The End of History Reading Gordimer’s Post-Apartheid Novels

Abstract

The article examines Gordimer’s novels that have appeared after the end of apartheid. In considering the continuing ‘relevance’ of her work, the purpose is to foreground features of the writing that were usually not emphasised when Gordimer was seen as the ‘conscience of the anti-apartheid struggle’: her liberation from excessive social responsibility, the shift from large historical events to the reconstitution of the civil imaginary, and engagements with the private life as independent of – and not as inextricably interwoven with – the public domain. I look beyond the constraints of the political context to ‘post-ideological’ possibilities.