Simulacrum Diaries: Time, the “moment of writing,” and the diaries of Johanna Brandt-Van Warmelo

Abstract

Diary writing is popularly defined around assumptions about the temporal and spatial circumstances of writing, which underpin the kind of knowledge diaries are often understood to “hold.” The epistemological status of diaries is rooted in an assumed ontology, concerning the time/space of their writing and the temporal location of their writer in relation to “entries” in them.This article explores “what happens” to the knowledge a diary is seen to hold when its ontological basis is disturbed by its assumed “present-ness” being shown to be an artful (mis)representation.

The case study discussed concerns the published diary Het Concentratie-Kamp van Irene (The Irene Concentration Camp, 1905), as well as the manuscript diary, and the letters written concurrently with the preparation of the former for publication, of a South African woman, Johanna Brandt-Van Warmelo. The diary deals with the author's experiences during six weeks spent as a volunteer worker in Irene concentration camp during the 1899–1902 South African War. In the secondary literature, knowledge claims about the Van Warmelo-Brandt diary not only assume referentiality but also the temporal synonymity of “the moment of writing” with “the scene of what is written about.” In particular, the assumption is that the time of its writing, narrative time in each diary entry, and the temporal location of the writer in relation to the diary entries, are all “of the moment.” However, important temporal disjunctures exist between the Brandt manuscript and published diary. Detailed examples are examined by unpacking the “moments of writing” of the manuscript and the published diary, by reference to family letters written by Brandt-Van Warmelo over the period the diary was being prepared for publication. In doing so, we develop the idea of a “simulacrum diary” in thinking about the relationship between the published and manuscript diaries and the complexities of their moments of writing.