Performing in the Margins: Intertextual Memory in Invisible Furies by Michiel Heyns

Abstract

Within the larger context of intertextuality in contemporary South African works of fiction, the article focuses on Michiel Heyns's novel, Invisible Furies, whose characters, plot trajectories, narrative strategies and thematic concerns are closely inscribed over those of Henry James's The Ambassadors. The article questions whether such blatant appropriation of a classic text might not risk becoming a form of self-marginalisation by the appropriating author, acknowledgement of the primacy of the source text and acceptance of an ancillary role. Approaching Heyns's novel from various theoretical perspectives on intertextuality and memory (Kristeva's intertextuality, Genette's hypertextuality, Riffaterre's obligatory intertextuality, Hutcheon's adaptation), the article examines Heyns's narrative performance in the margins of James's text in terms of Hutcheon's redefinition of intertextual parody as “repetition with critical distance that allows ironic signalling of difference at the very heart of similarity”, and concludes that in Invisible Furies Heyns combines an impressive intertextual feat with an ironic interrogation of intertextuality itself.

Keywords:

• contemporary South African fiction
• intertextuality and memory
• Michiel Heyns
• Invisible Furies
• parody

Notes on Contributor

J U Jacobs is Emeritus Professor of English, University Fellow, and Senior Research Associate of the University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, South Africa. He has published extensively on South African and postcolonial writing; his books include Diaspora and Identity in South African Fiction (2016), and, most recently, an edition, with an introduction, of a volume of non-fiction writings by Zakes Mda, Justify the Enemy: Becoming Human in South Africa (2018).

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.