White on Black in South Africa: A Study of English-Language Inscriptions of Skin Colour (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9780333365731)

The English-speaking whites of South Africa participate in the larger culture of the English-speaking world while rejecting its unspoken consensual positions on many basic issues. This study analyses texts of different kinds produced by the group to examine the way these deviant English-speakers see themselves, and particularly how this self-image is influenced by the presence of the blacks who constitute a crucial part of their perceptual field. Economically powerful but politically marginal for many years, the English-speaking whites have always been mediators of their community's experience to the world culture of the English language; the study shows how the act of mediation operates in more than one direction, producing a literary tradition that is essentially - and perhaps surprisingly - dissident.

Author: Michael Wade
ISBN-10: 0333365739
ISBN-13: 9780333365731
Publisher: Palgrave MacMillan
Language: English
Published: 01/14/1993
Pages: 175
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 0.85lbs
Size: 8.50h x 5.50w x 0.56d