English Academic Literary Discourse in South Africa 1958-2004

This book constitutes a thorough examination of the discipline of English Studies in South Africa in the period 1958-2004. The Foucauldian typology of procedures determining discursive production is systematically applied to demonstrate the existence of such procedures and to provide empirical evidence to subvert the contention that the discipline is unruly and its choice of objects random. During the period under review, South African imaginative written artefacts have moved from a marginal position to the centre of focus of the discipline. In addition, the common conception of what constitutes the 'literary' has returned to a pre-Practical criticism definition, broadly inclusive of a variety of types of artefact in addition to imaginative writing, such as autobiography, letters, journals and orature.