1994. However,
one must be aware that it could have turned out differently had certain factors, like
positive media coverage, not played to the advantage of the commission. Moreover, the
commission presented its final report in 1998, with its addenda in 2003, but the
continuation of the task of reconciliation was taken up by organizations such as the
Institute for Justice and Reconciliation and the Institute for Healing of Memories.
24
Part 2 – Trauma Theory and Memory
Chapter 4. Trauma Studies: A Genealogy
I half expected our friend to raise his voice and
begin a melodramatic scene. Except however for the
fact that he had grown a little more high-strung and
more voluble his behavior was not markedly
different from before. But his tone had altered. He
spoke now in jerky phrases punctuated with the most
blasphemous oaths and accompanied by grimaces
which were frightening to behold. The demon in him
seemed to be coming out. Or rather, the mutilated
being who had been wounded and humiliated
beyond all human endurance.
Henry Miller, The Alcoholic Veteran with the
Washboard Cranium
Although theories about trauma had already been around since the end of the 19th century,
they have only recently gained prominence outside the field of psychiatry. Since the
middle of the 1990s, trauma theory has become one of the most influential analytical
models in literary studies, and many western novels have been analysed or reanalysed in
light of this paradigm. This reappearance of trauma on the map of academia can best be
understood in view of its emblematic character “at the end of a century saturated with
unprecedented wounding events” (Hernandez 134). Two major theorists have helped
bring about this paradigm shift: Cathy Caruth, who wrote introductions to some of the key
26
works in trauma theory and helped Shoshana Felman and Dori Laub to acquire their
canonical position in the field, and Dominick LaCapra, one of the very few historians
interested in opening up the field of history to the study of experiences instead of facts,
more particularly, the experience of limit events. He calls the paradigm shift of the 1990s
“the turn to experience” (History 4).
However, these two authors and other theorists are not completely innovative. They
draw on the work of the late-nineteenth-, early-twentieth-century pioneer of trauma
studies Sigmund Freud. He was one of the first researchers to link the symptoms of what
we now call trauma to a psychological cause. Until the end of the 19th century, the word,
derived from Greek, only referred to a physical injury. In his work with Joseph Breuer,
Studies on Hysteria (1895), and in his essay “The Aetiology of Hysteria” (1896), Freud
explained the symptoms of “hysteria” mostly in sexual terms. According to him, women
that had been abused in their childhood were not traumatized by that experience because
they did not yet have the cognitive framework of sexual relations. A second experience
later in life, not necessarily sexual in nature, triggered the memory of the first and caused
hysteria because the adult woman by then had established the cognitive framework.
However, he had to revise his theory because of increasing social pressure. Most women
that presented symptoms of hysteria were of the middle class and, thus, Freud’s
“seduction theory” seemed to imply that the middle-class was frequently abusing its
children. Freud adapted his theory in The Interpretation of Dreams (1900), linking
hysteria to the sexual cravings of middle class women in Victorian society. However, with
the advent of WWI, Freud saw his theory of ‘the pleasure principle’ collapse because
returning soldiers manifested the same symptoms. He could not explain the nightmares of
27
these soldiers as pleasure seeking, and in Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920), Freud
introduced the “death drive” as another explanatory principle:
It is impossible to classify as wish-fulfilments the dreams we have been discussing
which occur in traumatic neuroses, or the dreams during psychoanalyses which
bring to memory the psychical traumas of childhood. They arise, rather, in
obedience to the compulsion to repeat, though it is true that in analysis that
compulsion is supported by the wish (which is encouraged by “suggestion”) to
conjure up what has been forgotten and repressed. ... If there is a “beyond the
pleasure principle,” it is only consistent to grant that there was also a time before the
purpose of dreams was the fulfilment of wishes (32-33).
He explains the death drive as the compulsion to repeat by the traumatized person in order
to bind the trauma, and, this way, return to an earlier time of total rest before birth.
However, apart from Freud’s ground-breaking study of hysteria and subsequent
publications, the interest in trauma did not quite catch on. Nonetheless, during and after
WWI, “the virtual epidemic of war neuroses made is impossible to deny the existence in
the male of traumatic symptoms which, although gathered together under the rubric of
‘shell shock’, were recognized as not different in kind from those observed in the
hysterical female” (Leys 4). Physicians and psychiatrists saw the same characteristics with
soldiers of the Second World War, but the connection with previous cases was not
generally made, and soldiers were said to be suffering from “combat fatigue” or, in the
case of holocaust survivors, “survivor syndrome” (5). Only after the Vietnam war the link
was made, and the American Psychiatric Association came up with the term PostTraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). “[I]t was largely as the result of an essentially political
struggle by psychiatrists, social workers, activists and others to acknowledge the post-war
28
sufferings of the Vietnam War veteran” (5). The interest in trauma was aroused again and
work on a more unified theory of trauma was continued. From the 1990s onwards
psychological trauma was also seen as a cultural phenomenon, thus emerging in the field
of literary studies and other more culturally oriented disciplines.
However, the definition of trauma and PTSD remains a contested one, each researcher
adding his or her own emphasis. Caruth mentions this contested nature and establishes a
working definition:
While the precise definition of post-traumatic stress disorder is contested, most
descriptions generally agree that there is a response, sometimes delayed, to an
overwhelming event or events, which takes the form of repeated, intrusive
hallucinations, dreams, thoughts or behaviors stemming from the event, along with
numbing that may have begun during or after the experience, and possibly also
increased arousal to (and avoidance of) stimuli recalling the event. (Caruth,
“Introduction” 4)
She points out that the traumatizing feature does not lie in the event itself, nor in the
“distorting personal significances attached to it” (4). What causes the trauma to happen is
the belatedness of the experience, the failure to completely and consciously experience the
event at the time. The limit event starts to haunt the victim in its absent presence, thus
preventing simple knowledge and memory (7).
In her discussion of the belated quality of trauma, Caruth draws on Freud’s train crash
model which Freud uses to explain how a victim can leave the sight of the accident, a train
crash, without manifesting signs of any psychological disturbance, but later start to suffer
from the consequences of the shock. However, Caruth’s interpretation of latency is
slightly different:
29
Yet what is truly striking about the accident victim’s experience of the event, and
what in fact constitutes the central enigma revealed Freud’s example, is not so much
the period of forgetting that occurs after the accident, but rather the fact that the
victim of the crash was never fully conscious during the accident itself [...] The
experience of trauma, the fact of latency, would thus seem to consist, not in the
forgetting of a reality that can hence never be fully known but in an inherent latency
within the experience itself” (Unclaimed 17).
Caruth is more explicit about the fact that the latency happens at the moment of the
traumatizing event itself; the event gets registered at the moment of impact but is not
experienced because the brain cannot cope with it. The latency, for Caruth, is inherent to
traumatization, and there is a temporary dissociation. Often, victims feel like they are
witnessing but not experiencing the event. This dissociation can lead to Multiple
Personality Disorder, which is nowadays called Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID):
The essential feature of Dissociative Identity Disorder is the presence of two or
more distinct identities or personality states (Criterion A) that recurrently take
control of behavior (Criterion B). There is an inability to recall important personal
information, the extent of which is too great to be explained by ordinary
forgetfulness (Criterion C). The disturbance is not due to the direct physiological
effects of a substance or a general medical condition (Criterion D). In children, the
symptoms cannot be attributed to imaginary playmates or other fantasy play
(American Psychiatric Association).
30
Chapter 5. Traumatic Memory vs. Narrative
Memory
It is singular how soon we lose the impression of
what ceases to be constantly before us. A year
impairs, a lustre obliterates. There is little distinct
left without an effort of memory, then indeed the
lights are rekindled for a moment - but who can be
sure that the Imagination is not the torch-bearer?
Lord Byron, Detached Thoughts
The difference between false memories and true
ones is the same as for jewels: it is always the false
ones that look the most real, the most brilliant.
Salvador Dali, The Secret Life of Salvador Dali
Lord Byron and with him many others were strongly aware of it: memory is a tricky thing
and, contrary to what we would want to believe, our control over it is limited. Over the
ages, the very nature of memory has been an important topic of discussion in intellectual
circles. It intrigues us because with the capacity of remembering also comes forgetting,
sometimes even the capacity to forget. Moreover, as Dalí suggests, humankind is prone to
fill the gaps in its memory with the brilliance of the imagination. Such pondering on the
mechanisms and, in particular, the troubled nature of memory became even more
prevalent in the realm of trauma studies.
31
The distinction between traumatic memory and narrative memory, introduced by Pierre
Janet, is of great value for trauma and memory studies. Janet was an early-twentiethcentury psychiatrist who like some of his contemporaries was “struck by the observation
that some memories could become the nucleus of later psychopathology [...]. They
recognized , on the one hand, the flexibility of the mind and, on the other, how certain
memories became obstacles that kept people from going on with their lives” (van der Kolk
and van der Hart 158). The group of early psychologists that Janet belonged to “developed
a comprehensive formulation about the effects of traumatic memories on consciousness”
(159).
Next to traumatic memories, caused, according to Janet, by “certain happenings,” (qtd
in van der Kolk and van der Hart 158) and narrative memories, Janet also distinguished
habit memory. This is the “automatic integration of new information without much
conscious attention to what is happening” (van der Kolk and van der Hart 160). This is
what humankind has in common with animals. What is unique for mankind is our
ordinary memory (160). Our everyday experiences are stored in the form of a narrative,
that is why they are so easily accessible if we want to talk about them. Moreover, we can
tell the story in a different form depending on the situation. “Narrative memory consists of
mental constructs, which people use to make sense out of experience” (160). Traumatic
memories, on the other hand, are stored in a different manner; they are primarily visual in
nature and are not easily accessible. Moreover, they are characterized by their circularity
and a-temporality; the past keeps haunting the victim in the present, the same images keep
coming back because the traumatized person was unable to integrate the an extreme
experience: “fragments of these unintegrated experiences may later manifest recollections
of behavioral re-enactments” (160) Consequently, Janet concludes that part of the healing
32
process is to make traumatic memories accessible by turning them into narrative
memories:
It consisted of a stepwise process of reexperiencing and verbalizing traumatic
memories, starting with the least threatening, and working toward assimilation of
the most traumatic events. For many tramatized [sic] patients, however, it was too
painful and demanding to actually relive and verbalize the trauma. They simply
could not manage to transform the traumatic event into a neutral narrative (van der
Hart, Brown and van der kolk 85).
Although Janet’s theories were forgotten for a large part of the twentieth century,
contemporary trauma theorists are gratefully making use of Janet’s distinction of the
different sorts of memory, and his view of the healing process, to posit their own theories.
However, the healing process and the way trauma is dealt with in historical discourse is
contested. LaCapra, for example, based on Freudian psychoanalysis, distinguishes three
different ways of dealing with trauma: denial, acting-out, and working-through which he
also observes in historiography. For LaCapra, turning traumatic memory into a narrative
memory does not necessarily imply successful healing, because “narrative memory is
capable of improvising on the past so that the account of an event varies from telling to
telling” (Whitehead 87). This possibility to come to narrating the traumatic memory, but
at the same time changing it can be linked to what Eric Santner calls narrative fetishism:
33
[T]he construction and deployment of a narrative consciously or unconsciously
designed to expunge the traces of the trauma or loss that called that narrative into
being in the first place […]; it is a strategy of undoing, in fantasy, the need for
mourning by simulating a condition of intactness, typically by situating the site and
origin of loss elsewhere. Narrative fetishism releases one from the burden of having
to reconstitute one’s self-identity under ‘posttraumatic’ conditions (144).
Narrative fetishism is a form of denial. Many victims of trauma deny, for instance, the
loss of a beloved person. In historical discourse this can take the form of flat-out denial or
“subtle modes of evasion” (LaCapra, Representing 48). For most trauma theorists this is
not an appropriate response, and it is this kind of response that is attacked in Adorno’s
famous saying that “to write a poem after Auschwitz is barbaric” (Prisms 34).
When we return to Caruth’s definition of PTSD we can see that she talks about
“repeated, intrusive hallucinations, dreams, thoughts or behaviors stemming from the
event” (Caruth, “Introduction” 4). This is similar to Freud’s melancholia and what
LaCapra, following Freud, calls acting-out: a repetitive pathological behaviour where you
keep returning to the moment of the trauma. As is clear from Caruth’s description, this
acting-out can both be mental and physical. LaCapra argues that acting-out is an essential
part of the healing process. The trauma victim always has to pass through a period of
acting-out, but when one gets stuck in the compulsive behaviour there is no chance of
renewal or regeneration.
According to LaCapra, in dealing with trauma it is essential to reach a stage of
working-through; this stage is similar to what Freud called mourning. In the process of
working-through, the trauma victim or the historian/trauma theorist gains a critical
distance on the event. By working-through, one comes to acknowledge the trauma and
34
enables oneself to overcome the compulsive fixation on it. The trauma is not denied, but is
given a place in the memories of the victim or the traumatized society.
35
Chapter 6. Collective Memory
The term collective memory is more widespread than traumatic or narrative memory, it is
even frequently heard in everyday conversation. It was coined in the 1950s, later than
Janet’s contribution to the field of memory, by the French philosopher and sociologist
Maurice Halbwachs in his seminal work On Collective Memory (1952).
Halbwachs and his teacher Émile Durkheim were the first to launch the idea that, in
addition to the individual memory, there also exists a collective memory. This memory,
however, is not an objective record of everything that happens within a society but a
memory shared by one particular group in society. According to Halbwachs, “every
collective memory requires the support of a group delimited in space and time” (22), and
it is constructed by that group according to the social framework it belongs to in society.
Halbwachs further argues that there is a two-way relationship between the individual and
the social framework of his group. On the one hand, the individual remembers by placing
him- or herself in the context of the group; on the other, the group memory manifests
itself and gives shape to the individual’s recollections (40).
Thus, the collective memory is not the sum of the memories of all individuals
belonging to the group. Halbwachs comments on the nature of the social frameworks:
36
It is necessary to show, besides, that the collective frameworks of memory are not
constructed after the fact by the combination of individual recollections; nor are
they empty forms where recollections coming from elsewhere would insert
themselves. Collective frameworks are, to the contrary, precisely the instruments
used by the collective memory to reconstruct an image of the past which is in
accord, in each epoch, with the predominant thoughts of the society. (40)
Hence, one might say that all individual memories are rooted in a social context and
structure, and that it is impossible for individuals to remember independently from their
social context. However, there is one area in which the individual memory escapes the
social structuring: the realm of dreams. In his introduction to Halbwachs’s work, Lewis A.
Coser comments that “dreams lack structure, continuity, orderly progression, and
regularity. The dream, Halbwachs argues , differs fundamentally from all other human
memories because, in contradistinction to them, it lacks organization” (Halbwachs 23).
This is the “result of the absence of other human actors”(23).
In other works on the subject, Halbwachs also discusses the relationship between past
and present by opposing history to collective memory. In Olick’s account of Halbwachs’
theory this opposition between history and collective memory is described as follows:
Autobiographical memory is memory of those events that we ourselves experience
(though those experiences are shaped by group memberships), while historical
memory is memory that reaches us only through historical records. History is the
remembered past to which we no longer have an “organic” relation—the past that is
no longer an important part of our lives—while collective memory is the active past
that forms our identities. (Olick 7)
37
It is precisely on this part of his theory that later scholars have worked to expand it and
make it more comprehensible. Principally, Jan Assmann has added much to the
development of these concepts. Within the collective memory, Assmann distinguishes
two forms, communicative and cultural memory (kulturelles Gedächtnis). The former is “
‘biographical’ and ‘factual’ and is located within a generation of contemporaries who
witness an event as adults and who can pass on their bodily and affective connection to
that event to their descendants” (Hirsch 110). The latter comes into being when the
communicative memory is institutionalized, when it becomes “archival memory” (110).
The communicative memory can be institutionalized by its direct bearers in “traditional
archives or books or through ritual, commemoration, or performance” (110).
38
Chapter 7. Testimony
The role of testimony in the context of trauma theory has been the specific focus of the
work of Shoshana Felman and Dori Laub. Laub underscores the importance of the witness
and testimonies for the understanding of specific events, even for the understanding of
history. For historiographers, the testimonies of witnesses are relevant only if they can be
backed up with substantial empirical proof. Historiography is only concerned with the
facts, while trauma theory, by analysing witness testimonies, seeks to get access to
experiences. What trauma theory tries to do is to write the “felt – history”, how it felt to be
a witness to a potentially traumatizing event. Felman and Laub’s work originated in a
concern with the most horrifying event of the last century, namely the Holocaust.
What is curious about Laub’s account of the Holocaust is that, while he values
testimony more than historical facts, he calls the Holocaust “an event without a witness,”
stating that “what precisely made a Holocaust out of the event is the unique way in which,
during its historical occurrence, the event produced no witnesses” (Laub, “Truth and
Testimony” 65). For Laub, witnessing an event is witnessing the truth of what is
happening and recording it in perception and memory (65). Thus, many people from
within or outside the event could have witnessed what was happening. However, Laub’s
39
reasoning is that “most actual or potential witnesses failed one-by-one to occupy their
position as a witness, and at a certain point it seemed as if there was no one left to witness
what was taking place” (66). The perpetrators themselves were aware of the atrociousness
of their project and tried to cover it up by imposing their ideology on their victims. The
witnessing of victims themselves was unreliable because of its being “inside the event”
(66); they could not grasp what was happening to them and never had a full picture of it.
Moreover, the Nazi ideology gradually convinced victims of their otherness and
inhumanity, thus creating a situation in which the victim could not even bear witness to
him- or herself. Even outsider witnesses were unreliable because they did not have a full
picture of it either or they did not want to know what was happening.
However, what Laub observes is that after a period of silence, testimonies that could
not be uttered during the event were beginning to be transmitted and to get heard .
According to Laub, it has “taken a new generation […] removed enough from the
experience, to be in a position to ask questions” (68). What he observes is a period of
latency during which the delusional Nazi ideology still has not lost its power and what
was missing in order to be able to testify was “the human cognitive capacity to perceive
and to assimilate the totality of what was really happening at the time” (69). Nevertheless,
it is important that the stories of survivors are heard, because they all feel the need to
restore their humanity by bearing witness. It is in the process of testifying that the survivor
finally takes up his or her position as a witness. In order for a testimony to come about,
however, the scene must be set for a reliving, and a listener is needed. According to Laub,
this listener or interviewer then actually becomes a witness before the narrator does. The
listener becomes the “blank screen on which the event comes to be inscribed for the first
40
time” (Felman and Laub 57). Thus, the listener is the first true witness through whom the
survivor can be a witness to himself.
However, the act of listening or bearing witness to a testimony is a delicate one
because instead of just listening to the story, the listener becomes a participant in the
testimony. In order for the testimony to be successful, the listener has to display a certain
degree of empathy. This “desirable empathy involves not full identification but what
might be termed empathic unsettlement in the face of traumatic limit events, their
perpetrators, and their victims” (LaCapra, Writing 102). The listener has come to feel the
same feelings as the trauma victim and has to address them in order to arrive at successful
witnessing. However, he or she must maintain his own position separate from the listener
so that he or she can keep looking at the event from his or her own perspective and he or
she has to take on the difficulties that the witnessing provokes in him- or herself (Felman
and Laub 58).
41
Part 3 – The Persistence of Memory
Chapter 8. Paul’s Traumatic Experiences
Most of the existing criticism of The Persistence of Memory sees it as a social satire, and
thinks of the emphasis on memory as a clever way of the writer to analyse the South
African condition. Indeed, Eprile thoughtfully explores the mechanisms of memory and
forgetting to uncover white South Africa’s way of distorting history and shaping the
present to its own benefit. However, literary critics fail to comment on the connection
between the various traumas Paul goes through, his father’s suicide in particular, and his
unusual memory. In this chapter, I will analyse this connection, specifically with respect
to its consequences for the reliability of Paul as a narrator. This aspect of the novel as well
is ignored by the critics. Theo Tait, in his review for the New York Times, mentions the
presence of an unreliable narrator, but does not bother to explain why this literary
technique is an important feature of the novel. What I want to argue is that the disclosing
of Sweetbread’s unreliable nature puts the whole novel into a new perspective, and makes
the reader reconsider everything that he has read before. The death of his father seems to
be only a very unfortunate event in Paul’s life story which is half-heartedly dealt with by
the author, and without major consequences. During a subsequent reading, however, it
becomes the central event of the novel which determines every aspect of Paul’s narration.
43
Sweetbread is only exposed as an unreliable narrator toward the end of the novel, when
he is called upon to testify in the amnesty case of Captain Lyddie. In order to undercut
Sweetbread’s testimony, Lyddie’s lawyer confronts Paul with his former psychiatrist
which he started attending after the death of his father. In the witness box, after a long
struggle between the lawyers whether it is morally right to utter a patient’s diagnosis in
public, Dr. Vishinski confesses that Sweetbread suffers from PTSD after having witnessed
the discovery of his father’s body:
What I came to conclude was that Mr. Sweetbread suffers from delusions of
memory. The human mind does funny things in response to overwhelming trauma –
sometimes we blot the bad event out completely, so it never happened. Other times,
we re-create it over and over in our minds, adding new details each time. Paul was
one of the haunted ones, replaying his father’s suicide continually; remember, he
witnessed the discovery of his father’s body. He essentially split his psyche into two
entities: one, the everyday ‘normal’ person; the other, a hypertrophied, prodigious
recording device that was beyond his control, what he so eloquently called his
‘poisoned gift.’ [...] This dissociation is a form of PTSD, albeit an unusual one, and
I have to say that it did predate his military service. (Eprile, Persistence 259)
This diagnosis does not only undercut Paul’s testimony , but it also undermines the image
we have of Sweetbread as a person with a perfect memory who remembers everything
exactly the way it was.
As Theo Tait points out, “Paul’s narration proceeds by ‘looping digression’, warily
circling the horrors at the center of the story, following his elephantlike memory along
various intriguing detours, for instance, into South African history or insect life” (Tait 1).
It seems as if he is reticent to narrate the story of his father’s death, but, at the same time,
44
he is giving the reader some clues about his anxieties that have come forth from this
unfortunate event. For example, he already mentions Dr. Vishinski early on in the novel
saying that, by telling the story of Miss Tompkins, he is “chasing the butterflies of
memory, as the good Dr. Vish would say” (Eprile, Persistence 16). Here he is already
presenting us his extraordinary gift, his perfect memory which the reader will only be able
to expose at the end of the novel as an invention by the traumatized mind.
In fact, he is constantly recreating knowledge and memories of his childhood in the
minutest detail, but when he comes to narrate the discovery of his father’s body he deals
with it in one short passage:
“Is there a particular pair of shoes you would like to talk about?” Dr. Vishinski
inquires in a friendly, neutral voice. Damn him. He has, I find out in the course of
successive sessions like this one, an uncanny knack of focusing on just what I want
obliterated. For there, hovering like foxfire at the outermost corners of my vision,
are the pale leather soles of an expensive pair of hand-stitched brogans glimpsed
dangling luminously in the crepuscular recesses of the maid’s quarters by a
frightened child who is doing his best to hide behind his mother’s ample hips. There
are suddenly men in uniform everywhere, and I am swept away by strong arms to
the comforting familiarity of the kitchen chair, while somewhere a woman’s voice
screeches horribly without cease. Conspicuous by its abrupt cessation is the
mechanical thumping of one of Dad’s company’s power compressors. That was
why the van was backed up in the driveway in place of the Mercedes. I should have
immediately recognized the choking-termite logo, the peppery odor of industrialgrade pesticide (Eprile, Persistence 34)
In the passage as well, he focuses on details such as the logo, the smell, a pair of shoes,
but he seems unable to narrate what the real tragedy was that he witnessed. The scene cuts
45
off, and the following scene starts with Paul mentioning that his father has died, but no
connection is made with the previous scene.
It is clear that Sweetbread wants to tell the story of his suffering, but he can only do so
indirectly through the encounters with his psychiatrist, and his father’s interest in insect
life. In a comment on a literary blog called The Page 99 Test, Eprile explains his use of
South African insect life as “representing the wildness of its [South Africa’s] indigenous
inhabitants, a bit of anthropology thrown in, and the absurdity of the events leavening the
pain and brutality that lies always under the surface of this world” (Eprile, Online
Posting). However, the references to insect life do not only serve as anthropological
comments, but play an important role in Sweetbread’s narrative. The memory of his
father’s profession as exterminator together with his books are the things that trigger some
more direct insights into Paul’s own anxieties. One scene that is particularly interesting in
this respect is a scene where Paul is reading a book by one of his father’s favourite
authors, and thinks he recognizes his father in a praying mantis:
“Dad?” I say, my voice croaking in the stillness. The praying mantis turns its
triangular head in my direction, eyes me inquisitively. Well, it sounds stupid now,
but it could have been him. It had the same angular face and elongated limbs, the
same skeptical expression, though Dad always wore glasses. I had never seen a
mantis like this one, and have not seen one like it since. About twelve inches long,
pale yellow instead of the usual green, it moved with deliberation up the lamp stem,
only turning occasionally to nod in my direction in that familiar vaguely friendly
way. [...]
46
The mantis turns back in my direction, raises the burring, protesting snack to its
mouth in a friendly toast, and begins to feed with a loud rustling. I break of more pie
and watch him eat. Crumbs drop onto my lap; a detached brown wing spirals
downward. Why, Dad? Why did you do it? I want to ask, but self-consciousness
stops me. What am I doing here, the voice of reason asks, talking to an insect in the
middle of the night? (Eprile, Persistence 21-2)
From this scene it is obvious that Paul was left with some unresolved questions as to the
reason for his father’s demise. However, the “Why did you do it?” (22) implies that, even
if he was still a young child at the moment he already suspected, or even knew that it was
not an accident. Moreover, he has the idea that the desperate act of his father was the
consequence of an affair he had with the family’s maid, who was of mixed race. At a
certain point, even before the scene with the praying mantis, Paul comments that
“[a]lthough she remained with us for six years, Corinthia invariably treated me with polite
distance spilling, when her guard was down, into open contempt, and I developed no love
for her. My feelings were not the issue here” (Eprile, Persistence 18). With the emphasis
on “my”, he indicates that there were feelings that were the issue, but it were rather his
dad’s feelings toward the maid, not his that were important.
Based on these scenes we can derive that Paul has problems dealing with the death of
his father, because, however accurate he claims his memories to be, he can never be sure
about the circumstances under which his father died. He can only rely on tensions in the
family that he supposedly noticed as a child, things that he sensed, but could not
understand. Moreover, there is a scene in which Paul narrates how it was Miss Tompkins
who advised his mother to send him to Dr. Vishinski from which he concludes that it must
47
have something to do with his marks. From his further explanation for the state he is in it
becomes obvious that Paul is not just shook up by the event, but is traumatized by it:
I should say here that my poor performance in class had nothing to do with my
being overcome with grief, as preferably romantic as that would appear. No, the real
difficulty was not that my memory was getting worse or being blocked by emotion,
but that it was getting better... to the point that I could let nothing go and every word
in the present suggested something from before, time melting into a series of
continually running screens in which the present moment was indistinguishable
from recollections of the past (Eprile, Persistence 52).
The same feelings are present when Paul describes how he lives just before going into the
army. He “lived from minute to minute, from day to day – a state some young people
foolishly associate with nirvana but that is really the apathy of despair” (Eprile,
Persistence 85). This account of what he is experiencing is very close to LaCapra’s
description, based on Freud, of traumatic memory:
“Traumatic memory (at least in Freud’s account) may involve belated temporality
and a period of latency between a real or fantasized early event and a later one that
somehow recalls it and triggers renewed repression, dissociation, or foreclosure and
intrusive behavior. But when the past is uncontrollably relived, it is as if there were
no difference between it and the present” (LaCapra, History 119).
The state of “timelessness” in which Sweetbread finds himself is also represented by
Eprile in the titles of the different parts of his novel. Book One, for example, is called The
Present, while it covers the years of Sweetbread’s youth. Moreover, the narrative voice is
that of an older Sweetbread telling the story of his childhood and puberty in the past tense.
In addition, the title of Book Three is Time Gone Awry, again indicating that Paul lost all
48
sense of temporal progression which is common in trauma victims. I will return to the
structure of the novel at the end of this chapter, after discussing two more events in Paul’s
life that were potentially traumatizing.
The second event I will discuss is the confrontation between Lyddie and the native
chief, where Lyddie tortures the chief’s son to get some information out of him with
regard to terrorist movement in the area:
“I see. With a single smooth movement, Lyddie grabs the child around the waist and
hoists him into the air. The half-chewed gum drops into the dirt, a wad of mastic
and white sugar. Lyddie marches over to the rain barrel and dumps the child
headfirst into the water. The child’s legs kick frantically and we can hear a bubbling
rush of air coming out of the barrel. The chief stamps up and down, crying in
frustrated horror, aghast, not daring to touch this white man who has so suddenly
injected terror into this quiet morning.
“Please, baas,” he says. “Please. He is my only son.”
Why does he look at me when he says this? It is Lyddie who is pressing the child’s
body deeper into the rain barrel. Then I realize that it is because I am the one
holding the rifle, gripped at the ready in both my hands (Eprile, Persistence 135).
Sweetbread is the only one on the side of the SADF to witness the excessive cruelty by
his superior, and does nothing to prevent it. Afterwards, on the way back to the camp,
Lyddie confronts Paul with his own cowardice. At first sight, the scene does not seem to
be traumatizing for Sweetbread, however horrible it might be. He is able to narrate the
event without hesitations, without circling around it, and leaving out the essence.
However, the fact that he does not react to Lyddie’s actions which he clearly disapproves
of does indicate that he is overwhelmed by them, and that he cannot cope at the moment
49
when they are happening. Moreover, further in the narration Paul mentions images of
laughing kids that get juxtaposed with Lyddie’s “clinical expression at the bubbles rising
in the rain barrel” (Eprile, Persistence 176). The images that haunt him are an indication
that he is traumatized for the second time by witnessing this violent scene.
Seeing Captain Lyddie torture a native child, and not being able to react also indicates
the ambiguous feelings Sweetbread has towards Lyddie. On the one hand, he loathes
many of Lyddie’s actions, the one described here in particular, but on the other hand, he
cannot help to feel a certain admiration for this “perfect specimen of South African
manhood: tall, muscular, with well-shaped thoroughbred muscles” (Eprile, Persistence
116). This admiration does not lessen after the scene in the natives’ village, because
during his time spent in the camp Paul has come to feel attached to the Captain who is
almost like a substitute father to him.
Lyddie seems to notice this admiration, and keeps approaching Sweetbread even
though he cannot stand Paul’s laziness and liberal beliefs. From Paul’s narration we can
conclude that Lyddie took a specific interest in him, because he hoped to change him.
Dini Van Vuuren, Paul’s representative at the TRC, comes to the same conclusion at the
end of the novel:
“You know, I thought about it too. I read all the records, obviously, and after a
while I could see he wanted to convert you somehow. I think he could see you
weren’t like the others, that you wouldn’t just go home and remember some rosecolored dream of ‘lekker days in the army’ (Eprile, Persistence 266).
Eventually, it is because of this peculiar relationship that Paul gets caught up in a third
traumatizing event. Some time after the visit to the Himba village, Paul hears about a
training programme to become a war photographer and participate in the army’s
50
propaganda. He soon transfers out of the infantry division to join the programme. After
his photography training in Pretoria, Paul gets sent back to Namibia, and is stationed for a
few weeks in the remote camp Ondangwa. At the end of Book Two, he gets called up for
an assignment. The last thing that is narrated is how he hears about the cease-fire from the
truck driver, and meets Captain Lyddie again in the bush. According to Paul’s
representative at the TRC hearing, Lyddie had “personally requested you [Paul] be sent to
join the unit of disbanded Koevoet members and Special Forces personnel at the time of
the April cease-fire” (Eprile, Persistence 236).
At the moment they meet again, Book Two cuts off, and, without any indication of how
much time there is between this scene and the next, Sweetbread is seen in the mental ward
at the beginning of Book Three. The use of this narrative technique by Eprile is meant to
heighten tension, and to give the novel a faster pace. However, in the light of trauma
theory, this might also indicate that Sweetbread’s mind has blanked from that moment
because of a traumatizing event that followed the encounter. During therapy, he only talks
about his visits to Dr. Vishinski, and about a golf trip he did with his father, but he never
comes to telling the army psychologist what has happened to him before being sent to the
hospital. When he gets a discharge from the army, Paul still has not narrated the last
episode of his army days, even though that must be what the psychologists have been
trying get a grip on.
Sweetbread is experiencing at the beginning of Book Three what LaCapra called, in his
definition of traumatic memory, a “belated temporality and a period of latency between a
real or fantasized early event and a later one that somehow recalls it” (LaCapra, History
119). The events that did not get narrated at the end of Book Two are recalled at the
51
amnesty hearing, where Sweetbread is asked to give an explanation for his mental
breakdown:
Although I have known this question would be coming, the lead-in for me to open
up a box and pull out the stacked bodies of murdered black men Lyddie is
responsible for, I am not ready despite all my preparation. I begin to sweat, to
shuffle from foot to foot, to wring my hands.
Finally I blurt out: “I couldn’t get rid of the feel of those dead people. I just
couldn’t. I couldn’t sleep. I smelled them on my hands and I couldn’t eat” (Eprile,
Persistence 237).
What follows is a very detailed account of the unnecessary killing of Swapo soldiers
returning to their homes under the protection of the official cease-fire, and the supervision
of U. N. soldiers. However, the latter are not aware of Lyddie’s disbanded unit taking
matters into their own hands at the border. Captain Lyddie leads his men into a senseless
attack on Swapo soldiers that have already surrendered. When the unit sets off heavily
armed in the direction of the guerrillas, Paul starts to feel that something is not right, but
he cannot escape the catastrophe. At the beginning of the fire fight he concentrates on
filming, but as the guerrillas fight back he is urged by Lyddie to take a gun and participate
in the fight: “With the camera lens no longer between me and the death that is everywhere
below, I am terrified, kak-scared, ready to jump up and run away screaming for my
mother” (Eprile, Persistence 244). During the fight Paul kills two guerrillas. Afterwards,
Lyddie orders to bury the dead so that U. N. troops would not find out about the massacre.
Sweetbread focuses on filming the whole event, but again gets bullied into helping to
transport the dead bodies. All this violence is too much for Sweetbread and “[t]here is no
relieving [his] burden of consciousness” (Eprile, Persistence 247).
52
From the discussion of these three events it can be concluded that Paul has a troubled
personality. He is confronted with three limit events in his life, and even though the last
event seems to have the worst impact on his life and conscience because of its sheer
cruelty, it is the suicide of his beloved father at an early age that should be the focus of
attention. Given the traumatized personality of the first-person narrator, one cannot be
sure about the nature of the memories which the narrator has of things that happened
either before or after the traumatizing event. As Dr. Vishinski discloses in the witness
box, “Mr. Sweetbread suffers from delusions of memory” (Eprile, Persistence 259). He
even states that Sweetbread “split his psyche into two entities: one, the everyday ‘normal’
person; the other, a hypertrophied, prodigious recording device that was beyond his
control” (259). This dissociation renders him extremely unreliable as a narrator, because
the reader can never be sure as to whether he or she is dealing with an authentic memory
or a memory that sprouted from the vivid imagination of a trauma victim.
As I have argued earlier, Sweetbread is stuck in the past, which is represented by the
title of Book One. Although he is narrating his childhood and puberty, he experiences
these moments as the present. Moreover, even when he already lives alone he still needs
to make use of a trick that he learned from Dr. Vishinski. He has to hold “to a handy set of
memories, keeping the magic number five” (Eprile, Persistence 212). This way he can
avoid being overwhelmed by memory. Nonetheless, when he finds a tape of himself
reading poetry from when he was participating in a poetry competition, he starts
digressing again about South African literature. Moreover, when he hears the creaking of
his dad’s chair on the tape he gets the feeling that his dad is with him in his flat:
53
Now and then, Father pushes back with his feet and the chair creaks back and forth
for a few seconds, clearly audible at first, then slowing to diminuendo. Tick! Tock!
A rhythm like a heart starting and stopping. I close my eyes and listen intently to
that gentle creaking of floorboards, the audible silence of Dad’s listening, and here
he is, though dead these past eleven years seven months and fourteen days as vivid a
presence as ever he was in life. My reasoning mind tediously notes that these are
sounds made by a pattern of negatively and positively charged ions on a metalimpregnated celluloid tape, but my own heart tells me that he is here with me in my
Hillbrow flat ... a visitation helped along by technology. I am physically stunned by
how palpable he is, though so quiet (Eprile, Persistence 215).
In this passage the reader again gets the impression that, although he is trying to use the
methods handed to him by Dr. Vishinski and the army psychologist, Paul still cannot
control his memories, and more importantly, his imagination.
A last indication that Paul is not able to control his narration are the short passages in
the novel where he recalls moments in his puberty. Most of them are about his
uncomfortable experiences with girls. Immediately before the first of those passages, Paul
comments: “and so I dissociate myself from that foolish he whose interludes – like Prince
Albert intruding on Mr. Dick’s memoirs – elbow their way into my narrative” (Eprile,
Persistence 94).
Based on the information that I have presented above I want to conclude that the whole
novel is designed to represent the narration of a traumatized person trying to turn his
traumatic memories into narrative memories by telling his life story. Paul mentions that he
is actually writing down the story that he is telling, saying “[e]ven when I write this”
(Eprile, Persistence 16). However, it seems to me that this is a case of narrative fetishism,
as he is circling the central traumatizing event in his narration, but never explicitly dealing
54
with it. At the end of the novel he does not seem to have overcome his traumas as he is
still haunted by images of his period in the army in his dreams: “Still, I lie in bed at night
and a host of images comes to me, a second-by-second replay of my army days, which
were quite long in the original, thank you" (273). Moreover, he is aware of the
possibilities to manipulate his recall: “It is just as well that I now know how to interrupt
the process by envisioning Dr. Vishinski’s magic slate erasing each horrific picture.
Thank you my analyst and friend” (Eprile, Persistence 16).
55
Chapter 9. Perfect Memory vs. “National
Dysmnesia, the Art of Rose-Colored Recall”
History, memory, is plastic here in the R.S.A. You
remember it the way you would have wanted it to be,
not the way it was.
Eprile, The Persistence of Memory
As I have argued in the previous chapter, Sweetbread suffers from various traumas caused
by limit events, sudden events “in an environment utterly unlike the normal experience of
reality, and these have produced emotions of such intensity and force that they appear
impossible to assimilate into the daily experience of living” (Eprile, Persistence 203).
This is the classical understanding of trauma, as it was defined by the earliest trauma
theorists. However, trauma theory is a field in expansion, and scholars are arguing to open
up the field, to move away from the Western hegemony from which this definition comes
forth. After all, this “normal experience of reality” in the original definition is that of, as
Laura Brown states, “what is normal and usual in the lives of men of the dominant class;
56
white, young, able-bodied, educated, Christian men” (qtd in Craps 55) 3. The alternative
for the Western definition of trauma as caused by a limit event is what Maria Root calls
insidious trauma: “the traumatogenic effects of oppression that are not necessarily overtly
violent or threatening to bodily well-being at the given moment but that do violence to the
soul and spirit” (qtd in Brown 100). Stef Craps adds to this definition that “such traumas,
moreover, tend to be collective experiences,” and “[f]or the psychological plight of the
socially disempowered to be fully accounted for, the object of trauma research must shift
from the individual to larger social entities, such as communities or nations” (Craps 55).
South Africa, with its recent past as an oppressive society under apartheid legislation,
forms a particularly interesting case for trauma research to explore the impact of such an
oppressive society on both the oppressed and the oppressor, and the nation as a whole. I
have included the oppressor here, because, as LaCapra argues in Writing History, Writing
Trauma (2001), the existence of perpetrator trauma should also be acknowledged:
[N]ot everyone traumatized by events is a victim. There is the possibility of
perpetrator trauma which must itself be acknowledged and in some sense worked
through if perpetrators are to distance themselves from an earlier implication in
deadly ideologies and practices (79).
In The Persistence of Memory, Paul is troubled very much by his personal traumas
from which his obsession with memory originates. This obsession, however, exceeds his
own traumatic memories, and through the various digressions in his narration he also
analyzes the collective memory of his tormented country about an era of unprecedented
cruelty. Thus, the novel engages in its own way with the notion of insidious trauma
3
I base my short overview of this development on Stef Craps’ article “Wor(l)ds of Grief: Traumatic Memory
and Literary Witnessing in Cross-cultural perspective.”
57
manifesting itself at a personal and national level. Paul is painfully aware of the effects of
an oppressive society on its inhabitants, because, as a Jew with a British background, he
belongs to no particular category, not the oppressed nor the oppressors. His in-between
state in a country where everything is black and white offers him a unique perspective on
the apartheid system which leaves no one unaffected.
Paul knows very well what the consequences of an oppressive society are on its
inhabitants, because the main traumatic event in his life, the suicide of his father was a
consequence of the pressures of apartheid legislation. The guilt that befell his father after
his wife found out about his affair with the mixed-race maid, and the subsequent
separation from his mistress are probably the reason for his desperate act. Paul remembers
overhearing his mother’s reaction from which it seems that the worst was not what he did,
but with whom he did it: “How could you? And with a bloody kaffir4...” (Eprile,
Persistence 50). Moreover, in his search for an explanation, Paul also muses about his
father trying to get rid of the memories of the affair that now threatens his “white man’s
world”:
Perhaps I have misinterpreted things and he was merely trying to get rid of the
haunting odor of his mistress, to shake off the succubus that had slipped through the
door of his orderly white man’s world hidden in her invisible magic cloak of
sandalwood and musk (Eprile, Persistence 51).
Another moment in the novel from which it becomes clear that Paul’s father suffers
from living under apartheid rules, even though they are not meant to oppress him as a
white man, is when Sweetbread talks about the day he went golfing with his dad. His
4
Disparaging and Offensive . (in South Africa) a black person: originally used of the Xhosa people only.
(“Kaffir”)
58
father had bought a new set of golf clubs , and took Paul to play on the golf course. They
are followed around the whole day by African caddies of Paul’s age, but his father insists
on carrying the golf clubs himself. At the end of the day “[u]ncharacteristically, Dad asks
if they would like a lift” (Eprile, Persistence 201). The African caddies eagerly accept the
ride given by this white man. Sweetbread’s conclusion indicates his insight in the divided
conscience of his father:
The children tumble out of three open doors, shouting “Goodbye, baas. Thank you,
baas.” The leader is the last to go, nodding briefly at first Dad, then me, before
disappearing into the crowd to find his charges. He is the only one not to use that
word. It is clear that he is pleased at what we have done – it has saved them a long
and wearying walk – but he is not grateful, nor need he be. I think it is this ride, so
generously and unthinkingly given, that keeps Dad from returning to play golf again
(202).
Paul does not only have a perfect memory, but he is also an excellent observer. Just
like he sees the tensions that weigh on his father’s conscience, he also notices the impact
of South Africa’s apartheid system, with its constant resorting to brutal force, on the
mental health of the black population. When he is watching after the house of the
Capelands, the family of an old friend, he gradually seems to win the trust of Alini, the
servant who acts as a sort of mother for the other servants. However, one night, after an
incident with one of the domestics earlier that day, Paul hears shouting from the servant’s
quarters and feels obliged to check out what the trouble is. First he shouts that the noise
must stop, and that they have to stop fighting, but they keep arguing until he shouts he is
going to call the police:
59
I shout, and the words have a magic effect, silencing the stream of mellifluous
Sotho immediately. A few minutes later, Alini appears. [...] “No police, young baas.
I will get them to behave. Sorry to disturb.” “Thank you Alini.” She turns her back
and disappears into the ombrage, and I feel ashamed of myself. She has never called
me baas before, but in this moment of crisis I’ve reverted to type by invoking the
hated apartheid authorities. No doubt the police would soon sort out this problem,
arresting whatever family and friends are living in the back rooms without properly
signed passes. I hear Alini’s voice, soft but commanding, and then there is quiet
again (Eprile, Persistence 88).
This passage demonstrates how conditioned relationships are for the black workers, and
how quickly they return to being submissive when they are reminded of the authorities.
There has been a short period of relief for the servants, because their masters are on a
holiday, and they are under the supervision of a young, inexperienced man. However, the
night of the incident, Alini immediately regrets having let Sweetbread get too close to her,
maybe even making her believe that she could, for once, have a more friendly relationship
with a white man. Merely by mentioning the police, Paul inspires the domestics with
terror. Clearly, the threat of being confronted with the police is ever-present in their life,
and the only means they have for preventing such a confrontation is to keep a polite
distance, and not being noticed. This threat is an instance of what Laura Brown denotes as
“[a] continuing background noise rather than an unusual event” (qtd in Craps 55).
Furthermore, apart from observing the effects of the oppressive South African society
on the black population, Sweetbread also analyzes the white South Africans’ sense of
history. According to the narrator, South Africans tend to distort their memories. As the
quote at the beginning of this chapter states: they remember their past “the way [they]
would have wanted it to be, not the way it was” (Eprile, Persistence 19). Moreover, they
60
do not only distort their memories, but they also manifest a particularly bad case of
amnesia. Sweetbread even goes so far as to call it a phobia:
One of the techniques for getting rid of phobias is “flooding” [...]. The trick is to
overexpose the sufferer to the very stimuli that create anxiety so he will simply shut
down that mechanism and not feel the symptoms. Perhaps white South Africans’
dysmnesia is a kind of phobia – a horror at the thought of remembering – and the
ultimate effect of all the daily broadcasts on radio and television and the newspaper
stories of the Commission’s hearings has been to flood that phobic response, to shut
down memory once and for all in promise of a cure (Eprile, Persistence 232).
What I want to argue is that this phobia is actually a form of traumatic response to the
atrocities committed in the recent South African past. White South Africans are not
victims, but they exhibit symptoms of PTSD. In other words, they suffer from what
LaCapra identifies as perpetrator trauma. They deny having been part of such a cruel
system by distorting their memories, and, as a consequence, the official history.
Sweetbread already detects this distortion of official history during his schooldays,
finding out that “our schoolbook’s numbers are haphazard at best” (Eprile, Persistence
32). Moreover, one of the new teachers, Mr. Brenner, tries to make his pupils aware of the
real history of their country, he tries to make them take a more critical perspective towards
their textbooks. When he is talking about the forced removals of the Grand Apartheid Mr.
Brenner does not tell the romantic tale of a black South African woman seeing all her
dreams come true that they find in their textbooks, but he points out the devastating
consequences of those removals for the woman. Later, when thinking about the TRC, Paul
is critical of one of his teachers who was not determined to do real history or did not have
the ability to see through the government’s imaginative version of the past:
61
Anything is preferable to the old amnesia that led to Rooibos Sanders telling us
sincerely that the Voortrekkers found the country’s interior empty of people, not
that masses of the Bantu had moved away after being devastated by white people’s
diseases (Eprile, Persistence 223-24).
The apartheid government’s efforts to instil its own, rose-colored version of history in
the South African people did go much further than determining what young
schoolchildren can know and what not by altering their schoolbooks. For instance,
Sweetbread describes how they watched banned or uncensored films from the collection
of his friend’s father whereas in cinemas, films were judiciously censored. The most
important of the government’s concerns in manipulating the official history was their own
“hearts and minds campaign” for which propaganda was the bedrock. Just like the U.S.
military tried to win the trust of the Vietnamese people, and show their own population
that what they were doing in Vietnam was righteous, the apartheid government tried to do
the same during the years of the Border War, and the numerous violent confrontations
within the South African borders. With their propaganda, they not only tried to make the
troubles inside South Africa look minor, and present the army in a good light, they also
tried to cover up their presence in Angola. Although Sweetbread is participating in this
questionable practice by joining the video unit, he is very critical of it:
62
What is harder to take is how seriously the army treats the hearts and minds
campaign. Daily, we are exposed to hours of film of patriotic content: smiling,
handsome soldiers waving from astride Hippos; heartrending military funerals ...
usually filmed with the sun behind the sorrowful comrade standing with his hand
over his own heart in silent memory of his brave friend. The calm, manly tones of
the voice-over do not tell us what killed the soldier lying in the flag-covered bier,
for that would be too awkward. We are officially not in Angola, so he couldn’t have
died there (Eprile, Persistence 175).
With regard to the Border War, moreover, “the press was not allowed to write anything
about the army without prior approval” (Eprile, Persistence 175). From these very
accurate and critical observations by Sweetbread, it can be concluded that the South
African apartheid ministers were very conscious about managing what information the
South African people, and, by extension, the rest of the world could get access to. They
were aware that the key to the hearts of the people is controlling the memories that will
form the collective memory of the nation. While working for the photography unit, Paul is
experiencing a certain pleasure in “making a permanent record (mind you, a selective one)
of the world around [him]” (174). He may not approve of the government’s methods, but
he does get some pleasure out of the power to decide what will be recorded to be watched
again later, and what not. Paul knows what the potential of written memories, or other
sorts of permanent records, is for shaping the collective memory, and knows that this is
exactly what apartheid ministers are trying to exploit so as to “control what the future
thinks” (Eprile, Persistence 68):
63
The one use for a simple tool that no other animal has conceived of is to write things
down. [...] We have found a way to transcend the limitations of our individual
minds and brief life spans through our scribbles and inscriptions, our runes and
hieroglyphs, our palimpsests, holographs, and multiple printings, our furor
scribendi. The greatest of human inventions is the library, a vast repository of
collective memory far larger than any single mind can hold. Written memory
becomes fixed in time, regardless of the distortions it contains, and the adventures
we recount on paper are there to be reexperienced by those who are not oneself, the
writer. So long as one’s narrative survives, one’s ideas and versions of history are
passed along, like genetic code, to ensuing generations. Control what goes into the
library, what becomes the available record, and you control what the future thinks
(68).
Sweetbread’s negative assessment of the practices of the Afrikaners running the
country during apartheid might be relentless, but his opinions about the TRC, the
institution that has to bring hope for a better future, are not completely positive either. At
the end of the novel, when the apartheid days are over, and the TRC has taken hold of the
whole country’s attention, he presents the reader with some of his ideas about the TRC. In
the first place, he identifies the same tendency to record everything, as if the TRC is trying
to counter the amnesia, that originates from the apartheid government’s distortions of the
past, by using the same method, and, thus, change the collective memory again:
And this theatre is recorded in the papers, on radio, video, and television, seared
into the very souls of South Africans so no future generation can disbelieve in
apartheid or the wars that have riven this land (Eprile, Persistence 223).
64
As I have indicated earlier with a quote from the novel, according to Sweetbread, the
TRC, and its search for the truth by recording every testimony, is actually an attempt to
overcome the amnesia which white South Africans suffer from. The way Sweetbread sees
the TRC, it is an instance of a whole nation searching to work through what could be
called a collective trauma by talking about it as much as possible. Sweetbread is “glad that
the white South African should be forced to recognize what was done on his behalf,”
(223). But, from his assessment can be concluded that he sees the overexposure, the
constant talking, as a sort of narrative fetishism performed by a nation. The TRC hearings
are searching “to shut down memory once and for all in promise of a cure” (Eprile,
Persistence 232), but in reality they are like the narration of a traumatized person who is
still in denial and circling the reality he cannot yet deal with. The post-apartheid society is
looking for premature closure, and hopes to find it in the search for Truth and
Reconciliation.
65
Chapter 10. “Ja, ja, ja. All you Jews are
Englishmen.”
The utterance which serves as the title for this chapter comes from Roelof DeWet, an
Afrikaner who comes to cook with Sweetbread in the army camp after having insulted too
many army officials with his liberal views and atheism. Despite his liberal views, even he
cannot grasp the complicated identity of Jews in South Africa, considering them all
Englishmen, because most of the Lithuanian Jews living in South Africa came via Great
Britain. For Sweetbread , being Jewish, speaking English, and, moreover, having a liberal
conscience makes it very hard to find his place in South Africa’s divided society where a
unified South African identity is not imaginable. Just like his father, and many other Jews,
he has difficulties forming an identity for himself that will help him to get accepted in the
country he was born in. At a certain point he recalls a joke his dad used to tell that nicely
captures the sentiment of many South African Jews:
66
One of Dad’s most beloved jokes, dating back to the Second World War:
Troubled by the division between Afrikaners and English, an army colonel decided
to try a little experiment. Going into the mess hall one day, he barked: “All right, I
want all the Afrikaners on the left-hand side of the room, all the Englishmen on the
right.” There was a little shifting of places – most of the splitting up had already
been done before he got there – and soon there were two groups of men in the mess
... Except for one lone man still standing in the middle. “And what are you?” the
colonel demanded. “A South African, sir.” “Very good. That’s the answer I’ve been
waiting for. What is your name, soldier?” “Yossi Greenbaum, sir.”
This joke demonstrates how, even within the white part of the South African population,
there is a strict division between English-speaking South Africans, and the “real”
Afrikaners. English-speaking Jews are left in the middle. As Joseph Sherman argues,
“[a]ll whites and all blacks were undergoing a forced negotiation of identity. ‘Black’ and
‘white’ identities in South Africa were not pre-determined categories; those very labels
were negotiated by all who were interpellated by them.” (507). Moreover, the outspoken
racist society “continually demanded ethical compromise as a precondition for social
acceptance and economic success” (505-6). It is that ethical compromise that leads to
moral ambiguity, and which makes Sweetbread become aware of his historical complicity.
On the one hand, he has anti-apartheid feelings, but, on the other hand, he enlists for
military service knowing that he will face guerrillas fighting for the black cause.
Moreover, many Jews in his environment have taken up a racist attitude while he tries to
maintain his liberal conscience. Throughout the novel, Paul is in search of an identity that
will get him accepted in the South African society, and which is acceptable to himself.
The problematic position of the Jewish people in South African society dates back to
earliest presence of Jews in the country. When Sweetbread is telling the story of his
67
grandparents, he describes how his grandfather fitted the cliché image of the “smous, the
itinerant Jewish salesmen of the nineteenth century” (Eprile, Persistence 38). His
grandfather’s business only became profitable after finding a way to be of use to the
apartheid regime, whereas before, he was not able to sell much to the Afrikaners.
However, despite being ridiculed by the Afrikaners, and struggling financially, he would
not accept it if he knew that his wife was doing a job reserved for the black population:
They struggled financially for years, living in a one-room cinderblock house only a
little bigger than our maid’s quarters now. Grandmother was thought snooty by her
neighbors – at first Litvak Jews, then Afrikaners, then Indians. She did washing (da
voss) on occasion for her Indian neighbors but did not tell her husband, lest he be
ashamed that she was doing kaffir work to make ends meet” (39).
Many years later, their grandchild, Paul Sweetbread is still in this in-between position. He
accepts a temporary job that only a Jew would accept. He decides to house-sit for the
Capelands, and to become “a servant of the servants, doomed to hurry home before nine
in the evening and to rise long before my usual waking time to prepare their [the
Capelands’ domestics] handouts” (75).
There is a particular passage in the last chapter of the novel where Paul is considering
to change his name. He is musing about returning to his roots by Hebraicizing his name or
even changing it to a real African name, “[t]his being the new New South Africa” (Eprile,
Persistence 218). In this passage he reveals very clearly his troubled identity as an
accumulation of contradictions: “But who is Paul Sweetbread? A nice Jewish Christian
boy, a liberal soldier in the army, a lousy good South African, a ware Zuid-Afrikaner
Englishman? Can such a person even exist” (219)? Sweetbread clearly suffers from an
identity crisis. He is Jewish, but his family is non-observant. Moreover, he is named after
68
the Apostle Paul, who was a Pharisee, a Judaic leader in charge of persecuting Christ’s
earliest followers, but later converted from Judaism to Christianity. He is determined to
uphold his liberal ideals, but also enlists in the army, the most anti liberal environment
imaginable. Lastly, as the joke I have quoted earlier indicates, it is impossible to be a real
Afrikaner if you speak English.
Although Paul is very to himself, and cannot help describing his own selfconsciousness, he is also a good observer. On various occasions in his narration, he is
quick to point out the hypocritical behaviour of his fellow Jews. When he starts preparing
his bar mitzvah, for instance, he realizes that the texts he is studying do not mean anything
to him, so he decides not to have a bar mitzvah. His friend cannot understand this
decision, but after his own bar mitzvah it appears not to have meant much to him either,
except for the presents he got:
“Very impressive,” said Dr. Simchah, unimpressed. “You have your portion
memorized. But what does it mean to you?” This was not a question I could answer
then, or even now, so I told Mother it would be hypocritical of me to have a bar
mitzvah I didn’t believe in. She didn’t press me on the point ... although Nigel
Capeland expressed shock when I informed a group of my school friends about my
decision. “But then you’ll never be a man!” he said. “Not in the Jewish sense.”
After his own bar mitzvah [...] he informed me in great detail as to the presents he’d
gotten: the fat cheques from his uncles, the stocks in mining companies, the fancy
pens, books, and gift certificates (Eprile, Persistence 208).
At an earlier point in his narration, Paul already gives a critical remark about Nigel
Capeland. He casually mentions Nigel’s original Jewish surname: “Nigel Capeland
(Kaplan in the original)” (71). Thus, he indirectly criticizes the name changing that is
69
common among the Jewish population in South Africa, even with his own parents who
called him Paul Sweetbread, an English name derived from the Jewish original Saul
Schwartzbart.
Another factor that influences Paul’s identity, and, consequently, his narration, is his
confrontation with anti-Semitism and racism. A first element in Sweetbread’s narration
that I would like to indicate is an image that Sweetbread uses when describing his housesitting experience. As I have said before, he feels like a servant of the servants, and this
makes him think of the anti-Semitism which Jews suffered doing jobs that no other white
person would do. This thought elicits a literary reference: “house-sitting (“The Jew squats
on the windowsill”)” (Eprile, Persistence 75). The line between brackets is a line from the
poem Gerontion by T.S. Eliot, whom is frequently said to have been anti-Semitic, just as
the poem is said to be anti-Semitic: “This poem, which articulates a loathing of Jews, has
as its subject a man who loathes Jews. It is an anti-Semitic dramatisation of an antiSemite” (Julius 73). A second instance of anti-Semitism enters the novel when Paul is
narrating how, prior to meeting Roelof DeWet, “the only Afrikaners I [Paul] had met had
been people I was afraid of. They were the shaven-headed, hard-eyed teenagers standing
outside cafés on the street corners, tough kids who liked to fight.” (Eprile, Persistence
123). He recalls a moment from his youth when he was bullied by some Afrikaner kids,
because he was a Jew:
70
Once, at one of our away games that the rugby coach insisted I go to, although – as
he said himself – there wasn’t a chance in hell I would be sent out with the team, I
was followed into the bathroom by two such youths. They had probably planned to
beat up this “sissy Jew,” but they found it much funnier to give me a hard push as I
Was standing at the urinal so that I wet My socks and shoes and spent a humiliating
afternoon with my own fellow Jews laughing at me” (123-4).
Furthermore, apart from these instances where Sweetbread is musing about anti-Semitism
or where he is directly confronted with it, there are some points in the novel where he has
to undergo the association with the English liberalism which I have commented on.
Especially Captain Lyddie cannot stand Paul’s liberal ideas which he considers as
cowardice.
In addition to the anti-Semitism he experiences, Paul is frequently confronted with the
racism that is manifest in every layer of the South African society. At an early age he
already notices the racist way of thinking of his schoolmates. Mr. Brenner teaches them
about how Sophiatown, a suburb of Johannesburg with a vibrant black African
community, was razed to the ground after forcefully removing all black inhabitants, and
was later renamed to Triomf. He introduces the children to the music of some of the most
renowned black musicians that had grown up in this energetic black African community.
Sweetbread perceives that “[s]ome of the students nod delightedly, a few furrow their
eyebrows. (Sure, we know the kaffirs can sing. Doesn’t mean we have to live next door to
them)” (Eprile, Persistence 58).
Another episode in his life where Sweetbread is confronted with racism, and,
moreover, with the absurdity of some of his countrymen’s thinking is when he meets the
Capelands. In the scene I have selected, Mrs. Capeland is explaining Paul’s tasks. She
71
explains how he is supposed to leave the servants their meals. When Sweetbread asks if
the maid cannot take her rations with her when she leaves, Mrs. Capeland answers the
following:
No, no, no. Routine is very important to them. And we can’t just let her take her
own food. Do you know, scientists have shown that Africans will eat their own
weight in meat in ten days if left to themselves?”
This remark is the product of many years of apartheid rule that has done everything within
its power to convince its people that black Africans are not like white people, that they are
basically another species. Sweetbread himself is seemingly intelligent and open-minded
enough to rise above the ignorance of many of his fellow South Africans, and he
recognizes in this remark what his beloved Mr. Brenner called “intimate tyranny” (75).
However, very soon after this passage it becomes clear that Sweetbread himself does not
have the right to judge the Capelands as he confesses that “[i]it is the first time I have
really conversed with a domestic servant – I have not had reason or opportunity to in the
past – and I find myself asking questions as if I were an interviewer on Radio 702” (78).
Moreover, he catches himself thinking in the same ignorant way:
He is sullen now and avoids my glance, like a child who has done something wrong
and resents your pointing it out. (How quickly one falls into the thinking habits of
paternalism!) (84)
This moral ambiguity he experiences, because of his being on the white side of a
racially divided society, and not being able to avoid falling into the pitfalls of racism,
evolves into a feeling of historical complicity when he participates in various missions for
the SADF. Upon getting promoted for making a propaganda movie that completely
72
misrepresents violence in the townships, he cannot help feeling proud, but at the same
time he is ashamed for participating in such a practice:
I see the eyes again, hatred deep as a vein of ore in stone. It bothers me that, in spite
of myself, I feel a touch of pride in my promotion. No matter how much I would
like to deny it, I am closer to those men in the Casspir than to those people in the
township. So now I know where I get my marks” (Eprile, Persistence 188).
Eventually, when being called upon to testify in the amnesty hearing for Captain Lyddie,
Paul decides to “testify against” him. Lyddie’s answer when Sweetbread says he “will just
tell what happened” (228) is striking:
As you remember it, you mean? You’ll be saying what you remember, I say what I
remember, and then we all go home and live happily ever after. That’s what this is
about, is it? Did you ever notice how in their public commentaries the Commission
only ever mentions the ‘oppressor’ and the ‘oppressed?’ You’re a student of
humankind; do you really think that you can separate us so simply into two different
species? Man the victim goes into Box A; Man the victimizer goes into Box B. Is
that the sort of rubbish you’ve stuffed your mind with at the university (228-29)?
In this last quote, Lyddie expresses exactly how a fragmented society can never be just
black-and-white. There are always members of that society whose loyalties are divided,
and who enter into a less determined category of people that struggle with the feeling of
moral ambiguity, because they are, in many cases, pressured into collaboration with the
oppressive side. Sweetbread is aware of this “grey zone”, in Primo Levi’s sense, that
South Africa has turned into. He condemns Lyddie’s actions, but realizes that nobody has
the right to judge, because all are implicated in the atrocities. In spite of his critical stance
73
towards the impossible quest for the truth by the TRC, after his testimony, Paul seems
finally to be able to come to himself:
SO, YES, MINE IS a bildungsroman after all. It’s taken time to get here, but what is
time when you think about it? For me it is ever-present ... nothing that has happened
is gone, though it might be changed. (Whether into the ghosts of tortured beings
howling through the galleries where the Commission sits or, as the scientists have it,
transformed into an information-bearing protein in the brain, I cannot say.) We have
all become experts on the past, here in the New South Africa. Among all that is new
here, the past is the newest thing yet.
Nonetheless, this is only an impression. He later narrates how he is still troubled at night
by a series of images of his time in the army, and that he has difficulties facing the
uncertainty of what the future will bring for him and the nation.
74
Conclusion
This dissertation set out to contribute to the new direction in trauma theory which aims to
surpass the Western hegemony, discerned in its seminal texts, by broadening the field of
study to the cultural output of non-Western societies. In literary studies, trauma theory is
now particularly interested in postcolonial trauma novels. Therefore, South Africa’s postapartheid literature is an appealing new research topic for academics adopting this angle.
With my analysis of The Persistence of Memory I wanted to initiate academic debate
about this interesting first novel by Tony Eprile, a promising author who seeks to add his
voice to those of more established South African writers such as Nadine Gordimer and
André Brink.
First off, Eprile is appreciably aware of the implications of personal trauma for the
identity of the traumatized person. I have discussed the multiple traumatic events in Paul
Sweetbread’s life, and how these influence his relationship with the South African society.
Moreover, I have indicated how Eprile uses postmodernist techniques such as the
unreliable narrator, and the disrupted chronology, to reflect the traumatized nature of the
protagonist. By opting for a first-person narrative, Eprile makes the reader doubt about the
reliability of the narrator until the last chapter where Paul himself hears for the first time
75
that he is diagnosed with PTSD. Thus, Eprile makes his reader reconsider the whole
novel. If one does so, certain elements of the narration become more transparent. For
instance, the emphasis on memory and the many digressions are recognized as symptoms
of the PTSD Paul suffers from. Moreover, Paul’s distorted sense of time, as I have
asserted, is an indication that Paul is in the phase of acting-out the central trauma in his
life without really acknowledging it. This, in my opinion, makes of Paul’s story an
instance of narrative fetishism.
However, in spite of his digressive way of narrating, Sweetbread’s voice is that of a
critical observer. In the second part of my analysis, I argue how Eprile uses his narrator’s
accurate observations to analyse the South African society. Again, the emphasis is on
memory. Sweetbread sees how his compatriots distort their memories, and how the
apartheid government does everything within its power to control the collective memory
of the nation by censoring the cultural production and manipulating official history. This
linking of the individual dimension to a collective dimension, in this case, the nation, is
typical for the postcolonial novel, but in The Persistence of Memory it is also linked with
trauma. This makes the novel extremely interesting for the adoption of a cross-cultural
perspective, because scholars such as Maria Root and Stef Craps have indicated that
trauma in an oppressive society need not necessarily be caused by a limit event, but can
come forth out of the constant pressure on disempowered groups, and, moreover, these
traumatic experiences tend to be collective. I have focused on how the suicide of Paul’s
father is the result of the “insidious trauma” of apartheid, and how the life of the black
population, as it is represented in the novel, is also determined by this constant
oppression. Moreover, I have argued that even the white population manifests trauma
symptoms, especially with regard to memory. They are haunted by the gruesome
76
traumatic memories of the apartheid era, and try to deny their trauma by distorting their
memories. Through the Truth and Reconciliation Commission they hope to find closure,
but, according to Sweetbread, it can only be a premature closure.
A last important element in the novel is Paul Sweetbread’s Jewishness. This aspect
adds an interesting dimension to this postcolonial trauma novel. In the postcolonial racist
society of South Africa, the inhabitants constantly have to negotiate an identity for
themselves. For the Jewish population, this is exceptionally difficult since Jews in South
Africa do not belong to the side of the oppressed nor the oppressors, they find themselves
in an ambivalent position that leads to moral ambiguity. Eprile, himself of Jewish descent,
explores throughout the novel the impact of Paul’s Jewishness on his identity. He analyses
Paul’s relationship with his fellow South Africans, and his stance towards anti-Semitism
and racism. Together with the traumatic experience of his father’s death, this other aspect
of his problematic identity leads him to enlist in the army, which gets him involved in two
more traumatic experiences.
With my study of The Persistence of Memory I hope to have aroused interest for this
novel, as it is a novel that unites many features that contemporary trauma theorists are
engaging with. Moreover, given the limited length of this dissertation I have not gone into
some elements of the novel that are well worth exploring. Future research might, for
instance, look into the applicability of Michael Rothberg’s relatively new notion of
multidirectional memory for this novel. After all, Paul Sweetbread is of Jewish descent,
and at various points in the novel the holocaust is implicitly dealt with. Another avenue
for future research that this dissertation might have opened up is the investigation of the
impact of religion and ethnicity on trauma victims’ relationship with the outer world.
Lastly, future research could trace two motifs that I have discerned in the novel; the motif
77
of food and the motif of insects. Sweetbread is obsessed with food and the cooking
thereof. I would suggest that this could be linked to the anxiety that he feels. Moreover, he
considers food as a form of memory which could be connected to the topic of collective
memory. The motif of insects is subtler, but appears frequently in relation to thoughts of
his father.
78
Appendix
Promotion of National Unity and Reconciliation Act, No 34 (1995):
To provide for the investigation and the establishment of as complete a picture as possible of the
nature, causes and extent of gross violations of human rights committed during the period from 1
March 1960 to the cut-off date contemplated in the Constitution, within or outside the Republic,
emanating from the conflicts of the past, and the fate or whereabouts of the victims of such
violations; the granting of amnesty to persons who make full disclosure of all the relevant facts
relating to acts associated with a political objective committed in the course of the conflicts of the
past during the said period; affording victims an opportunity to relate the violations they suffered;
the taking of measures aimed at the granting of reparation to, and the rehabilitation and the
restoration of the human and civil dignity of, victims of violations of human rights; reporting to
the Nation about such violations and victims; the making of recommendations aimed at the
prevention of the commission of gross violations of human rights; and for the said purposes to
provide for the establishment of a Truth and Reconciliation Commission, comprising a Committee
on Human Rights Violations, a Committee on Amnesty and a Committee on Reparation and
Rehabilitation; and to confer certain powers on, assign certain functions to and impose certain
duties upon that Commission and those Committees; and to provide for matters connected
therewith.
79
List of Abbreviations
SADF
SAP
SWAPO
PLAN
MPLA
UNITA
CODESA
TRC
PTSD
MPD
DID
80
South African Defence Force
South African Police
South-West African People’s Organization
People’s Liberation Army of Namibia
Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola
National Union for the Total Independence of Angola
Convention for a Democratic South Africa
Truth and Reconciliation Commission
Post-traumatic Stress Disorder
Multiple Personality Disorder
Dissociative Identity Disorder
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