The politics of location: Nadine Gordimer’s fiction then and now

Abstract

This essay is a comparative analysis of three novels and a range of short stories by Nadine Gordimer, examining her changing presentation of the interrelations between space and identity. Using theoretical perspectives derived from feminism and cultural geography, it argues that Gordimer’s evocation of place is always politically charged but that there is a discernible shift in the underlying political ideology in the period between Burger’s Daughter (1979) and The Pickup (2001). The essay suggests that Gordimer inserts theoretical ruminations on space and identity into her work and that she tends to revisit previous theories and revise them in later works. Particularly apparent is a different interpretation of gendered spaces in the later work, an interpretation which may superficially appear reactionary but which may be regarded as a new feminist strategy of reappropriation, rather than overt rebellion.