Dust Explodes for All to See: Narrating the Actual in a Time of Continuous Disaster

Abstract

On 31 December 2019, scientists announced to the world the discovery of a new strain of coronavirus, COVID-19, in the city of Wuhan, China. COVID-19 soon spread globally, and by March had been declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization. In that same month, South Africa began a nationwide lockdown, which was divided into various stages, implemented according to the severity of the pandemic and its potential to cause extreme and rapid loss of life, particularly among South Africa’s vulnerable populations. The impact of COVID-19 further exposed all the wounds and ruptures within contemporary society. Using the poetry of Mxolisi Nyezwa and Angifi Dladla as an analytical lens, this article critiques the distinction between a recognized state of disaster and the everyday state of violence in which the marginalized live and argues that the precarious are living in a state of continuous disaster. It recognizes the vitality and power of critique through literature that engages with the actuality of the present moment. Furthermore, it foregrounds the term ‘the actual’ as preferable to ‘the real’ or ‘reality,’ framed as those terms are by realist epistemologies and the heroic materialism of real capitalism.

Keywords:

• continuous disaster
• slow violence
• the actual
• precarity
• ontological terror
• cruel optimism
• COVID-19
• the unlanguaged
• romantic capitalism
• necropolitics
• reactualization

Notes

1 All references to Angifi Dladla’s poems are from The Girl Who Then Feared to Sleep (2001). Nearly all references to Mxolisi Nyezwa’s work are from Malikhanye (2011), barring a few that are specifically mentioned as being from Song Trials (2000) or New Country (2008).