Representing Dissension

This study seeks to explore all South African fictional representations by white writers in English related to historically recorded acts of dissidence or agitation during the period c. 1906 to c. 1956. For too long the world of political and labour issues has been regarded as not quite proper for literary criticism undertaken by liberal humanists. The author of Representing dissension wishes to recuperate notions of an authentic liberalism in a society where this philosophy has been mocked and repudiated by both the left and the right. Thus the title investigates, from a liberal humanist perspective, ways in which writers of fiction represent particular events or phases in South African history involving sociopolitical dissidence and agitation. In doing so it seeks to develop an intimate sense of the actuality of a period by using historical material close in date to the period itself. However, the study is not primarily intended to supplement or correct the evidence available to historians.Rather it is concerned with the degree to which writers' re-creation of particular events or historical phases may have led them to some awareness of the gap between the actual and an ideal, n