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The Afrikaans poetry collections grond/Santekraam (2011) by Ronelda S. Kamfer and bientang (2020) by Jolyn Phillips both centralise the ocean and both deal with attempts at recovering repressed black histories. Apart from figuring as a source of spiritual fulfilment and connected to figures in the collection’s livelihoods, the ocean is represented in these collections as the bringer of European colonisers and of slaves to South Africa. In this article I contend that references to slavery and colonialism and the use of words in languages brought to South Africa through slave networks position these collections as products of the transnational Black Atlantic tradition, as theorised by Paul Gilroy. The fact that the narratives of both collections take place in the Overstrand region, near the meeting place of the Atlantic and Indian Oceans, gives an indication of how Gilroy’s theory needs to be adapted to be applicable to Afrikaans literature: as many English-language South African theorists have argued, oceanic literary studies in South Africa should pay as much attention to routes in the Indian Ocean as to Atlantic routes. The emphasis in both collections on not only a history of slavery, but also one of the displacement of and violence against the people already inhabiting the area when colonisers alighted, further serves to indicate what an Afrikaans black aquatic literature looks like. When taking into account these differences between Afrikaans and other versions of black aquatic art, reading grond/Santekraam and bientang as part of a global black aesthetics allows the researcher to identify the ways in which these collections are characterised by a hermeneutics of suspicion (an interpretation of contemporary life that recognises the ways in which it is structured and functions in anti-black ways) and a hermeneutics of memory (an interpretation of this anti-black contemporary as a continuation of the history of the dehumanisation of black people). 

Willem Anker’s debut novel, Siegfried, deals with the experiences of the eponymous character, who is mentally disabled and whose hands and feet are webbed. In this article, an attempt is made to investigate how the theories of Deleuze and Guattari, as well as object oriented ontologies, can be used to argue that the representation of the character of Siegfried involves a blurring of the boundaries between the human and the nonhuman. The second aim of this article is to establish whether such a blurring is ethically problematic, given the cruel ways in which people considered less human than others are often treated. Where the first aim is concerned, it is argued that Siegfried’s interaction with the world challenges hegemonic ideas of human subjectivity, especially ideas of what constitutes normal humanity. In the character of Siegfried traces are found of what can be described, in Deleuze and Guattari’s terms, as becomings. These becomings serve as lines of flight from blocked forms of human subjectivity. The boundaries between what is considered human and what is considered nonhuman are therefore indeed blurred. Concerning the second aim, it is argued that the novel can be read as a critique of the ways in which society treats disabled people, and that it can therefore be brought into dialogue with disability studies. The potential for object oriented ontologies to be apolitical (and even unethical, in this respect), is countered in the analysis of the novel by disability studies’ activism and social commentary. 

Deon Meyer’s post-apocalyptic novel, Fever, opens with Nico Storm, the narrator, and his father being attacked by dogs. Nico is only thirteen years old, but is forced to shoot the dogs to rescue his father. This incident sets the scene for the rest of the novel. It characterises Nico and his father and their relationship. It also informs the reader about the world in which the novel is set. Fever opens a few months after ninety-five percent of the world’s population died as the result of a mysterious virus—one engineered in an attempt to redress ecological imbalances. In this article, the representation of dogs and other canids in Fever is used as a departure point to bring the worldviews of the various characters into dialogue with Timothy Morton’s Dark Ecology. It is argued that the different worldviews (and the place accorded to canids in each) have political and ecological implications. Most of the worldviews can be understood in terms of what Morton calls the “agrilogistic loop” because they are based on the assumption that humans can and should manipulate the nonhuman. Two characters’ view of canids are, however, closer to what Morton terms “ecognosis”, because they acknowledge humans’ (and canids’) entanglement with the rest of nature. ment with the rest of nature.

In this review article, we focus on the depiction of the transnational and translingual as a state of being in-between in Klara du Plessis’s debut poetry collection, Ekke (2018). This in-between state has implications for how identity, place and visual art feature in the collection. Ekke contains fragments of German and French, but consists mainly of English interspersed with Afrikaans. The creation of meaning through this linguistic slippage reflects the idea of identity as always in-process that comes to the fore throughout the collection. Ekke also represents an intervention in South African urban literature, as Bloemfontein, a city not much featured in literature, is represented in several poems. In these poems, the poet/speaker struggles to situate Bloemfontein and its surrounding areas’ histories and symbolism in the transnational networks that she is a part of. The conception of identity and language being constantly in-progress is also conveyed in the collection’s poems about visual art. In these poems, meaning is created through the interaction of language with visual art, a process the poet calls ‘intervisuality’. Keywords: transnationalism, transnational identity, translingualism, multilingual poetry, Klara du Plessis, Bloemfontein in literature, ekphrasis.

In this article, the representations of the ocean in Afrikaans poet Ronelda S. Kamfer's grond/Santekraam (2011) and in 'Water', a poem in Koleka Putuma's Collective Amnesia (2017) are compared. Meg Samuelson's identification of trends in the representation of the ocean in 21 st -century South African prose fiction is used as a reference point. The aim here is to determine whether the same trends are present in these examples of 21 st -century South African poetry. The ocean is depicted in the work of both Kamfer and Putuma as a metaphor for repressed historical trauma. In 'Water' the historical trauma relates to the ocean as route of slavery and colonialism; in grond/Santekraam it relates to slavery but also to a historical event, namely the forced resettlement of the fishing community of Skipskop. In some of the novels that Samuelson discusses, the ocean symbolises the unknowable, the irrational and spiritual. In 'Water' the ocean has a similar connotation. In grond/Santekraam the ocean is not depicted in spiritual terms, but in two poems an underwater town becomes a space in which a mythological version of events can be re-imagined. The unknowability of the ocean floor is depicted as a space in which the tragic influence of historical events on the present can be explored. The way in which the ocean is represented in the poetry of these two South African female poets therefore overlaps with how it is depicted in prose but also differs in the specifity of its metaphorical connotations.

The Afrikaans poetry collections grond/Santekraam (2011) by Ronelda S. Kamfer and bientang (2020) by Jolyn Phillips both centralise the ocean and both deal with attempts at recovering repressed black histories. Apart from figuring as a source of spiritual fulfilment and connected to figures in the collection's livelihoods, the ocean is represented in these collections as the bringer of European colonisers and of slaves to South Africa. In this article I contend that references to slavery and colonialism and the use of words in languages brought to South Africa through slave networks position these collections as products of the transnational Black Atlantic tradition, as theorised by Paul Gilroy. The fact that the narratives of both collections take place in the Overstrand region, near the meeting place of the Atlantic and Indian Oceans, gives an indication of how Gilroy's theory needs to be adapted to be applicable to Afrikaans literature: as many English-language South African theorists have argued, oceanic literary studies in South Africa should pay as much attention to routes in the Indian Ocean as to Atlantic routes. The emphasis in both collections on not only a history of slavery, but also one of the displacement of and violence against the people already inhabiting the area when colonisers alighted, further serves to indicate what an Afrikaans black aquatic literature looks like. When taking into account these diferences between Afrikaans and other versions of black aquatic art, reading grond/Santekraam and bientang as part of a global black aesthetics allows the researcher to identify the ways in which these collections are characterised by a hermeneutics of suspicion (an interpretation of contemporary life that recognises the ways in which it is structured and functions in anti-black ways) and a hermeneutics of memory (an interpretation of this anti-black contemporary as a continuation of the history of the dehumanisation of black people). Keywords: Ronelda S. Kamfer, Jolyn Phillips, slavery in literature, Paul Gilroy, Black Atlantic, black aquatic, Afrikaans poetry, black Afrikaans writing.

The reason for hosting the second colloquium on the QwaQwa campus of the University of the Free State and not in Bloemfontein was precisely to acknowledge the tension between the local and the global, and is in keeping with the Unlaagering Project's ideals of moving away from the central and the centralised. In his welcoming address, the Assistant Dean of the Faculty of Humanities of the QwaQwa campus, Jared McDonald, addressed the complex history of this campus that was incorporated into the University of the Free State in 2003. McDonald describes the campus as being situated \"in a context of transboundaries and transfrontiers, at a geographical and social crossroads\"; being positioned, as it is, in a former 'homeland', close to the Golden Gate National Park, the uKhahlamba-Drakensberg world heritage site, between the Free State and KwaZulu-Natal provinces and neighbouring Lesotho. The cover art was created by Afrikaans comic book artists André and Nathan Trantraal.

Willem Anker’s debut novel, Siegfried, deals with the experiences of the eponymous character, who is mentally disabled and whose hands and feet are webbed. In this article, an attempt is made to investigate how the theories of Deleuze and Guattari, as well as object oriented ontologies, can be used to argue that the representation of the character of Siegfried involves a blurring of the boundaries between the human and the nonhuman. The second aim of this article is to establish whether such a blurring is ethically problematic, given the cruel ways in which people considered less human than others are often treated. Where the first aim is concerned, it is argued that Siegfried’s interaction with the world challenges hegemonic ideas of human subjectivity, especially ideas of what constitutes normal humanity. In the character of Siegfried traces are found of what can be described, in Deleuze and Guattari’s terms, as becomings. These becomings serve as lines of flight from blocked forms of human subjectivity. The boundaries between what is considered human and what is considered nonhuman are therefore indeed blurred. Concerning the second aim, it is argued that the novel can be read as a critique of the ways in which society treats disabled people, and that it can therefore be brought into dialogue with disability studies. The potential for object oriented ontologies to be apolitical (and even unethical, in this respect), is countered in the analysis of the novel by disability studies’ activism and social commentary