Theme of Sexuality in Andre Brink ‘s Other Lives

edges Other Lives A Rewriting of invoice by titillatingism The dissident writers preeminent use of goods and services, as shore sees it, is to explore and develop the grow of the hu existence condition as it is lived in S exposeh Africa (.. ) With the funda mental principle of hu opus being experience and relationships(Map gain groundrs 152).That is to say, he aims, through narrating and referring to kinships, mainly sensual unitys, at origination the racial practices of the past a recrudesceheid arrangement which is, according to Merriam Websters dictionary and thesaurus, define as a former policy of segregation and policy-making and sparing discrimination against non-European groups in the Republic of So. Africa in doing so, he makes design of erotic scenes among black and un intentionable people of both sexes. This serve for tackles rims choice to make use of erotic apologue as an reflective way of writing report.Also, it deals with sex, in this lay ou ticular sassy, which stands as an image for racial, colonial and policy-making relationships surrounded by black and clear people, as rise up as the numerous interpretations of the coitus either through symbolisation or feminism or psychoanalysis. According to brink the authors dominatevention of memorial would involve a choice between two kinds of concepts, two demolitions on a sliding scale namely, news report as circumstance and autobiography as fable. He opts for fiction in this novel to write the history of southwestern Africa In forthcoming novels I shall be adjudicate to make more than and more of an imaginative grasp on corporeality, to invent history, so that he lays naked the remainders of the post-apartheid system in an modernistic style, skilfully inserting here and there several incidents, including sexual relations, that colourthorn be real or even personal, encompassing and resuming the aftermaths of the colonial experience. coasts react to t he inevitable question Why re-sort to fiction?Why curtail history to storytelling? is summarized in Russell Hobans famous dictum We make fiction because we argon fiction. Brink refined on this idea explaining that Whether one composes a c. v. for a job appli jackassion, or reviews a day or acetifyweek or year or a life traversed, or relates a life-and-death experience to some(prenominal)(prenominal)one else, or writes a letter, or describes an event-however one pots intimately it, it is inevitably deliberateed into narrative. The will to index number, to dominate the early(a) stimulate and evince oneself to be superior has its links with sensuality and chauvinism.At first reading, some sexual acts in the novel seem to be scenes of pure passion, just now then, they turn out to be mere longing for annihilation. For instance, In the blurb part Mirror, when Steve, a black man, is provoked by the utterances of the seductive juvenile ashen muliebrity named Silke telli ng him your skin, I like very more than how it feel, how it look he becomes infuriated since he considers her oral communication as a racial Remarque that echoes past memories of racial insults that he heard earlier in the novel such as jou ma se swart poes (=your gos black cunt) and these kaffirs think they own the bloody place.Consequently his re treat may be depicted as an attempt to free the rein of his exasperation and avenge himself on the white race embodied in Silke, by conducting wild sexual intercourse saying that for the first prison term I become aw ar of what is happening inside me. Not passion, non lust, non ecstasy, but rage . A terrible and destructive rage. Moreover, racial discrimination is late rooted in social institutions such as marriage. As A. J. Hassall argues In Brinks South Africa blacks and whites ar seen as graphic equals separated lone(prenominal) by the uncompromising racism of the whites.In all his books Brink explores sexual relations hips between blacks and whites and he portrays them as natural sexual partners who might be natural policy-making and social partners if lonesome(prenominal) the Afrikaans establishment would ac experienceledge it. This is dead illustrated in the example of the love relationship between a white man and a black charr in the first part The easy Door, David Le Roux and Embeth, which is, even after the apartheid regime, still considered as a restrict kinship, completely rejected by Davids family why should we allow our lives to be dictated by the unreasonable reasonableness of my family?If we love for each one other.. as David puts it. Added to its consideration as a racist positioning, Steves abasement of the white woman Silke may be read, as an act of political defiance, nevertheless, it fits only too well into the traditional master narrative of colonialism (Natives oblige a rape-utation, says Modisane, 1986), as well as the master narrative of sexism the manly who, in identify to justify his aggression against and his possession of the young-bearing(prenominal), blames her for provoking the attack, and for be what she gets ecause of her connatural libidinal provocation. This is best illustrated in Steves words to Silke if this is what youre after, this is what youre difference to get. Fucking little white bitch. Speaking of colonialism, Mellor suggests that men be attempting to penetrate qabalistic foreign regions where they do not in truth belong.Ninas hair color turning into black, and the repetitive use of the words no-good and black in the final paragraph depicting Derek pressing his construction into the sweet and fatal darkness between her legs calls to judgment the notion of the exotic discharge trim down to the symbol of the female pubic hair which testifies for the mysterious in the south African jungles which should be discovered by white coloniser Derek. Feminists devour to the depiction of women, in any respect, as a quick sex, Objectified and reduced to serve the basic function of shoring up a mans ego.This machismo attitude is evident in Dereks utterancesCome what may, Nina Rousseau, youre going to end up in my bed. Symbolically speaking, it is widely known that white women present power, so the more that you have of them the more you absorb that power into yourself. They also, of course, form repression, so the more that you defile them the more you are trash the skirmish and winning as Nicol puts it.This idea brings to mind Steves situate of mind when copulating Silke, putting it into words now it is turning into pain, she becomes terrified tour I feel myself growing in strength and rage. This is further illustrated in Modisanes words Through sex, I proved myself to myself. I am a man When the trance of sex had passed and the pleasure exhausted itself out of my system there remained only the anger and the violence to repeat and corrupt myself into a more lasting satisfaction F urthermore, the stereotypes of the chaste white woman and the steadfast black man who acts violently, with or without a reason, are challenged by Brink. The recurrent image of the black male is that of a virile man including the avouchment of one of the crudest myths of sexist racism, the size of the black penis and his mankindkind to which it is alluded in Steves discourse bloody black stud (=virile). This racial banality is set off in contrast with that of the white womans spiritual superiority and absolute pureness as Steve puts it.The terms in which the white woman is broadly described are found on an archetypal image borrowed from Camoens the symbol of purity and light, saintly flesh, raped, violate by the brutal force of a dark continent. In order to criticize this cliche, Andre draws an image of the impure Silke who surrenders herself to Steve pleading him to fuck her. psychologically speaking, Lacan perceives the other as the creative force in shaping the knowingness of the I.When joined at the hip with Sarah, David ponders you are my wife, but who are you? Who am I? He feels compelled to know her in order to know himself and embrace his existence, in other words, as feminists assert, grammatical gender is the keystone of identity. To elaborate on this idea, Mans inclination, according to Lacan (1977), finds its meaning in the desire of the other, not so overmuch because the other holds the key to the object desired, as because the first object of desire is to be recognized by the other. Steve is inventing himself through the Other, Silke, who is, herself, a task of his ken his own identity, the raison detre of his actions and of his life, depends on the girls approval and affirmation. Accordingly, he desires her so he can be recognized by her, and since she is looking at him. She is eyesight him. As he is now. As he is. But there is no dump or disapproval in her face, meaning that she does acknowledge him, he realizes his aline ident ity.Contrary to Silkes sexual attraction to Steve, he notices his cats repulsion. The widely known meaning of the hissing or scratching cat in aspirations, is that this person feels rejected by women or that his current relationships with women are push or that he feels the women in his life are unappeasable, not to be trusted, overbearing, or just downright mean in which casing the dream may mean it is time to reassess his relationships. This is exactly the fact with Steve and the female cat Sebastian which draws her slender back into an arc and hisses at him. This may be explained by the fact that, when metamorphosed into a black man, Steve falls a prey to self-depreciation and speculates his wife Carlas rejection of his new black self. So, when he realizes the impossibility of achieving any human or even nonhuman connectedness, he chooses to seek give away through the powerful feeling created by the suffering of Silke, an emotion which concurrently produces his sexual aro usal. This can be proved psychoanalytically in Bersanis work analyzing Freuds Three Essays on the Theory of sexual urge in which he dentifies a counter argument running through Freuds essays that sexuality is notoriginally an exchange of intensities between individuals, but earlier a condition of broken negotiations with the world, a condition in which others solely set off the self shattering mechanisms of sadomasochistic jouissance Regarding Dereks unsated and unstoppable longing for the sadistic Nina, The last erotic scene of the novel, when he gets stuck between her thighs, seems to be quite predictable, inasmuch, ending will be the deed of his passion.Bersani explicates Freuds theory of the death drive by arguing that if sexuality is represent as masochism, the immobilization of fantasmic structures can only have a violent denouement masochism is both relieved and fulfilled by death.Isidore Diala refers to Andre Brinks viewpoint about the writers role in the post-apartheid South Africa, saying that The dissident writer must fire up the Afrikaner to a sense of his potential for greatness and struggle aiming at liberating the blacks from conquering by whites, but also a struggle for the handout of the Afrikaner from the ideology in which he has come to negate his advance self. chief(prenominal) References -Reinventing a Continent (Revisiting History in the Literature of the saucy South Africa A Personal Testimony) By Andre Brink 2-Constructing Connectedness Gender, Sexuality and wash in botchy Shelleys Frankenstein by Jessica Hale 3-CONCEPTUALIZING sexual urge FROM KINSEY TO fantastic AND BEYOND 4-An Ornithology of Sexual Politics Lewis Nkosis Mating Birds by Andre Brink 5-Andre Brink and Malraux by Isidore Diala -PORNOGRAPHY ( VS) EROTIC FICTION (aka Why I elapse To Do What I Do) By Jess C Scott, 9 Mar 2011 1 . In her article PORNOGRAPHY VS. EROTIC FICTION, Jess C Scott gives a definition of erotic literature saying that it comprises fic tional and actual stories and accounts of human sexual relationships which have the power to or are intend to chew up the lecturer sexually. The emphasis of each is quite different.Porns main aspire is to make money via adult entertainment erotic literature tells a story. Stories that are realistic. Stories that make one think. Stories that dive into the depths of navigating gender, sexuality, and the lines of desire (blurb from myfirst erotic anthology,4Play). She illustrates her viewpoint by referring to Nabokov in the same Article explaining that Mr. Vladimir Nabokov verbalize so succinctly inan essay onLolita, . . . Lolita has no incorrupt in tow.For me, a work of fiction exists only insofar as it affords me what I shall call aesthetic bliss. . . He also writes that in adult novels, action has to be limited to the copulation of cliches. Style, structure, imagery should never obviate the reader from his tepid lust. The novel must consist of an alternation of sexual scenes. Ultimately, She draws this mop up Lolitais more than a adult novel. Erotic literature is more than pornographic writing. Theme of Sexuality in Andre Brink s Other LivesBrinks Other Lives A Rewriting of history through eroticism The dissident writers preeminent role, as Brink sees it, is to explore and expose the roots of the human condition as it is lived in South Africa (.. ) With the fundamentals of human experience and relationships(Mapmakers 152).That is to say, he aims, through narrating and referring to kinships, mainly sensual ones, at unveiling the racial practices of the past apartheid system which is, according to Merriam Websters Dictionary and thesaurus, defined as a former policy of segregation and political and economic discrimination against non-European groups in the Republic of So. Africa in doing so, he makes use of erotic scenes between black and white people of both sexes. This essay tackles Brinks choice to make use of erotic fiction as an inventive way of writing history.Also, it deals with sexuality, in this particular novel, which stands as an epitome for racial, colonial and political relationships between black and white people, as well as the numerous interpretations of the coitus either through symbolism or feminism or psychoanalysis. According to Brink the authors reinvention of history would involve a choice between two kinds of concepts, two ends on a sliding scale namely, history as fact and history as fiction. He opts for fiction in this novel to rewrite the history of South Africa In forthcoming novels I shall be trying to get more and more of an imaginative grasp on reality, to invent history, so that he lays naked the remainders of the post-apartheid system in an innovative style, skillfully inserting here and there several incidents, including sexual relations, that may be real or even personal, encompassing and resuming the aftermaths of the colonial experience. Brinks answer to the inevitable question Why re-sort to fiction?Why reduce history to storytelling? is summarized in Russell Hobans famous dictum We make fiction because we ARE fiction. Brink elaborated on this idea explaining that Whether one composes a c. v. for a job application, or reviews a day or week or year or a life traversed, or relates a crucial experience to someone else, or writes a letter, or describes an event-however one sets about it, it is inevitably turned into narrative. The will to power, to dominate the other race and prove oneself to be superior has its links with sensuality and chauvinism.At first reading, some sexual acts in the novel seem to be scenes of pure passion, but then, they turn out to be mere longing for annihilation. For instance, In the second part Mirror, when Steve, a black man, is provoked by the utterances of the seductive young white woman named Silke telling him your skin, I like very much how it feel, how it look he becomes infuriated since he considers her words as a racial Remarque that ec hoes past memories of racial insults that he heard earlier in the novel such as jou ma se swart poes (=your mothers black cunt) and these kaffirs think they own the bloody place.Consequently his reaction may be depicted as an attempt to free the rein of his wrath and avenge himself on the white race embodied in Silke, by conducting violent sexual intercourse saying that for the first time I become aware of what is happening inside me. Not passion, not lust, not ecstasy, but rage . A terrible and destructive rage. Moreover, racism is deeply rooted in social institutions such as marriage. As A. J. Hassall argues In Brinks South Africa blacks and whites are seen as natural equals separated only by the uncompromising racism of the whites.In all his books Brink explores sexual relationships between blacks and whites and he portrays them as natural sexual partners who might be natural political and social partners if only the Afrikaner establishment would allow it. This is perfectly ill ustrated in the example of the love relationship between a white man and a black woman in the first part The Blue Door, David Le Roux and Embeth, which is, even after the apartheid regime, still considered as a taboo kinship, completely rejected by Davids family why should we allow our lives to be dictated by the unreasonable reasonableness of my family?If we love each other.. as David puts it. Added to its consideration as a racist attitude, Steves degradation of the white woman Silke may be read, as an act of political defiance, nevertheless, it fits only too well into the traditional master narrative of colonialism (Natives have a rape-utation, says Modisane, 1986), as well as the master narrative of sexism the male who, in order to justify his aggression against and his possession of the female, blames her for provoking the attack, and for deserving what she gets ecause of her innate libidinal provocation. This is best illustrated in Steves words to Silke if this is what youre after, this is what youre going to get. Fucking little white bitch. Speaking of colonialism, Mellor suggests that men are attempting to penetrate mysterious foreign regions where they do not rightfully belong.Ninas hair color turning into black, and the repetitive use of the words dark and black in the final paragraph depicting Derek pressing his face into the fragrant and fatal darkness between her legs calls to mind the notion of the exotic land reduced to the symbol of the female pubic hair which testifies for the mysterious south African jungles which should be discovered by white colonizer Derek. Feminists object to the depiction of women, in any respect, as a degraded sex, Objectified and reduced to serve the basic function of shoring up a mans ego.This machismo attitude is evident in Dereks utterancesCome what may, Nina Rousseau, youre going to end up in my bed. Symbolically speaking, it is widely known that white women represent power, so the more that you have of them the more you absorb that power into yourself. They also, of course, represent repression, so the more that you defile them the more you are fighting the battle and winning as Nicol puts it.This idea brings to mind Steves state of mind when copulating Silke, putting it into words now it is turning into pain, she becomes terrified while I feel myself growing in strength and rage. This is further illustrated in Modisanes words Through sex, I proved myself to myself. I am a man When the trance of sex had passed and the pleasure exhausted itself out of my system there remained only the anger and the violence to repeat and indulge myself into a more lasting satisfaction Furthermore, the stereotypes of the chaste white woman and the potent black man who acts violently, with or without a reason, are challenged by Brink. The recurrent image of the black male is that of a virile man including the assertion of one of the crudest myths of sexist racism, the size of the black penis and his manhoo d to which it is alluded in Steves discourse bloody black stud (=virile). This racial cliche is set off in contrast with that of the white womans spiritual superiority and absolute pureness as Steve puts it.The terms in which the white woman is broadly described are based on an archetypal image borrowed from Camoens the symbol of purity and light, saintly flesh, raped, violated by the brutal force of a dark continent. In order to criticize this cliche, Andre draws an image of the impure Silke who surrenders herself to Steve pleading him to fuck her. Psychologically speaking, Lacan perceives the other as the creative force in shaping the consciousness of the I.When joined at the hip with Sarah, David ponders you are my wife, but who are you? Who am I? He feels compelled to know her in order to know himself and apprehend his existence, in other words, as feminists assert, sexuality is the keystone of identity. To elaborate on this idea, Mans desire, according to Lacan (1977), finds i ts meaning in the desire of the other, not so much because the other holds the key to the object desired, as because the first object of desire is to be recognized by the other. Steve is inventing himself through the Other, Silke, who is, herself, a projection of his consciousness his own identity, the raison detre of his actions and of his life, depends on the girls approval and affirmation. Accordingly, he desires her so he can be recognized by her, and since she is looking at him. She is seeing him. As he is now. As he is. But there is no shock or disapproval in her face, meaning that she does acknowledge him, he realizes his true identity.Contrary to Silkes sexual attraction to Steve, he notices his cats repulsion. The widely known meaning of the hissing or scratching cat in dreams, is that this person feels rejected by women or that his current relationships with women are strained or that he feels the women in his life are unappeasable, not to be trusted, overbearing, or just downright mean in which case the dream may mean it is time to reassess his relationships. This is exactly the case with Steve and the female cat Sebastian which draws her slender back into an arc and hisses at him. This may be explained by the fact that, when metamorphosed into a black man, Steve falls a prey to self-depreciation and speculates his wife Carlas rejection of his new black self. So, when he realizes the impossibility of achieving any human or even nonhuman connectedness, he chooses to seek release through the powerful emotion created by the suffering of Silke, an emotion which simultaneously produces his sexual arousal. This can be proved psychoanalytically in Bersanis work analyzing Freuds Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality in which he dentifies a counter argument running through Freuds essays that sexuality is notoriginally an exchange of intensities between individuals, but rather a condition of broken negotiations with the world, a condition in which others me rely set off the self shattering mechanisms of sadomasochistic jouissance Regarding Dereks unsatisfied and unstoppable longing for the sadistic Nina, The last erotic scene of the novel, when he gets stuck between her thighs, seems to be quite predictable, inasmuch, death will be the consummation of his passion.Bersani explicates Freuds theory of the death drive by arguing that if sexuality is constituted as masochism, the immobilization of fantasmic structures can only have a violent denouement masochism is both relieved and fulfilled by death.Isidore Diala refers to Andre Brinks viewpoint about the writers role in the post-apartheid South Africa, saying that The dissident writer must awaken the Afrikaner to a sense of his potential for greatness and struggle aiming at liberating the blacks from oppression by whites, but also a struggle for the liberation of the Afrikaner from the ideology in which he has come to negate his better self. Main References -Reinventing a Continent (Rev isiting History in the Literature of the New South Africa A Personal Testimony) By Andre Brink 2-Constructing Connectedness Gender, Sexuality and Race in Mary Shelleys Frankenstein by Jessica Hale 3-CONCEPTUALIZING SEXUALITY FROM KINSEY TO QUEER AND BEYOND 4-An Ornithology of Sexual Politics Lewis Nkosis Mating Birds by Andre Brink 5-Andre Brink and Malraux by Isidore Diala -PORNOGRAPHY ( VS) EROTIC FICTION (aka Why I Continue To Do What I Do) By Jess C Scott, 9 Mar 2011 1 . In her article PORNOGRAPHY VS. EROTIC FICTION, Jess C Scott gives a definition of erotic literature saying that it comprises fictional and factual stories and accounts of human sexual relationships which have the power to or are intended to arouse the reader sexually. The emphasis of each is quite different.Porns main purpose is to make money via adult entertainment erotic literature tells a story. Stories that are realistic. Stories that make one think. Stories that dive into the depths of navigating gender, sexuality, and the lines of desire (blurb from myfirst erotic anthology,4Play). She illustrates her viewpoint by referring to Nabokov in the same Article explaining that Mr. Vladimir Nabokov said so succinctly inan essay onLolita, . . . Lolita has no moral in tow.For me, a work of fiction exists only insofar as it affords me what I shall call aesthetic bliss. . . He also writes that in pornographic novels, action has to be limited to the copulation of cliches. Style, structure, imagery should never distract the reader from his tepid lust. The novel must consist of an alternation of sexual scenes. Ultimately, She draws this conclusion Lolitais more than a pornographic novel. Erotic literature is more than pornographic writing.