Stobie, C. 2012. “Dystopian dreams from South Africa: Lauren Beukes’ Moxyland and Zoo City”
Introduction
Utopia, dystopia, eutopia
The national mood in post-apartheid South Africa, and dystopian cultural
production
Zoo City
a polarised discourse of race is now distressingly prevalent in South Africa
post-apartheid euphoria has been followed by disenchantment and
melancholy
Writers can revitalise the
power of language
segregation, criminality, violence, oppression and
human rights violations which characterised the past and persists into the future
representations of dystopias, imaginary spaces in
literature which are clearly worse than contemporary society
dystopias
allow for some hope, or ‘social dreaming’ within the reader
social dreaming within
a dystopian text
progressively more disaffected and
alienated, leading to a counter-narrative of politicised resistance
no closure, but offer certain
possibilities
insights of feminism,
postmodernism and postcolonialism, and offer a range of voices
=resistance
postcolonial dystopia = critical dystopia
critique universalising power systems, such as patriarchy
Hope, and the mood shifted to a post-apartheid mindset
cultural relativism was under scrutiny
post-apartheid utopian fiction
engages with issues of national and cultural identity obliquely
optimistic mood, relief
Thabo Mbeki’s presidency
public protest and paranoia
stemming from high crime and unemployment rates, lack of service delivery, a power
crisis, xenophobic attacks
corruption, racketeering, cronyism and sexual
intemperateness
critical dystopianism in South African cultural products
national mood
slump of the Mbeki and Zuma eras
Dystopian
critical dystopia
criticise socio-political systems from the perspective of disaffected outsiders
‘militant pessimism', ‘focused anger’ and ‘radical hope’
offer no refuge
historically significant South African city, Johannesburg, black gold miners
‘muti noir' novel
As a result of a serious crime, each of these individuals has been mystically bonded with an
animal
extreme contrasts in economic circumstances
aphorism encapsulates concepts of risk, money, crime, sexual
transgression and punishment
centre of xenophobic
attacks
Most of them are marked as criminals by their animal
familiars
‘Murderers, rapists, junkies. Scum of the earth
undertow
‘Murderers, rapists, junkies. Scum of the earth
possibility of hope and redemption
Chronotype
2010
‘zoo’ is conferred with a psychic gift which brings redmption
first-person present-tense narration
multiplicity of perspectives
brings noir into dialogue
with postcolonialism and feminism
5 features of a noir novel oneiric, strange, erotic,
ambivalent, and cruel
characters are flawed and alienated, and are frequently shown as engaged in
love affairs
flashbacks
pessimism, doomed fate
Zoo City, the text’s nickname for Hillbrow
Sangoma, past, sins, muti, traditional Zulu culture