Synopsis
What happens when we cross a significant boundary? We step into an unsettling in-between zone, where we have to abandon accepted structures and truths. Yet this liminal zone can also open up possibilities for inner transformation, leading to the birth of a new sense of fellowship. Since 1994, South Africans have been experiencing the anxieties of old structures breaking down and of new ones being built – a process that South African authors have been powerfully representing and questioning. Beyond the Threshold analyzes the transformative powers of liminal states and hybridizing processes in literature. Its authors discuss a wide range of intriguing liminal characters, dangerous liminal situations, and unique transformations in recent books mainly from South Africa. These books tell the compelling stories of marginal characters, giving their stories moral authority while exploring their transformative possibilities.
About the Author
The Editors: Hein Viljoen is Professor of Afrikaans and Dutch literature at the Potchefstroom Campus of the North-West University, South Africa. He received his Ph.D. from the same university in 1985 on a comparative study of three South African novels using a systems approach. Since then he has published widely on Afrikaans literature and literary theory, including a joint volume with Chris N. van der Merwe on methodology and representation and an introduction to literary theory. Van der Merwe and he also co-edited Storyscapes – South African Perspectives on Literature, Space and Identity (Peter Lang, 2004). His current research interests are identity and hybridity in recent Afrikaans and South African literature.
Chris N. van der Merwe is Associate Professor of Afrikaans and Dutch Literature at the University of Cape Town. He has written many articles in Afrikaans, Dutch, and English on South African and Dutch literature and theory of literature. He is also the author and editor of a number of books, including Breaking Barriers – Stereotypes and the Changing of Values in Afrikaans Literature (1994) and Strangely Familiar – South African Narratives on Town and Countryside (2001). His current research, in collaboration with Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela, focuses on narrative and trauma, and their joint book Narrating Our Healing – Perspectives on Working through Trauma is forthcoming.
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