'Home is Another Country': A Foucauldian Reading of Sisonke Msimang's Always Another Country. Issue 2 (3rd July 2022)
- Record Type:
- Journal Article
- Title:
- 'Home is Another Country': A Foucauldian Reading of Sisonke Msimang's Always Another Country. Issue 2 (3rd July 2022)
- Main Title:
- 'Home is Another Country': A Foucauldian Reading of Sisonke Msimang's Always Another Country
- Authors:
- Henning, John
- Abstract:
- Abstract: Sisonke Msimang's Always Another Country is an intimate account of the lifelong search for 'home' by its autobiographical narrator, the child of exiled South African parents. My essay argues that Msimang's figuring of a complicated, nationally-organized external realm through the exilic subjectivity of its narrator provides an opportunity to read a series of spaces in the text as what Michel Foucault, in 'Of Other Spaces' (1986), calls 'utopias' and 'heterotopias'. Simply put, South Africa exists as a non-real space – a utopia – for most of the memoir. It carries down telephone wires and from television screens into the mind of Sonke, where it is reproduced as an alternate, imagined version of itself. On the other hand, 'real' spaces – living rooms, principals' offices, family homes – all develop characteristics of Foucauldian heterogeneity. They are sites within sites or, as Peter Johnson explains, microcosms of reverse social ordering. Rather than producing an overly theoretical rendering of a deeply personal text, my essay aims to show the benefits of Foucauldian approaches in conceptualizing and understanding the complicated ways in which exiled-subjects occupy space in our nationally-organized world.
- Is Part Of:
- English studies in Africa. Volume 65:Issue 2(2022)
- Journal:
- English studies in Africa
- Issue:
- Volume 65:Issue 2(2022)
- Issue Display:
- Volume 65, Issue 2 (2022)
- Year:
- 2022
- Volume:
- 65
- Issue:
- 2
- Issue Sort Value:
- 2022-0065-0002-0000
- Page Start:
- 14
- Page End:
- 23
- Publication Date:
- 2022-07-03
- Subjects:
- Foucault -- Sisonke Msimang -- memoir -- heterotopia -- utopia -- Always Another Country -- 'Of Other Spaces' -- exile -- post-transitional literature
English literature -- History and criticism -- Periodicals
English language -- Study and teaching -- Periodicals
English language -- Africa -- Periodicals
English literature -- Periodicals
American literature -- Periodicals
American literature
English language
English language -- Study and teaching
English literature
Africa
Criticism, interpretation, etc
Periodicals
Electronic journals
420 - Journal URLs:
- http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/reia20/current ↗
http://www.tandfonline.com/ ↗ - DOI:
- 10.1080/00138398.2022.2096750 ↗
- Languages:
- English
- ISSNs:
- 0013-8398
- Deposit Type:
- Legaldeposit
- View Content:
- Available online (eLD content is only available in our Reading Rooms) ↗
- Physical Locations:
- British Library DSC - BLDSS-3PM
British Library HMNTS - ELD Digital store - Ingest File:
- 22927.xml