The white crisis : an analysis of the redemption of guilt in postcolonial Southern African literature.

• Main Author: Leong, Lucas Wei Ben.
• Other Authors: Bede Tregear Scott
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: 2013
• Subjects: DRNTU::Humanities
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/54983
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

A common underlying theme in postcolonial literature centres on manifestations of White colonial guilt and its effects on the coloniser vis a vis the colonised. In relating the common themes of JM Coetzee’s Disgrace, Waiting for the Barbarians and Doris Lessing’s The Grass Is Singing, we see that the manifestations of guilt in these postcolonial novels is seen as a destabilising force, and the acceptance of which ultimately leads the protagonists to exclusion from their native societies. In essence, accepting and attempting to reconcile White colonial guilt is ultimately a futile exercise in attempting to lesson collective guilt in a social system so deeply entrenched in the postponement and denial of guilt due to deep-set issues such as superiority complexes. In understanding these manifestations of guilt, the theories of Sigmund Freud comes to the fore, as we attempt to affix psychoanalytical studies to the issues presented in the novels.