South Africa-sur-Nemunas: transnational hinterlands in Dan Jacobson's Heshel's Kingdom

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Collection:
Mokslo publikacijos / Scientific publications
Document Type:
Straipsnis / Article
Language:
Anglų kalba / English
Title:
South Africa-sur-Nemunas: transnational hinterlands in Dan Jacobson's Heshel's Kingdom
In the Journal:
English in Africa. 2023, vol. 50, no. 2, p. 7-27
Summary / Abstract:

ENThe paper investigates the representation of Central Europe and its hinterlands in selected works by 20th-century South African writers. It pays special attention to Dan Jacobson’s Heshel’s Kingdom about Jacobson’s travel to Lithuania in search of the writer’s “middle-European” patrimony. Drawing on previously unpublished archival records, the study argues that Jacobson’s book merges Central European hinterlands (their histories, identities, landscapes) with South African ones in a radical act of re-mapping both areas. The paper also insists on recognising a distinctive mode of conflating Central Europe and South Africa. This hinternational poetics annuls the existing imperial cartography and builds transnational connections between different hinterlands and their pasts. Additionally, the article demonstrates how the need to “unlearn” imperial history allows for a geographic/spatial overlap between the “heart of the country” and the “core of Europe,” as well as creation of a network of transnational solidarity and implication across nations and ethnicities. Keywords: South Africa, Central Europe, transnationalism, hinternationalism, Dan Jacobson. [From the publication]

DOI:
10.4314/eia.v50i2.1
ISSN:
0376-8902; 2071-7474
Related Publications:
"A Deeper silence" : Dan Jacobson's Lithuania / Geoffrey V. Davis. Africa writing Europe: opposition, juxtaposition, entanglement Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2009. P. 39-66.
Permalink:
https://www.lituanistika.lt/content/108717
Updated:
2024-06-22 14:20:57
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