Whitelier than white? Inversions of the racial gaze in white Zimbabwean writing

Abstract

This article looks at inscriptions of whiteness in selected white Zimbabwean narratives. Through a reading of Andrea Eames' The Cry of the Go-Away Bird (2011), Alexandra Fuller's Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight (2003) and John Eppel's Absent: the English Teacher (2009), the argument proposes that white Zimbabwean narratives situate whiteness within the context of change and marginality in Zimbabwe. The narratives deal with experiences of change and apprehensions of lived reality marked by the transfer of power from white minority to black majority rule. Our reading of The Cry of the Go-Away Bird examines how whiteness in the postcolonial Zimbabwean state is perceived through an outsider's gaze, resulting in a kind of double consciousness within the (racialized, white) subject of the gaze. It is argued that the text depicts whites as torn between two unreconciled streams of possibility, reinforcing their sense of alienation. Fuller's Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight represents whiteness as a thoroughly ephemeral experience. The meaning of whiteness is mediated through perpetual physical movement as whites travel from one point to another. Eppel's Absent: the English Teacher affords a rethinking of whiteness as an unstable form of identity contingent on historical and political factors.

Keywords:

• Zimbabwean literature
• whiteness
• whiteness studies
• racial gaze
• whiteliness
• double consciousness
• race

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

^1. Department of English, University of Johannesburg, Johannesburg, South Africa.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Research Foundation (NRF) of South Africa, in particular the Rated Researchers Incentive Fund.

Notes on contributors

Cuthbeth Tagwirei

Cuthbeth Tagwirei received his PhD in English at Stellenbosch University in 2014. He is also a post-doctoral fellow in the Department of English at the University of Johannesburg. His research interests include the ‘behaviours’ of literary and cultural systems. He has published in journals such as Journal of Literary Studies, Critical Arts: A Journal of South-North Cultural Media, Children's Literature in Education and Latin American Report.

Leon de Kock

Leon de Kock is emeritus professor of English at Stellenbosch University and senior research associate at the University of Johannesburg. He has published many books and critical articles, including Civilising Barbarians: Missionary Discourse and African Textual Response in Nineteenth Century South Africa (Witwatersrand University Press and Lovedale Press,1997), Bad Sex (2011, a novel), three volumes of poetry, and several works of literary translation, including novels by Marlene van Niekerk, Etienne van Heerden and Ingrid Winterbach. His current book project, Losing the Plot, is due at Witwatersrand University Press in 2016.