ZusammenfassungWohin mit der Literatur im Zeitalter der semiotischen Überforderung? In einer Diskussion von El Polaco von J.M. Coetzee, La plus secrète mémoire des hommes von Mohamed Mbougar Sarr und Still Life von Zoë Wicomb schlägt dieser Aufsatz vor, dass eine Dialektik zwischen textueller Umgehung und der intertextuellen Produktivität von Kommentaren, Übersetzungen und generativer KI den Weg nach vorne weisen könnte.

In this article I think through the recognition of the “ontological legitimacy” of iqaba—a concept that is found in South Africa, owing to the ontological split among Blackness/Indigeneity that was promulgated by colonial incursion. I do so using the question: “How will black people, long accustomed to dispossession and deprivation, adjust to a new condition of not being racial victims,” which was initially posed by Zoë Wicomb in the early 1990s. It is a question inspired by the end of (...) apartheid and the looming promise of democracy. I juxtapose this question with a close reading of Samuel Edward Krune Mqhayi’s “Intshayelelo: Imbali.”Simply, the thesis of this article holds that iqaba possesses ontological legitimacy, iff [sic] they take heed of the instructions outlined in Mqhayi’s propositions of the importance of historical self-knowledge. Moreover, ontological legitimacy and an inclusive national identity are two sides of the same coin of recognition. (shrink)