'Iron on iron': modernism engaging apartheid in some South African railway poems

Wright, Laurence

Title: 'Iron on iron': modernism engaging apartheid in some South African railway poems
Creator: Wright, Laurence
Date Issued: 2011
Date: 2011
Type: text
Type: article
Identifier: vital:7068
Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1007459
Identifier: https://doi.org/10.1080/00138398.2011.626177
Description: preprint
Description: Modernism tends to be criticised, internationally, as politically conservative. The objection is often valid, although the charge says little about the quality of artistic achievement involved. This article argues that the alliance between Modernism and political conservatism is by no means a necessary one, and that there are instances where modernist vision has been used to convey substantive political insight, effective social critique and solid resistance. To illustrate the contrast,the article juxtaposes the abstract Modernism associated with Ben Nicholson and World War 2, with a neglected strain of South African railway poetry which uses modernist techniques to effect a powerful critique of South Africa’s apartheid dispensation. The article sustains a distinction between universalising modernist art that requires ethical work from its audiences to achieve artistic completion, and art in which modernist vision performs the requisite ethical work within its own formal constraints. Four very different South African railway poems, by Dennis Brutus, John Hendrickse, Alan Paton, and Leonard Koza, are examined and contextualised to demonstrate ways in which a modernist vision has been used to portray the social disruptions caused by apartheid. Modernist techniques are used to turn railway experience into a metonym for massive social disruption,without betraying the social reality of the transport technology involved.
Format: 15 pages
Format: pdf
Language: English
Relation: English Studies in Africa
Relation: Wright, L.S. (2011) 'Iron on iron': Modernism engaging apartheid in some South African Railway Poems. English Studies in Africa, 54 (2). pp. 1-15
Relation: English Studies in Africa volume 54 number 2 1 15 Nov 2011 type="issn">0376-8902
Rights: Wright, Laurence
Rights: Use of this resource is governed by the terms and conditions of the English Studies in Africa Self-archiving Policy

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RU Institute for the Study of English in Africa (ISEA)

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