Document generated on 01/29/2019 9:01 a.m. Études littéraires africaines Unstable Orders : Dislocation as Metaphor and Allegory of Post-apartheid Transition in Ivan Vladislavić’s The Restless Supermarket Kudzayi Ngara Article abstract L’Afrique du Sud et la littérature post-apartheid (1994-2014) Le roman de Ivan Vladislavić The Restless Supermarket a pour cadre Number 38, 2014 Johannesbourg, une ville qui subit aujourd’hui de profondes transformations sociales et politiques. En premier lieu, cet article évalue comment le personnage principal, Aubrey Tearle, homme aux URI: id.erudit.org/iderudit/1028674ar vues rétrogrades et conservatrices, négocie la transition politique, en https://doi.org/10.7202/1028674ar se concentrant sur les rapports qu’il entretient avec l’infrastructure sociale et physique dynamique de la ville, et les stratégies qu’il déploie pour se chercher une identité dans un contexte de fluidité. Dans ces See table of contents circonstances, les notions de définitionde soi sont d’abord examinées en interrogeant comment Johannesbourg, et le quartier de Hillbrow en particulier, en tant que zones urbaines en voie de démocratisation, se définissent de manière opposée aux idées que Tearle se fait de l’ordre et des conve-nances en ayant recours au bizarre ou à l’incongru. En Publisher(s) second lieu, je propose que l’invention, par Tearle, d’une ville imaginaire comme Alibia constitue une métaphore et une allégorie de Association pour l'Étude des Littératures africaines (APELA) l’ordre linguistique qui se délite rapidement au fur et à mesure que la ville se transforme. Cette fantaisie utopique est conçue pour contrecarrer l’impression de descente vers un chaos dystopique que l’émergence d’une ville post-apartheid représente pour lui. Mais Tearle ISSN 0769-4563 (print) comprend bientôt que, même dans ce monde allégorique, il est en définitive incapable d’imposer l’ordre qu’il souhaite ; il lui faut plutôt 2270-0374 (digital) apprendre à découvrir comment entretenir des liens nouveaux avec la ville comme espace que l’on habite. Explore this journal Cite this article Ngara, K. (2014). Unstable Orders : Dislocation as Metaphor anTdhis document is protected by copyright law. Use of the services of Érudit (including ATolluesg odrryo iotfs Préosset-ravpésa r©th Aeisds oTcriaantisoitni opno uinr Ilv'Éatnu dVel addeiss laLvitićté’sr aTthuer eRsersetlpersosduction) is subject to its terms and conditions, which can be viewed online. [https:// Safurpiecraminaersk e(tA. ÉPtEuLdAes) l,i t2té0r1a5ires africaines, (38), 55–67. https:// apropos.erudit.org/en/users/policy-on-use/] doi.org/10.7202/1028674ar This article is disseminated and preserved by Érudit. Érudit is a non-profit inter-university consortium of the Université de Montréal, Université Laval, and the Université du Québec à Montréal. Its mission is to promote and disseminate research. www.erudit.org UNSTABLE ORDERS : DISLOCATION AS METAPHOR AND ALLEGORY OF POST- APARTHEID TRANSITION IN IVAN VLADISLAVIĆ’S THE RESTLESS SUPERMARKET RÉSUMÉ Le roman de Ivan Vladislavić The Restless Supermarket a pour cadre Johannesbourg, une ville qui subit aujourd’hui de profondes transformations sociales et politiques. En premier lieu, cet article évalue comment le person- nage principal, Aubrey Tearle, homme aux vues rétrogrades et conservatrices, négocie la transition politique, en se concentrant sur les rapports qu’il entre- tient avec l’infrastructure sociale et physique dynamique de la ville, et les stratégies qu’il déploie pour se chercher une identité dans un contexte de flui- dité. Dans ces circonstances, les notions de définition de soi sont d’abord exa- minées en interrogeant comment Johannesbourg, et le quartier de Hillbrow en particulier, en tant que zones urbaines en voie de démocratisation, se définis- sent de manière opposée aux idées que Tearle se fait de l’ordre et des conve- nances en ayant recours au bizarre ou à l’incongru. En second lieu, je propose que l’invention, par Tearle, d’une ville imaginaire comme Alibia constitue une métaphore et une allégorie de l’ordre linguistique qui se délite rapidement au fur et à mesure que la ville se transforme. Cette fantaisie utopique est conçue pour contrecarrer l’impression de descente vers un chaos dystopique que l’émergence d’une ville post-apartheid représente pour lui. Mais Tearle comprend bientôt que, même dans ce monde allégorique, il est en définitive incapable d’imposer l’ordre qu’il souhaite ; il lui faut plutôt apprendre à découvrir comment entretenir des liens nouveaux avec la ville comme espace que l’on habite. * The Restless Supermarket is Ivan Vladislavić’s second novel and in it the city attains a definable character, rather than remaining a faint nebulousness on the edges of memory and the imagination. The novel is set in Johannesburg’s Hillbrow suburb and I will look at Aubrey Tearle, the central character and first-person narrator of the story, as a figure struggling with notions of self-definition as a sub- ject in the context of a democratising city 1 that has a growing global outlook and influence. The city is also a magnet for migrants who, 1 Democratising in the qualified sense that Johannesburg is a city in a society that is undergoing social and political transformation as a result of the end of legislated apartheid. The intricacies of the realities of the changes mean that such democra- tisation is not equally or universally spatialised across the city. 56) in Tearle’s estimation, contribute to the disruption of the establi- shed order he so highly values. A large proportion of the less well- heeled (especially African) migrants into South Africa over the last few decades have used Hillbrow as their first port-of-call and spring- board into the rest of the country. This has contributed to the hastening of what Saskia Sassen, a Dutch sociologist credited with coining the term « global city », has described as the « periphera- lization at the center of major cities » 2. Hillbrow exemplifies the development of such inner-city zones of deprivation next to the commercial hub of the city, which ultimately leads to a form of capital flight 3 from the centre to new edge cities like Sandton in Johannesburg. As Jennifer Robinson has usefully observed, for many the history of Hillbrow captures well the complex trajectories of utopian hopefulness and dystopian despair, as it moved from an all- white neighbourhood of high-rise modernism to a pre-dominantly black neighbourhood with declining infrastructure and poorly main- tained apartment blocks 4. For Tearle the social and economic deterioration of the inner city, epitomised in Hillbrow, is reflected in what he judges to be a concomitant slippage in the standards of the English language. In his article on the work of Vladislavić as an editor, Fred de Vries succinc- tly sums up the notion that Aubrey Tearle’s « use of language and his command of English define the man » because « his superiority, his resentment, his nostalgia, his class, his style, his longing, his belon- ging, everything is contained in his language » 5. The metaphor of linguistic order is central to Tearle’s method of observing the city, as well as to how he relates to other characters and the city itself as lived-in space. It is in this light that I examine how he uses language, which is a familiar cultural artefact, and the allegory of the imagi- 2 SASSEN (Saskia), « A New Geography of Centers and Margins : Summary and Implications », in : LEGATES (Richard T.) & STOUT (Frederic), eds., The City Reader. London : Routledge, 1996, 532 p. ; p. 70-74 ; p. 71. 3 FISHMAN (Robert), « Megalopolis Unbound », Wilson Quarterly Review, vol. 14, no1, 1990, p. 25-44 ; p. 27. Fishman describes capital flight as a state whereby « the peripheries have replaced the urban cores as the heartlands of our civili- sation ». 4 ROBINSON (Jennifer), « Living in Dystopia : Past, Present and Future in Con- temporary African Cities » [Seminar Paper presented at the Centre for African Studies, University of Cape Town, August 2009], in : PRAKASH (Gyan), ed., Noir Urbanisms : Dystopic Images of the Modern City. Princeton : Princeton University Press, 2014, p. 187-217. 5 DE VRIES (Fred), « Lost in Translation : A Personal Reflection on Ivan Vladislavić as an Editor », Scrutiny2, vol. 11, n°2, 2006 ; p. 101-105 ; p. 104. Unstable Orders (57 nary city of Alibia to try to impose his sense of order on what he feels to be a deteriorating Johannesburg. The Uncanny – Re-imagining the ordinary In his collection of essays Rediscovery of the Ordinary, the South African cultural and literary critic, Njabulo Ndebele, has advocated for what he terms the rediscovery of the ordinary in South African literature 6. In The Restless Supermarket Ivan Vladislavić goes beyond such a gesture by, in fact, making the ordinary into the un-ordinary. Among other facets, the author’s Johannesburg is marked by the presence of the uncanny, spectacles that suddenly appear on the streets but also go some way in defining the unpredictable nature of the city. I use uncanny here to approximate a perception of the often playfully strange sense of wondrous coincidence and accidental juxtaposition. I am interested in the manner in which characters seem to willingly write themselves into the postcolonial cityscape as well as how the author deploys the uncanny, the unfamiliar, and uses spectacle to represent the physical and psychic fissures and openings of the city of Johannesburg in general and Hillbrow parti- cularly. Through using situations of the uncanny, different identities are performed or dramatized and spatialized (as in made specific to or characteristic to of particular locales) across the city or urban space. The temporal nature of the city is to be found in terms of the uncanny presences and behaviour of some of the characters in the novel, The Restless Supermarket ; in the manner in which various indi- viduals locate themselves, walk and see the city ; in the represent- tational practices that define their individual identity, sense of self and subjectivities, and in the quest for physical and material cer- tainty through an ephemeral linguistic order. As an illustration of the points above, the dramatic opening lines of The Restless Supermarket feature the strange and somewhat unset- 6 NDEBELE (Njabulo), Rediscovery of the Ordinary : Essays on South African Literature and Culture. Scottsville : University of Kwazulu-Natal Press, 2006, 184 p. This is a collection of essays which were first published in the 1980s. The first two essays in particular – « Turkish Tales and Some Thoughts on South African Fiction » (p. 17-40) and « The Rediscovery of the Ordinary : Some New Writings in South Africa » (p. 41-59) – focus on what he describes as the « inadequacies [of] the modes of story-telling », which inadequacies arise from preoccupation with the « surface » as opposed to the « process » of « rediscovering the ordinary and the creative ». For Ndebele the latter process involves, for example, the development of « independent narrative » or « plot line[s] » instead of an over-reliance on considerations of the grand narratives of nationalism and apartheid. 58) tling sight of a man in a pinstriped suit having sex with a pink ele- phant : A salesman buggering a pink elephant (excuse my Bulgarian). Not a sight one sees every day, even on the streets of Johannes- burg – the Golden City as it were, Egoli as it are, to quote my pal Wessels, the last of the barnacles (RS, p. 3 7). Beyond the connections drawn between « ethnic and linguistic “impurity” » as « symptoms of cultural “mixing” » that Tearle asso- ciates with « decline » 8 one could also suggest that this sarcasm may point to the deterioration in social and linguistic standards that so fixate him. This blurring of borders is partially responsible for the creation of what I term an uncanny effect, especially in the reader’s mind, in that the « familiar » sexual act has been projected onto a space in which the real is inseparable from the unreal. Beyond this, recognition of the coded signs and successful navigation of the labyrinth all add to the effect of the uncanny, both in terms of how the characters in the novel experience the imagined city as well as how the reader’s conceptions are shaped. The excerpt above is also interesting on several other counts, for instance Tearle’s love for wordplay as evidenced in the use of « excuse my Bulgarian » where the commonplace phrase is « excuse my French » 9. While the word Bulgarian in this context plays on the conjugated verb « buggering », it also reveals the narrator’s disdain for the Eastern European migrants into Johannesburg 10, a disdain that is dealt with in greater detail in the later sections of the novel. The migrants are equated with vulgarity and the symbolic buggering or bastardising of the English language. 7 VLADISLAVIĆ (Ivan), The Restless Supermarket [2001]. Cape Town : David Philip, 2006, 339 p. ; p. 3. Hereafter, page references to quotations from the text The Restless Supermarket shall be prefixed with the abbreviation RS. I am using the 2006 imprint, which has different pagination from the 2001 edition. 8 CHAROS (Caitlin), « “The End of an Error” : Transition and “Post-apartheid Play” in Ivan Vladislavić’s The Restless Supermarket », Safundi, vol. 9, n°1, 2008, p. 23-38 ; p. 29. 9 Emphasis added. 10 KNECHT (Stacy), « Interview with Ivan Vladislavić », in : The Ledge : http://www.theledge.com/flash/ledge.php?conversation=47&lan=UK ; availa- ble online 2005, accessed on 22 June 2011. In conversation with Knecht Vladislavić notes how even before the influx of black people, Hillbrow « was always a place that a lot of newcomers to Johannesburg moved through ». Unstable Orders (59 Johannesburg, the imagined city, is also a place of contrasts and uncanny juxtapositions. In Mpe’s Welcome To Our Hillbrow 11 such dramatic representations of distinction can take the form, for instance, of the spatial location of two buildings with very dissimilar functions in very close proximity. Hence we have the Jabula Ebusiku shebeen 12 sharing a fence or wall with the Universal Kingdom of God church, between which the narrator wryly remarks that there is a competition for the spiritual attention of the Hillbrow residents. The presence of the shebeen in the inner city exemplifies both how the township has, in the sense of physical and social infrastructure, come to the city, and also how the demarcations of space that apartheid has attempted to legislate have become porous. In Vladislavić’s imagined Hillbrow in The Restless Supermarket, the rela- tive opulence of the Chelsea Hotel and even the narrator’s favoured haunt of Café Europa are in marked contrast to the poverty and deprivation of the beggars and street-people like the Queen of Sheba. Such cleavages in the social structure of the city reflect on how the lived experience of a metropolitan urbanity such as in Johannesburg is fragmented. In Welcome To Our Hillbrow the nar- rator, at times, resorts to the use of the device of a stream of cons- ciousness to relate the sensual, fragmentary reality of the city because of the multitudinous stimuli. The content of the quotation cited in the preceding paragraph further points to the blurring of boundaries, moral and social, that has become a hallmark of the postcolonial and post-apartheid urban space of Johannesburg in the process of transformation. For the sake of clarity about my use of these two terms at this juncture and later, it is necessary to consider the following. The terms post-apartheid and postcolonial are quite problematic and are not read here as mea- ning definitive breaks with the past, as the periodicity implied in « post » would seem to suggest, and Tearle is tellingly unable to exemplify either of these categories. Christopher Warnes (2000) 13 11 MPE (Phaswane), Welcome to our Hillbrow. Pietermaritzburg : University of Natal Press, 2001, 124 p. 12 Originally a type of illegal liquor outlet that developed in the black townships at the time of segregation, increasingly many shebeens are now licensed and form part of the regular fare on some tourist routes in the major cities of South Africa. Jabula Ebusiku can be literally translated as « enjoy the night ». 13 WARNES (Christopher), « The Making And Unmaking Of History In Ivan Vladislavić’s Propaganda By Monuments and Other Stories », MFS Modern Fiction Studies, vol. 46, no1, 2000, p. 67-89. 60) and Ato Quayson (2000) 14 have, among others, detailed the ambi- guities that generally characterise the genre of postcolonial writing in this respect but, for the present, suffice it to say that when used together, the postcolonial and the urban or metropolitan represent a discursive narrative and terrain – a time and space continuum – in which the individual subject performs his or her identity in the process of becoming or being. Johannesburg, as a city, has become a site of transgressions but Tearle seems to suggest that what he is describing, in this case, may even be beyond some of the extremes that he has become accustomed to. This blurring of borders is partially responsible for the creation of what I term an uncanny effect, especially in the reader’s mind, in that the familiar sexual act has been projected onto a space in which the real is inseparable from the unreal. The pink elephant is in reality a fibreglass mascot for the « Jumbo Liquor Market » 15 that is chained to a parking metre outside the premises, also a regular haunt for the narrator’s closest acquain- tance, Wessels. Such mascots have become part of the everyday experience of the city, especially through the growth of a comer- cialised consumer culture, although this one may have a more locali- sed frame of reference and recognition, unlike global signifiers like Ronald McDonald. In this light, Shane Graham has postulated that the novel « reveals an awareness of consumer capitalism as a force that profoundly shapes perceptions and uses of space, place and time » 16. This mascot is transformed from its everyday significance by the act of an individual man directing his desire towards it. Even the normally taciturn Aubrey Tearle, who « has come to expect undignified behaviour as a matter of course » (RS, p. 3) is shocked. This in spite of the fact that living in the city in such proximity to total strangers has, in Georg Simmel’s formulation, the effect of producing what he describes as the « blasé attitude » or posture 17. The city is a place where one can expect to encounter the unusual, 14 QUAYSON (Ato), Postcolonialism : Theory, Practice or Process ? Cambridge : Polity Press, 2000, 216 p. 15 Jumbo Liquor Market is a franchise chain of liquor stores extending across South Africa’s major urban centres, with each branch displaying such a mascot. The mas- cots are about the size of baby elephants. 16 GRAHAM (Shane), « Memory, memorialisation and the transformation of Johannesburg : Ivan Vladislavić’s The Restless Supermarket and Propaganda by Monuments », MFS Modern Fiction Studies, vol. 53, n°1, 2007, p. 70-97 ; p. 83. 17 SIMMEL (Georg), « The Metropolis and Mental Life », in : KASINITZ (Philip), ed., Metropolis. Center and Symbol of Our Times. New York : New York University Press, 1995, 486 p. ; p. 30-45 ; p. 35. Unstable Orders (61 but here even a hardened Johannesburger like Tearle is unsettled by the sight, notwithstanding his general demeanour of aloofness and unconcern or seeming laissez-faire with the private matters of his « friends » 18 and the people around him. Louis Wirth expands on the theme of the blasé outlook by framing it as a defensive mecha- nism rather than the result of overstimulation : The contacts of the city may indeed be face to face, but they are nevertheless impersonal, superficial, transitory and segmental. The reserve, the indifference, and the blasé outlook which urba- nites manifest in their relationships may thus be regarded as devices for immunising themselves against the personal claims and expectations of others 19. Wirth’s articulation above also best explains the way in which private space is framed in the novel, especially with reference to Tearle, whose residential address none of his friends seems to know. In the incident concerning Darryl and the pink elephant mascot the narrator stops to stare, whilst expressing at the same time the contradictory thought that « [a] lifetime of practice » as a proof- reader had turned him « into one of the world’s most shameless scrutineers » (RS, p. 3). He stares because of the scale of the shock, because of this aberration elicits. Displaying some elements of the flâneur – as an idler or gentleman stroller – the retired Aubrey Tearle now has all the time in the world to indulge his gaze. The gaze in this case is, however, not uni-directional because it can be reflected back on himself as the original watcher. An example of this is the narrator’s own surprisingly self-critical and candid admission that his description of Darryl as a salesman is an act of labelling based on the stereotype of salesmen wearing pinstripe suits. Tearle reveals some of his own presumptions and prejudices, which he euphemistically describes as « [o]ld-fashioned associations » (RS, p. 3). As the crowd continues to gather, Darryl opens « one eye to gauge the response of his growing audience » (RS, p. 5) and the gaze is returned, now turned upon the original viewers. It is Darryl who now evaluates the reactions of the watchers while at the level of morality his actions constitute a challenge to the social lines drawn 18 Single quotation marks are used for « friends » to emphasise the fact that the true nature of the relationship between Aubrey Tearle and his circle of acquain- tances does not extend to the levels of social intimacy implied by the term. 17 WIRTH (Louis), « Urbanism as a Way of Life », The American Journal of Sociology, vol. 44, n°1, 1938, p. 1-24 ; p. 12. 62) to demarcate what is acceptable behaviour and what is not. The overall effect of Darryl’s performance is that in the postcolonial metropolis, the Rabelaisian carnival in Bakhtinian terms, which necessarily includes a festival of the grotesque, has moved from the fields beyond the margins of the city and elements of it are now found closer to the centre. In some respects the spectacle has become part of the everyday. Performance is not reserved for the festival only but becomes part of the street-level intimations of identity 20. Related to the use that Vladislavić makes of the uncanny, or of representing everyday situations in ways which make them appear sometimes strange and unreal, television and TV news is another form of spectacle utilised by the writer as means to re-imagine and represent the postcolonial city. However, Tearle finds this to be a completely unedifying medium. The broadcast of the CODESA 21 proceedings leaves him cold : CODESA this and CODESA that. The country was disappearing behind a cloud of acronyms. As for the decor at the « World Trade Centre » 22 – how could one expect proper political deci- sions to be made in those dreadful surroundings ? The place loo- ked like a brothel (RS, p. 13). Throughout the story Tearle exudes a sense that the decline of what he refers to as « standards » in Hillbrow and Johannesburg generally has coincided with the moment of democracy. In stark contrast to his lexicographical skills, Tearle displays a distinct inabi- lity to gauge history and it seems to pass imperceptibly before his unconvinced eyes. The almost daily marches through the centre of Johannesburg that are now held peacefully without inviting the cus- tomary violent wrath of the authorities are the street-level manifes- tations of the fluidity of the political ground. The CODESA talks highlight the inevitability of change in the apartheid city, change 20 MOELE (Kgebetli), Room 207. Cape Town : Kwela Books, 2006, 238 p. Moele’s narrator in Room 207 recounts how he nonchalantly walks naked from his girlfriend’s flat in Hillbrow to his shared lodgings in another block one morning, and in the process makes a spectacle of himself. 21 The Convention for a Democratic South Africa (CODESA) was a series of mee- tings after the unbanning of the South African liberation struggle movements like the ANC and the release from prison of Nelson Mandela in 1990 that led to a negotiated transition to democracy, culminating in the election of the iconic Mandela as president in 1994. 22 The South African version, located in Kempton Park, Johannesburg. Unstable Orders (63 which is evident to Aubrey Tearle, but that he appears unwilling or unable, initially, to deal with. Alibia and the Allegory of (Linguistic) Order Unable to contend with nor comprehend the socio-political rea- lity that is unfurling before his very eyes, Aubrey Tearle resorts to escapism and the utopian fantasy of Alibia, which is the subject of the middle section of the novel. Language and linguistic order, or what literary critic Irikidzayi Manase refers to as the « linguistic rationality » through which the protagonist « imagines that his city can be preserved from collapse » 23, is closely associated with how Tearle defines his « self » 24 but the irony is that in his digging up the etymological roots of words, for example, he instantiates the ephe- merality of meaning, and of being. In his quest for the essence of words, he discovers troubling, multiple significations. In the end, Aubrey Fluxman (Tearle’s adopted pseudonym in the fantasy) and his colleagues, who are the guardians of the imagined city of Alibia and are armed with proofreading tools such as pencils and erasers, recognise the futility of religiously insisting on a particular order of space. They realise that the ground is constantly shifting beneath them and that the city is in flux. Tearle’s « Proofreaders’ Derby » which he intended as a sort of ode to his craft, remains no more than an exercise in intellectual flânerie. Alibia is a fiction within a fiction, a version of the famed Chinese boxes (that seem to endlessly fold one over the other) or the mise-en-abyme effect of Russian dolls, and serves to illustrate the self-reflexive aspects of postcolonial writing generally, and Ivan Vladislavić’s oeuvre particularly. An interesting proposition is to read Alibia, as a utopian idyll, through allegorical reference to Prospero’s island in William Shakespeare’s The Tempest. The island functions, in this interpreta- 23 MANASE (Irikidzayi), « Johannesburg During the Transition in Vladislavić’s “The WHITES ONLY Bench” and The Restless Supermarket », English Academy Review, vol. 26, n°1, 2009, p. 53-61 ; p. 60. 24 MARAIS (Mike), « Reading Against Race : J.M. Coetzee’s Disgrace, Justin Cartwright’s White Lightning and Ivan Vladislavić’s The Restless Supermarket », Journal of Literary Studies, vol. 19, n°3, 2003, p. 271-289 ; p. 283. Mike Marais describes this process as the collapsing of « the distinction between [the] prota- gonist’s linguistic proofreading and his social proofreading ». He is referring to the manner of Tearle detecting « error ». Similarly, Hegelsson concludes that the difference between « language » and « social reality » is collapsed » – HEGELSSON (Stefan), « “Minor disorders” : Ivan Vladislavić and the devolution of South African English », Journal of Southern African Studies, vol. 30, n°4, 2004, p. 777-787; p. 778.