Memory’s Future: Affect, History, and New Narrative in South Africa

Focusing on the literary unit of genre as a mappable unit, one whose flows invite analysis on a global scale and a practice of memory in which the past finds itself sedimented into the present, this paper explores the work that the novel does in coming to terms with foundational violence, with a particular emphasis on postapartheid South African fiction. The paper considers affect as a useful category not only for the literature of partheid but also for the literature emerging from the historical experiences of slavery, empire, and global terror. “Affect” thus lends itself both to national literary approaches and to a clearer understanding of world literature.