Homosexuality & the Postcolonial Idea: Notes from Kabelo Sello Duiker's The Quiet Violence of Dreams

Summary

INTRODUCTION

Despite its significant contribution towards the transition from apartheid to democracy in South Africa, it is clear nowadays that the Truth and Reconciliation Commission was not faultless. When The Aversion Project states that reconciliation and healing could not occur in the ‘absence of knowledge and understanding’ (Van Zyl et al.: 11), it implies that democracy in South Africa is built over troubling misunderstandings. Kabelo Sello Duiker's The Quiet Violence of Dreams (2001) depicts homosexuality as a privileged symbolic field that translates these misunderstandings. Though enshrined in the 1996 South African Constitution, perceptions of homosexuality are never freed from moral disgust or aversion. In this relation, centring the narrative on homosexuality takes this issue in a similar direction to that of postcolonial theory as portrayed by scholars who assert its ‘subversive strategies’ (Ashcroft et al. 1989: 33). The paper illustrates how homosexuality in The Quiet Violence of Dreams appears like the semiotic realisation's ground of the postcolonial ideal.

HOMOSEXUALITY IN THE QUIET VIOLENCE OF DREAMS

Moura (‘La Critique Postcoloniale, Étude des Spécificités’: 18) and Moudileno (‘Littérature et Postcolonie’: 9) insist that any postcolonial reading needs to always come back to the literary text. Consequently, this section aims to highlight what The Quiet Violence of Dreams is all about, before homosexuality is discussed as the central topic of the narrative. When they came to Cape Town from Johannesburg to study, protagonists Mmabatho and Tshepo believed they could make it in the post-apartheid town. Mmabatho is unwillingly transformed into a heterosexual and lesbian whore because all her black and white male partners deceive her. On his part, Tshepo misses four months of studies at Rhodes University because of psychiatric troubles. After recovery, he looks for jobs in vain. He finally finds a work as masseur at Steamy Windows, a homosexual shop. His profession labels him as ‘Angelo’. Tshepo (Angelo) is found back in Johannesburg at the novel's end, where he takes care of street children in an orphanage.

The focus of the narrative on Angelo-Tshepo makes him play an explicit function in relation to Duiker's commitment in the narrative.