The Literature Police

Apartheid Censorship and Its Cultural Consequences

Peter D. McDonald

A fascinating account of the inner workings of literary censorship carried out in the name of one of the most repressive regimes of the post-war era, and of the cultural resistance it inspired
Focuses on the work of well-known writers - including Nadine Gordimer, J. M. Coetzee, Andre Brink, Breyten Breytenbach, and Es'kia Mphahlele - as well as attending to the vast number of more obscure, but no less inventive, figures whose cultural and political impact was significant but not widely recognised
Transforms our understanding of the literary history of apartheid South Africa - and adds a new chapter to the story of the struggle against apartheid both in South Africa and the wider world
Draws on and presents a wealth of original and previously unknown material - state archives, the archives of publishers and writers' groups, and oral testimony by censors, writers and publishers
Uncovers the roles of the often forgotten gatekeepers and guardians who make and unmake the space of culture - publishers, reviewers, prize judges, writers themselves, and, more perversely, censors

The Literature Police

Apartheid Censorship and Its Cultural Consequences

Peter D. McDonald

Description

'Censorship may have to do with literature', Nadine Gordimer once said, 'but literature has nothing whatever to do with censorship.'

As the history of many repressive regimes shows, this vital borderline has seldom been so clearly demarcated. Just how murky it can sometimes be is compellingly exemplified in the case of apartheid South Africa. For reasons that were neither obvious nor historically inevitable, the apartheid censors were not only the agents of the white minority government's repressive anxieties about the medium of print. They were also officially-certified guardians of the literary. This book is centrally about the often unpredictable cultural consequences of this paradoxical situation.

Peter D. McDonald brings to light a wealth of new evidence - from the once secret archives of the censorship bureaucracy, from the records of resistance publishers and writers' groups both in the country and abroad - and uses extensive oral testimony. He tells the strangely tangled stories of censorship and literature in apartheid South Africa and, in the process, uncovers an extraordinarily complex web of cultural connections linking Europe and Africa, East and West.

The Literature Police affords a unique perspective on one of the most anachronistic, exploitative, and racist modern states of the post-war era, and on some of the many forms of cultural resistance it inspired. It also raises urgent questions about how we understand the category of the literary in today's globalized, intercultural world.

The Literature Police

Apartheid Censorship and Its Cultural Consequences

Peter D. McDonald

Preface
Note to the Reader
Part I: Creating Spaces/Guarding Borders
1: Censors
2: Publishers
3: Writers
Part II: Singular Situations/Disruptive Moments
1: Nadine Gordimer and the Strength of African Fiction
2: Afrikan versus Volks Humanism: Es'kia Mphahlele's Worldly Music and the Transcendent Space of Culture
3: Connected versus Internal Critics: Breytenbach, Leroux and the Volk Avant Garde
4: BLAC Books, Black (Anti-)Poetics
5: J. M. Coetzee: The Provincial Storyteller
6: Protest and Beyond: Third-World People's Stories in the Staffrider Series
Postscript
Acknowledgements
Chronology
Bibliography

The Literature Police

Apartheid Censorship and Its Cultural Consequences

Peter D. McDonald

Author Information

Peter D. McDonald, Fellow of St Hugh's College and Lecturer in English at the University of Oxford

The Literature Police

Apartheid Censorship and Its Cultural Consequences

Peter D. McDonald

Reviews and Awards

"For South Africans, Peter McDonald's brilliant book will explain many perplexing events and help to heal many wounds. For the rest of us it is food for thought about our own professional judgements, and about the situation of creative writing in our own society." - The Australian Library Journal

"I recommend this complex book and the associated website - www.theliteraturepolice.com - not just to students of South African literatue and history, but to readers of all kinds" - C. J. Driver, The Use of English