Building new selves: identity, “Passing,” and intertextuality in Zoë Wicomb’s Playing in the Light
dc.contributor.author | Hoegberg, David | |
dc.contributor.department | English, School of Liberal Arts | en_US |
dc.date.accessioned | 2018-11-02T16:19:48Z | |
dc.date.available | 2018-11-02T16:19:48Z | |
dc.date.issued | 2018 | |
dc.description.abstract | This article examines Zoë Wicomb’s wide-ranging use of intertextuality in the novel Playing in the Light to explore the links between identity construction and postcolonial authorship. Focusing on the characters as intertextual agents, I argue that the three coloured women on whom the novel focuses – Helen, Marion, and Brenda – use texts in distinctive ways that illuminate their struggles to position themselves in South Africa’s complex and changing racial landscape. Racial “passing” is one form of a larger pattern in the novel of the use of citation and imitation to achieve specific ends. By embedding the citations of Helen and Marion within the citation-rich narrative of Brenda, Wicomb lays bare the mechanisms of identity construction within a work that stages and highlights its own intertextual practices. | en_US |
dc.eprint.version | Author's manuscript | en_US |
dc.identifier.citation | Hoegberg, D. (2018). Building new selves: identity, “Passing,” and intertextuality in Zoë Wicomb’s Playing in the Light. Safundi, 0(0), 1–20. https://doi.org/10.1080/17533171.2018.1453977 | en_US |
dc.identifier.uri | https://hdl.handle.net/1805/17694 | |
dc.language.iso | en | en_US |
dc.relation.isversionof | 10.1080/17533171.2018.1453977 | en_US |
dc.relation.journal | Safundi | en_US |
dc.rights | Publisher Policy | en_US |
dc.source | Author | en_US |
dc.subject | Zoë Wicomb | en_US |
dc.subject | Playing in the Light | en_US |
dc.subject | intertextuality | en_US |
dc.title | Building new selves: identity, “Passing,” and intertextuality in Zoë Wicomb’s Playing in the Light | en_US |
dc.type | Article | en_US |