Silence, the Unsaid and the Unsayable in Yvonne Vera’s The Stone Virgins

ABSTRACT

The primary aim of this article is to think through how silence can be considered as generating meaning in literary prose. For this purpose, the article focuses on Zimbabwean author Yvonne Vera’s last novel, The Stone Virgins (2002a), which has often been described as ‘breaking the silence’ about the genocidal violence remembered as Gukurahundi. As a secondary aim, the article sets out to rethink Vera’s idea and argues that rather than ‘breaking’ the silence, her novel explores different forms of silence, some of which are necessary for healing and regeneration. However, silence is not just a theme or motif in the novel: Vera also uses silence in her own writing to generate new meaning. Using an essay by Elleke Boehmer as a point of departure, this article proposes a conceptualisation of silence through two terms: the unsayable and the unsaid, where the former refers to meaning that is suppressed and the latter to that which has not yet been said. It argues that the novel presents a poetics that aligns with its theme of meaning, generative silence, which uses opaque and imprecise syntax and referentiality in a way that maximises the possibility of the unsaid to be said.

KEYWORDS:

• Yvonne Vera
• Gukurahundi
• silence
• the unsayable
• the unsaid
• Elleke Boehmer
• Zimbabwean literature
• The Stone Virgins
• Julia Kristeva
• Wolfgang Iser

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 Different sources give different end dates for the Gukurahundi period. I have chosen to use the longest timespan. Vera’s narrative ends in 1986.

2 It should be noted here that the ethnic composition of ZANU-PF/ZANLA and ZAPU/ZIPRA was more convoluted than is sometimes suggested in the literature (see Alexander 2021, 770).

3 Alexander (2021) references an estimate by CCJP. The CCJP say that at least 3000 people were killed but adds that the number may well be twice that. Alexander does not make an estimate but points out that some sources put the death toll at 20,000 based on a misreading of the CCJP report.

4 Cephas means ‘rock’ and is the name given by Christ to Peter, the apostle.