Reverie qua ‘Worldliness’ in the Wilderness Texts: the Autobiographical Fiction of Es’kia Mphahlele and Chabani Manganyi
Masemola, Kgomotso
Written from the culmination point of exile in the universities of Denver and Yale, the two
fictional autobiographies of Es’kia Mphahlele and Noel Chabani Manganyi mobilize
reverie to hold in counterpoise the harsh reality of hostile home and exile. The article
argues, through a reading of these texts via ideas of double consciousness and temporality,
that we need to interpret reverie at the level of the interpenetration of the subject and
object as both counterpoint to and counterpart of the ‘I’ and ‘me’ of fictional
autobiography. These fictional autobiographies are framed in the double temporality of the‘inside’ and ‘outside’ of exile, the most powerful trope of which is the near-escapism of
reverie itself in the course of fantasies of violence. The fictional autobiography of exile –
what is here called the wilderness text – becomes a line of flight imbued with a
worldliness (a being-in-the world) that puts the body at stake as it contemplates and
solidifies existing reality by doubling its representational time by means of reverie.
↧