The excremental postapartheid imaginary: Niq Mhlongo’s Dog Eat Dog

ABSTRACT

Niq Mhlongo’s use of scatology in Dog Eat Dog foregrounds his exploration of the temporal affects of disillusionment and disappointment. Drawing together critical and theoretical writing on affect, scatology, the postcolony, and abjection, this article contends that corporeality is symbolically and politically significant in the postapartheid imaginary. This significance is evident throughout Dog Eat Dog, especially in two episodes set in university toilets, which explore through corporeal imagery the topics of racial abjection, vulnerability, and exclusion in postapartheid South Africa. The article draws attention to the affective and political aspects of Mhlongo’s excremental postapartheid vision, a feature of his (and others’) writing which should not be dismissed, for example, as extraneous or merely comic detail. Implicit in the argument is the call for nuanced readings in postapartheid literature of the body and its processes; these representations of corporeality often signal political inequality and exclusion within the social body itself.

KEYWORDS:

• Postapartheid literature
• affect
• scatology
• abjection

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

¹ Refapa, “Indigeneity in Modernity,” 104. As Lesibana Refapa points out, Mhlongo’s style has often been interpreted as “normatively picaresque.”

² Van der Vlies, Present Imperfect, vii.

³ Ibid., viii.

⁴ Esty, “Excremental Postcolonialism,” 24.

⁵ Van der Vlies, Present Imperfect, vii.

⁶ Ibid., viii.

⁷ Ibid., original emphasis.

⁸ Ibid., ix, original emphasis.

⁹ Ibid., original emphasis.

¹⁰ Ibid., 14.

¹¹ Ibid., 20.

¹² Hook, (Post)Apartheid Conditions, 4.

¹³ Ibid., 5.

¹⁴ Ibid., 4.

¹⁵ Ibid., 6, original emphasis.

¹⁶ Van der Vlies, Present Imperfect, 153.

¹⁷ Minesh Dass, in his article “Niq Mhlongo told us #FeesMustFall,” notes the lack of sustained scholarly attention to Dog Eat Dog in South African criticism. As he points out – besides essays written by Christopher Warnes and Lesibana Refapa (and now himself, of course) – articles that mention Dog Eat Dog do so only in passing and/or to note an exciting new voice in black writing. This article seeks to contribute to an expanding critical interest in Mhlongo’s novel.

¹⁸ Van der Vlies, Present Imperfect, 152.

¹⁹ Warnes, “Welcome to Msawawa,” 549.

²⁰ Mhlongo, Dog Eat Dog, 62.

²¹ See: Goldie, “A Connection of Images”; Esty, “Excremental Postcolonialism”; Wayne and Grogan, “Abjection in Dambudzo Marechera’s House of Hunger.”

²² Esty, “Excremental Postcolonialism,” 23.

²³ Ibid., 30

²⁴ Ibid., 26.

²⁵ Ibid., 25.

²⁶ Ibid.

²⁷ Ibid., 26

²⁸ Grogan, “(Im)Purity, Danger and the Body,” 31.

²⁹ Douglas, Purity and Danger, 36.

³⁰ Ibid., 4. Notions of cleanliness and order are readily adopted and deployed by oppressive, unequal societies that “order” themselves according to difference; here, racist affects such as disgust and contempt then hold these notions in place.

³¹ Kenqu, “Plunging into the Mire,” 155.

³² Dass, “Niq Mhlongo told us #FeesMustFall,” 119.

³³ Tsehloane, “The Tragic and the Comic,” 82.

³⁴ Mhlongo, Dog Eat Dog, 165.

³⁵ Mhlongo, Dog Eat Dog, 70.

³⁶ Ibid., 9.

³⁷ Ibid.

³⁸ Ibid., 13.

³⁹ Ahmed, The Cultural Politics of Emotions, 88.

⁴⁰ Ibid., 89, original emphasis.

⁴¹ Mhlongo, Dog Eat Dog, 248, emphasis added.

⁴² Ibid., 33.

⁴³ Ibid., 60. The Bantu Education Act of 1953 was an Apartheid law governing the education of black children and enforcing racially segregated educational facilities.

⁴⁴ Ibid., 26.

⁴⁵ Ibid., 10.

⁴⁶ Douglas, Purity and Danger, 36.

⁴⁷ Esty, “Excremental Postcolonialism,” 26.

⁴⁸ Mhlongo, Dog Eat Dog, 34.

⁴⁹ Ibid.

⁵⁰ Kristeva, Powers of Horror, 8. According to Kristeva, the process of abjection (of rejecting the abject) allows for subjectivity, which must separate itself from dirt and degeneration; it allows the subject to perceive itself as “clean and proper,” as a discrete entity. In Dog Eat Dog, the condition of postapartheid abjection (of embodying the abject) disallows this coming-into-being, preventing Dingz’s development or bildung.

⁵¹ Ahmed, The Cultural Politics of Emotion, 89.

⁵² Mhlongo, Dog Eat Dog, 34.

⁵³ Ibid., 35.

⁵⁴ Ibid.

⁵⁵ Ibid.

⁵⁶ Ibid.

⁵⁷ Ibid., 36.

⁵⁸ Ibid., 35.

⁵⁹ Ibid., 170.

⁶⁰ Fourie and Meyer, The Politics of AIDS Denialism, 132. In 2004, as Mbeki began his second term as president, Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, notorious for her emphasis on treating AIDS with vegetables like beetroot and potatoes rather than antiretrovirals, was reappointed as Minister of Health.

⁶¹ Mhlongo, Dog Eat Dog, 139.

⁶² Ibid., 141.

⁶³ Ibid., 142.

⁶⁴ Van der Vlies, Present Imperfect, vii.

⁶⁵ Mhlongo, Dog Eat Dog, 171.

⁶⁶ Ibid.

⁶⁷ Armah, The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born, 124.

⁶⁸ Mhlongo, Dog Eat Dog, 171.

⁶⁹ Ibid.

⁷⁰ Hook, (Post)Apartheid Conditions, 4.

⁷¹ Van der Vlies, Present Imperfect, 14.

⁷² Esty, “Excremental Postcolonialism,” 44.

⁷³ Mhlongo, Dog Eat Dog, 35.

⁷⁴ Ibid., 34.

⁷⁵ Maxwele, “The Not So Potty Idea.”

⁷⁶ Ibid.

⁷⁷ Ibid.

⁷⁸ Mhlongo, Dog Eat Dog, 224.

⁷⁹ Ibid. 225.

⁸⁰ Ibid., 224.

⁸¹ Kristeva, Powers of Horror, 8.

⁸² Mhlongo, Dog Eat Dog, 254.

⁸³ Ibid., 257.

⁸⁴ Ibid

⁸⁵ Ibid.

⁸⁶ Ibid, 260.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Research Foundation (Grant Number 109070).

Notes on contributors

Bridget Grogan

Bridget Grogan is an Associate Professor in the Department of English at the University of Johannesburg. She holds a rating from the National Research Foundation of South Africa as an emerging yet established researcher. Her research focuses on corporeality, embodiment, and affect in modernist, twentieth-century, and contemporary writing. She has published a monograph on abjection in the fiction of Australian modernist Patrick White and a range of articles on corporeality in South African and world literature.