Making black creativity visible: reading the intermediality of Zakes Mda’s fictions

Abstract

Zakes Mda’s fictions have been widely recognised for their performative elements, and this article expands on such readings by using an intermedial lens. Our analysis focuses on moments in Mda’s fictions which invoke, refer to, describe or mimic different media, such as photographs, painting, sculpture, performance and music. It will be argued that at such points in the fictions a creative sense of black subjectivity is enacted, made visible or audible, thereby staging a transformative aesthetics. Through an embedded intermediality, Mda is able to narrate his characters not as mere objects of colonial or apartheid oppression, but as the subjects in control of their own narratives, art and creativity. In drawing from the ideas that arise from the framework of intermediality, we read these fictions as staging a transformative, aesthetic re-imagination of black subjects, giving insight into the interiority of the protagonists and their lives. The lens of intermediality can serve as a vital tool in understanding Mda’s larger project which dismantles representations of black people as inherently unagentive and unimaginative victims trapped in their past.