Reading emotion, reading joy: South Africa’s literary non-scenes

Abstract

#Fallism has taken South African literature to a precipice. A growing mistrust in the country’s postcolonial politics and the continuing physical and economic oppression of black bodies–captured in the spirit of #RhodesMustFall–has led to a questioning of the rational desire to ‘put into words’. The radical social and political change required, critics imply, can no longer be adequately understood through the certainty of the written form: The path to a true decolonial future is in live art. This paper uses these suggestions as a springboard but refuses to accept the ‘death of the text’ that is implied. Rather I utilise interventions from the 1980s to once again encourage the academy to recognise the power of ‘literary non-scenes’ where the performed and the written interact. Moreover, I argue that scholars should begin to read for emotion and, in so doing, open the space for the expression of Black joy.