It might get loud by Ingrid Winterbach (translated by Michiel Heyns): the uncut review

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  1. Introduction

The question of language – its meanings, poetic applications, subversions and subtexts, to name a few – is paramount in translation and directly addresses not only the question of meaning transference, but also the conveyance (passage, delivery) of an author’s aesthetic tendencies, capacities and singularity. Derek Attridge (2004:73) argues that if “the singularity of the literary work arises from its existence as a series of specific words in a specific arrangement”, one might have the impression that a translation is an entirely new and different literary work as none (or very few in some cases) of the original words appear in exactly the same way in the translated work. This, Attridge contends, underlies the inventiveness and singularity of literature which, “far from being opposed to translatability, goes hand-in-hand with it” because a singular literary work is “not merely available for translation but is constituted in what may be thought of as an unending set of translations” (Attridge 2004:73). But there is a further sense in which this may be understood: a singular literary work demands translation; it “provokes translation (in all senses) as a creative response rather than a mechanical rewording” (Attridge 2004:74). And the extent to which translation takes place as machinic repetition rather than mechanical reproduction, marks its own singularity. As Gilles Deleuze (1995:7–8) explains:

There are, you see, two ways of reading a book: you either see it as a box with something inside and start looking for what it signifies, and then if you are even more perverse and depraved you set off after signifiers. And you treat the next book like a box contained in the first or containing it. And you annotate and interpret and question, and write a book about the book, and so on and on. Or there is another way: you see the book as a little non-signifying machine, and the only question is “Does it work, and how does it work?” How does it work for you? […] This second way of reading is intensive: something comes through or it does not. There is nothing to explain, nothing to understand, nothing to interpret.

If we then consider both Die aanspraak van lewende wesens and its translation. entitled It might get loud, as little non-signifying machines rather than little boxes with something inside (each containing a special set of signifiers), we are able to move away from what the texts mean to what they do. That is, the emphasis shifts from mere meaning-making to the potentiality of translation to retain and transfer intensive affect.

Affect, which operates with sense, rather than emotion, refers to the chance variations, modifications or transformations that occur when configurations, such as literary configurations, collide. Claire Colebrook (2002:21) writes that “[i]f philosophy takes language away from simple definitions and the fixity of opinions to concepts and problems, art creates affects and percepts.” Literary affect could therefore be said to be that which reveals the limits imposed by structural semiotics (set of signifiers) on our “emotional responses to aesthetic and physical experiences” (Colman 2005:12) and operates dynamically within assemblages[i] to influence meaning-making and produce intensity situationally, rendering these responses singular and free from the primary structures and organising principles of representation and identity. In the same way it could be argued that translation is not merely about semantic transfer or mechanical reproduction, but about machinic[ii] repetition which takes into account what the original text is doing as a material flow and situated process intersecting with myriad other machinic flows and processes past, present and future.

In Accented futures, Carli Coetzee (2013:1) argues “against translation” in favour of what she terms accentedness; ie the translator “has to resist the homogenised (orientalised, some might say as a shorthand) representation of ourselves/themselves, and offer, instead, heterogeneity and a refusal of essence” (Coetzee 2013:3). This “refusal to translate” necessitates that writing and translation are not merely about cultural transfer or the manipulation of linguistic conventions and semantic content but that, instead, they are an orientation which exposes the parameters of structural semiotics. Writing and translation could thus be said to be about “the skill that consists in developing a compass of the cognitive, affective and ethical kind” (Braidotti 2012:307); an orientation that allows for language to be accented so that languages become diverse, even within themselves. This is of particular importance in the work of Ingrid Winterbach, as Afrikaans is remarkably diverse within itself in her oeuvre. Accordingly, to “judge” whether the translation of Die aanspraak van lewende wesens is accented, we cannot merely rely on accurate semantic transferral, but have to take into account whether the intensive affect of the original work is retained, accented and conveyed in the translated text. In other words, does it work, and if so, how does it work?

  1. It might get loud: mechanical reproduction or machinic repetition?

Die aanspraak van lewende wesens, a postmodern pastoral quest novel (Van der Merwe 2012), which was awarded the NB Publisher’s Groot Afrikaanse Romanwedstryd Prize (2012), the WA Hofmeyr Prize (2013), The Hertzog Prize for prose (2013) and the University of Johannesburg Prize (2013), explores themes of “madness”, such as substance abuse, dementia, deliriousness, fixation, depression, obsessive-compulsive behaviour, etc. These themes can be found throughout Winterbach’s oeuvre, but become especially prominent in the two preceding novels, Die boek van toeval en toeverlaat / The book of happenstance and Die benederyk / The road of excess. There is also, as in Die boek van toeval en toeverlaat / The book of happenstance in particular, a preoccupation with lost language (or the historicity of language as concretised in the leitmotifs, the lexicon and the register) and the preservation thereof. The two protagonists, Maria Volschenk and Karl Hofmeyr, both undertake journeys. Maria first undertakes one to Stellenbosch to try to come to terms with her sister’s suicide and then another to Cape Town, where her son Benjy, who displays symptoms of bipolarity or borderline personality disorder, is seemingly caught up in a life-threatening situation. Karl, also an extreme obsessive-compulsive character, is en route to Cape Town after having received a call from his brother’s landlord informing him of Iggy’s deteriorating mental stability. Iggy, as the reader later finds out, is in fact having a psychotic breakdown and, according to Van der Merwe (2012), Iggy’s battle is depicted through words and concepts that have almost become forgotten. For example, Iggy writes in a letter to his brother Karl (201):

Om sy nek, soos om die hals van ’n Spaanse edelman, soos deur El Greco geskilder, is ’n gekartelde wit kraag. O onfatsoenlikheid! O onheilige verskynsel, o prins van die onderwêreld.

Was dit maar ’n drogbeeld, ’n hersenskim, maar daar ís dit, die ding is werklik, ewe werklik as my hand, tásbaar – sou ek my weersin kon oorkom, vorentoe tree en daaraan raak.

This passage illustrates one of the exigencies of translating Winterbach, namely her idiosyncratic writing style and often archaic vocabulary. That is, Winterbach could be said to write against the grain of language so as to disrupt salient novelistic structures through a number of stylistic, thematic and linguistic devices (Botha and Van Vuuren 2006; 2007; 2008). In this way her writing creates a relationship between authoritative discourse and minor voices. South African author and translator Michiel Heyns translated this passage as follows (187):

Around its neck, as around the throat of a Spanish nobleman as painted by El Greco, is a frilly white ruff. Oh impropriety! Oh unholy manifestation, oh prince of the underworld.

If only it were an hallucination, a chimera, but there it is, the thing is real, every bit as real as my hand, tangible – if I were to overcome my revulsion, step forward and touch it.

In this passage Heyns manages to retain both the staccato rhythm of Winterbach’s writing and Iggy’s almost antiquated voice. And in fact, throughout It might get loud I had the experience of reading a novel by Ingrid Winterbach, rather than a Winterbach plot in a different language. Perhaps the only word in this passage that is not convincing of Winterbach’s style is “frilly”. A phrase such as “rushed white collar” carries, for me, more of the outdated impression of the rest of the passage. Still, when compared with translations of her earlier works, this one, through careful consideration of Winterbach’s atypical writing style, manages to intensively retain and transfer the affect of the original text. Consider also how Heyns deals with Winterbach’s incisive humour, often seamlessly entwined with melancholy and pathos (Books LIVE 2015), and another element which frequently gets lost in the translations of her work. For example, the opening pages of Die aanspraak van lewende wesens introduces us to Karl and his friend Hendrik, both heavy metal enthusiasts (5):

Eers nadat hulle ’n hele paar biere gedrink het, het Karl die moed om vir Hendrik te vertel van die oggend se oproep. Ja, sê Hendrik, dit klink nie goed nie. Dit klink kak, sê Karl. Wat gaan jy doen? vra Hendrik. Ek sal seker moet gaan, sê Karl. Wanneer? vra Hendrik. Ek weet nie, sê Karl, ek hoop so half as ek lank genoeg wag, sal die situasie vanself regkom.

Hulle drink nog ’n bier en luister na Delirious Nomad, Armored Saint se tweede album. Pure Los Angeles power metal, sê Hendrik. Totally underrated, sê Karl. Jissus, sê Hendrik, dat ou Dave Pritchard dood is. Devastating, sê Karl. Best news ever dat Duncan en Sandoval weer ingeklim het, sê Hendrik. Kan nie wág vir hulle nuwe album nie, sê Karl.

Hulle drink ’n laaste bier en luister na La Raza. No holds barred delivery, sê Hendrik. Relentless riffing, sê Karl. Maar hoe hy dit ook al wil, vanaand kan die musiek hom nie soos gewoonlik een honderd persent meevoer nie.

And in the translation (8–9):

Only after they’ve had quite a few beers does Karl get up the courage to tell Hendrik about the phone call that morning. Yes, says Hendrik, doesn’t sound good. Sounds shit, says Karl. What are you going to do? asks Hendrik. I suppose I’ll have to go, says Karl. When? asks Hendrik. I don’t know, says Karl, I’m half-hoping that if I wait long enough, the situation will sort itself out.

They have another beer and listen to Delirious Nomad, Armored Saint’s second album. Pure Los Angeles power metal, says Hendrik. Totally underrated, says Karl. Jeez, says Hendrik, to think that old Dave Pritchard’s dead. Devastating, says Karl. Best news ever that Duncan and Sandoval got back into the act, says Hendrik. Can’t wait for their new album, says Karl.

They have a last beer and listen to La Raza. No holds barred delivery, says Hendrik. Relentless riffing, says Karl. But try as he may, tonight the music just doesn’t grab him as totally as usual.

In this passage Karl’s melancholic demeanour is revealed through his simultaneous disclosure of Iggy’s situation to Hendrik as well as his evasiveness about the reality of the situation. This passage is rendered humorous by at least three elements: 1) Winterbach’s brisk dialogue which is reflective of the difficulty with which Karl (and Hendrik, and men from many cultures which do not value male emotional acuity and demonstration) speaks of his emotions; 2) Karl and Hendrik’s descriptions of heavy metal, which serve as a conversational emollient and emotional outlet; and 3) the use of Engfrikaans, “a form of code switching used by certain Afrikaans authors” (John 2004).

The first aspect, namely Winterbach’s style, is relatively straightforward for anyone who has some understanding of both Afrikaans and English as the emotive briskness is present in both languages (it can even be read aloud for phonetic impact), though the Afrikaans “kak” is far more affecting than the English “shit”, partly due to the repeated plosive [k]-sound which lends a certain amount of gravitas to the expletive. The English substitute does, however, work in this instance, though I think the Afrikaans “jissus” could have been kept as is in the translation. Of more interest to me, however, is Winterbach’s use of lists in her oeuvre – long lists, yet incomplete ones – or what Umberto Eco (2009:81) terms “the etcetera of lists”, and specifically their mnemonic function because, as Eco argues, “things in a given order help us to remember them, to remember the place they occupied in the image of the world” (Eco 2009:115). The most notable list in Die aanspraak van lewende wesens is that of heavy metal bands, a music genre which developed in the late 1960s and early 1970s and which, according to Wikipedia (2014), is “characterised by highly amplified distortion, extended guitar solos, emphatic beats, and overall loudness”, along with “masculinity and machismo”. But even though heavy metal is associated with machismo, it also achieves the opposite in that it disrupts the discreetness of gender heteronormativity through the androgyny of the band members which “provided stylistic and cultural alternatives to youth of both sexes in many countries” (Goodlad 2007). Winterbach’s listing of heavy metal bands, then, highlights the tensions of normative gendering in that it undermines Afrikaner perceptions of masculinity – a hypermasculine ideal – and gender binarism (which results in hyperfemininity as well). It is comical because Hendrik is described on p 8 as “sturdy and hairy, with a broad, flat face. Everything is broad and flat about Hendrik. He looks like an amiable mariner.” In some ways he therefore embodies both masculinity (though without the machismo, as he is also described as “always laughing”) and androgyny (“He has long, curly hair and a beard.”). Heyns successfully manages to convey this affective experience of masculinity and androgyny throughout the translation through his descriptions of Karl and Hendrik and their discussion of music – particularly the tension and build-up of the music, their emotional exchange through the music, and the humorous descriptions which retain the tragic-comedy contained in the Afrikaans text. (This is the first of Winterbach’s translated works which had me laughing out loud!)

Another example can be found towards the end of the same passage when Karl thinks (5): “Sou shit graag op die oomblik enige ander plek wou wees as hier, dink Karl, met Iggy wat weer iewers nonsens aanvang.” The expression “shit graag”, which literally means, shit glad (as in “I would have been shit glad to be anywhere but here right now”) is translated by Heyns as (9): “Would give my left testicle to be anyplace but here right now, Karl thinks, what with Iggy causing shit again somewhere.” Even though “shit graag” is replaceable with “shit glad”, Heyns’s translation actually captures the comedy of the situation better because it allows him to translate “nonsens aanvang” (which in this context means “causing havoc”) as “causing shit”, thus capturing Karl’s idiolect which “causing havoc” does not, even though it could be seen as perfectly sound semantic transfer.

Heyns reflects a sensitivity to idiolect not only in his descriptions of Karl, Hendrik and Iggy, but also in his translation of Maria and her son Benjy’s speech. Especially in dialogue, Maria’s tentativeness and Benjy’s histrionics come to the fore (as I illustrate in an example later on).

The final aspect I want to address is that of Engfrikaans. Some readers, such as Johannes Comestor (2014), disapprove of the use of Engfrikaans in Afrikaans novels. He writes (with my translation following):

Is dit werklik ’n weerspieëling van die toestand waarin Afrikaanse resensente en literatore verval het; dat doelbewus onsuiwere Afrikaans sonder protes gelees, bespreek en hartlik aanbeveel word? Is my suiwer taalgegronde kruistog teen Kaaps, wat aan dieselfde (ongeneeslike) Engelse siekte ly, onredbaar outyds en uit die bose? Is dit nie simptomaties van Afrikaners, wat hulle trots, insluitende hulle moedertaaltrots, verloor het (nie) …

Is this truly a reflection of the state of decay in which Afrikaans reviewers and literators find themselves; that impure Afrikaans is read, discussed and recommended without protest? Is my pure linguistic crusade against Kaaps, which suffers from the same (incurable) English disease, hopelessly evil and obsolete? Is this not symptomatic of Afrikaners who have lost their pride, including pride in their mother-tongue …

I would argue that the use of Engfrikaans in Winterbach’s oeuvre is not “a reflection of the state of decay” in Afrikaans but rather a deliberate structural element, as the author’s novels clearly demonstrate a strong command of the Afrikaans language and she herself is concerned with its decay (illustrated most plainly in Die boek van toeval en toeverlaat / The book of happenstance). Again, it is useful to consider the use of Engfrikaans in terms of what it does, rather than what it means.

One example from Die aanspraak van lewende wesens (65) which illustrates Engfrikaans well is seen when one of the characters, speaking about Yngwie Malmsteen, a death metal musician, says, “Hy’s a fokken krismisboom! As jy neat fretwork wil hoor, of inventing shredding, luister na John Petrucci van Dream Theatre. Die man neem progressive metal na ’n nuwe level.” (Translation, p 59: “He’s a fucking Christmas tree! If you want to hear neat fretwork, or inventive shredding, listen to John Petrucci from Dream Theatre. The man takes progressive metal to a new level.”) From the English translation it becomes clear that the Afrikaans word “krismisboom” is an anglicisation and colloquialisation of the English word “Christmas” which is actually “Kersfees” in Afrikaans, though it is combined with the Afrikaans word “boom” rather than the English equivalent “tree”. English phrases such as “neat fretwork”, “inventing shredding” and “progressive metal”, as well as the word “level” are incorporated seamlessly (at least on some level) into Afrikaans, so that the languages become blended. This is also reflective of how most Afrikaans people actually speak in contemporary South Africa, especially the younger generations.

Consider, too, the following passage (p 188, Maria Volschenk in conversation with her son Benjy):

Hoe gaan dit? wil sy weet. Hy is ontwykend. Nee, dit gaan okay. (Dit help nie om langer uit te stel nie.) Wat makeer, vra sy hom, wat is die probleem?

Hy’t actually soos in hierdie besigheid, hierdie kind of venture wat jy ’n besigheid kan noem maar dis ook nie actually eintlik nie, ennieway hy en twee ander ouens het dit soos in eintlik ge-initiate, hy sal haar soontoe neem, die premises is shit great, dis actually shit hot en die prospects is soos van yslik, as hulle net, as dit nie was, dis soos van vast, die possibilities is endless, dis net soort van hierdie initial stumbling blocks, soos in obstacles, net erger. Maar dis eintlik soort van ’n ideal opportunity.

All the English words/phrases or anglicised words/phrases have been underlined. Heyns’s translation reads (173–4):

How are you? she asks. He is evasive. No, he’s okay. (No point in putting it off any longer.) What’s the matter, she asks him, what’s the problem?

He’s actually like in this business, this kind of venture that you can call a business but it’s not actually that either, anyway he and two other guys like sort of initiated it, he’ll take her there, the premises are shit great, it’s actually shit hot and the prospects are like massive, if they only, if only actually, if it wasn’t for, it’s like vast, the possibilities are endless, it’s just sort of these initial stumbling blocks, as in obstacles, just worse. But it’s actually sort of like an ideal opportunity.

This passage concretises one of the “problems” of translation, particularly in a multilingual society such as South Africa, where translation takes place predominantly “into English, out of other South African languages”, so that “this monolingual privilege can be confirmed and extended” (Coetzee 2013:3). The question, therefore, is: How does one retain accentedness which allows for an ontological polyvocality, even within a monolingual English translation?

One of the ways, as I have argued, is through idiolect, which Heyns gets right in this passage through the use of the word “like” to replace the Afrikaans “soos in”. Benjy’s English speech patterns thus mimic the Afrikaans successfully so that he does not, for example, sound like Karl or Maria, or any of the other characters. Elsewhere in the novel Heyns keeps the Afrikaans “kak” so as to capture the character Stevie’s linguistic style and heritage. Speaking about the band Wolfmother he says (57): “No, man, […] why would you listen to that kak? You should listen to Uriah Heep.” And a bit later Karl thinks “he hears Stevie saying kak, kak, it’s all kak they’re listening to …” (63). Thus, far from being an indictment of the decay of Afrikaans (as purists have claimed), the use of Engfrikaans by Winterbach reveals the creativity of the language within itself and demonstrates Winterbach’s incisive humour, as Philip John (2004) argues convincingly. Also, Engfrikaans is in itself “untranslatable” as it presupposes the use of two language codes in the source text, thus – in a sense – demanding the use of two codes in the target text as well.

The title, which is markedly different from the Afrikaans one, is also worth discussing, because many of Winterbach’s English titles leave something to be desired. The Afrikaans title of Niggie, for example, literally meaning “(girl) cousin”, was finally translated as To hell with Cronjé. The irony of the Afrikaans title occurs due to the fact that women in Afrikaans communities, especially during the period in which the novel is set, namely the Anglo-Boer War, were often called by such generic names, thus rendering them nameless in a certain sense and without individual identity (though this is complexified by the fact that these names were also sometimes pet names and, as such, caring). It is, furthermore, ironic that even though the title of the novel is Niggie and suggests that the novel is about a specific woman, the female characters are introduced only towards the end of the text and could therefore be said to be allusive of their place within Afrikaner patriarchy. All of this is, of course, lost in the translation of the title.

Another of Winterbach’s novels which illustrates the importance of a title is Die boek van toeval en toeverlaat, which was translated as The book of happenstance. Thematically the novel presents many binary opposites (Strydom 2010:8), for example the personal vs the cosmic, life vs death, forsaking vs preserving, the loss of language vs the creativity thereof and the idea of “chance … pitted against refuge and solace” (Lenta 2009). The latter aspect is beautifully captured in the Afrikaans title, but because only the first part of the title is translated into English, the English readership is presented with only part of the descriptive intimation contained in the original. The second part of the Afrikaans title, which contains the word toeverlaat (meaning “refuge” or “solace”), is itself an archaic Afrikaans word form with a double allusion: firstly, it refers to the thematic concern with archaic word forms and the archiving of Afrikaans lexical items in particular and, secondly, it semantically suggests the idea of refuge or solace. Perhaps something like The book of synchrony and sanctuary, The book of chance and solace, The book of fluke and refuge, The book of fate and refuge or The book of happenstance and haven might have intimated this loss of ontological meaning (and, as such, the affective encounter) more readily, even though the alliteration may have been lost.

As regards Die aanspraak van lewende wesens, the word “aanspraak” has two meanings in Afrikaans. In the sense of the title it refers to a kind of claim from / to living beings. It evokes a type of entreaty, petition, plea, supplication; an appeal from/to corporeal creatures (past, present, future). In the second sense, the word denotes conversation or dialogue – someone to talk to. These thematic strains – our claims to people, our pleas to them (and other animate things), supplication from them, conversation with them – are, unfortunately, lost in the translated title, It might get loud. To be fair, though, a direct translation does not have the affective impact of the Afrikaans title, nor does it contain the double entendre. What the English title does manage to convey, and which therefore allows for something to be gained again, is the obsessive-compulsive refrains found in the novel. The music might get loud, the haunting of the dead might get loud, the blood and oil and psychics might get loud, the misery “with a capital M” (309) might get loud, “the writing on the wall, the stacked bones of animals, the heaps of limbs of dolls like the hacked limbs of people, the grimacing baboon sculls, the unidentifiable objects and homunculi in great glass jars, pallid as pickled organs” (188) might all indeed get loud! The title is also, superficially, “catchy”, and while I am sure many would like to think this should not matter, it does. Despite the translative loss, the English title works (there is nothing to explain, nothing to understand, nothing to interpret).

Conclusion

Michiel Heyns beautifully retains the individual idiolects of characters in the translation, as well as giving careful consideration to Winterbach’s idiosyncratic language use, including Engfrikaans. In this way, It might get loud reveals itself as having the “capacity to provoke new and singular responses” (Attridge 2004:75) that are accented. To my mind, this is the most successful translation of Winterbach’s work to date and can indeed be said to be machinic repetition[iii] rather than mechanical reproduction.

References

Attridge, Derek. 2004. The singularity of literature. London, New York: Routledge.

Barad, Karen. 2007. Meeting the universe halfway. Quantum physics and the entanglement of matter and meaning. Durham, London: Duke University Press.

Books LIVE. 2015. Louise Viljoen gesels met Ingrid Winterbach by die bekendstelling van Die aanspraak van lewende wesens. Books LIVE (website), June 5, 2015. http://nb.bookslive.co.za/blog/2012/10/19/louise-viljoen-gesels-met-ingrid-winterbach-by-die-bekendstelling-van-die-aanspraak-van-lewende-wesens.

Botha, Marissa and Helize van Vuuren. 2006. Die eksperimentele gebruik van taal in Ingrid Winterbach se Niggie (2002). Stilet, XVIII(2):35–56.

—. 2007. Eksperiment en intertekstualiteit in Niggie. Journal of Literary Studies, 23(1):63–80.

—. 2008. Die enigmatiese aard van die trieksterfiguur in Ingrid Winterbach se Niggie. Tydskrif vir Letterkunde, 45(2):48–71.

Braidotti, Rosi. 2012. Writing. In The Deleuze dictionary, ed Adrian Parr, 306–7. New York: Columbia University Press.

Coetzee, Carli. 2013. Accented futures. Johannesburg: Wits University Press.

Colebrook, Claire. 2002. Gilles Deleuze. London, New York: Routledge.

Colman, Felicity J. 2005. Affect. In The Deleuze dictionary, ed Adrian Parr, 11–3. New York: Columbia University Press.

Comestor, Johannes. 2014. Ingrid Winterbach: Die aanspraak van lewende wesens. LitNet, January 12, 2014. https://www.litnet.co.za/Article/brief-ingrid-winterbach-die-aanspraak-van-lewende-wesens.

Deleuze, Gilles. 1994. Difference and repetition. Translated by Paul Paton. New York: Columbia University Press.

—. 1995. Letter to a harsh critic. In Negotiations, 7–8. Translated by Martin Joughin. New York: Columbia University Press.

Eco, Umberto. 2009. The infinity of lists. From Homer to Joyce. London: Maclehose Press.

Goodlad, Lauren ME. 2007. Men in black: androgyny and ethics in The crow and Fight Club. In Goth: undead subculture, eds Lauren ME Goodlad and Michael Bibby, 41–64. Durham: Duke University Press.

John, Philip. 2004. Meer dydelikhyt oor die punch en die vis: ’n vergelyking van Niggie, Daar’s vis in die punch en Eilande. Literator 25(1):23–45.

Lenta, Margaret. 2009. Expanding “South Africanness”: debut novels. Current Writing: Text and Reception in Southern Africa, 21(1–2):59–77.

Philips, John. 2006. Deleuze and Guattari lecture notes. Deleuze and Guattari (website), October 7, 2013. http://courses.nus.edu.sg/course/elljwp/deleuzeandguattari.htm.

Stagoll. 2005. Difference. In The Deleuze dictionary, ed Adrian Parr, 72–3. New York: Columbia University Press. California, London: University of California Press.

Strydom, Gideon. 2010. ’n Vergelykende studie van Ingrid Winterbach se Die boek van toeval en toeverlaat (2006) en Etienne van Heerden se Asbesmiddag (2007). Master’s dissertation, Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University.

Van der Merwe, Chris. 2012. Die aanspraak van lewende wesens deur Ingrid Winterbach – ’n postmoderne quest-verhaal (review).” LitNet, 27 November 2012. https://www.litnet.co.za.

Wikipedia. 2014. Heavy metal music. Wikipedia. The free encycopledia, April 5, 2014. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heavy_metal_music.

Winterbach, Ingrid. 2002. Niggie. Cape Town, Johannesburg, Pretoria: Human & Rousseau.

—. 2006. Die boek van toeval en toeverlaat. Cape Town, Pretoria: Human & Rousseau.

—. 2007. To hell with Cronjé. Translated by Elsa Silke. Cape Town, Pretoria: Human & Rousseau.

—. 2008. The Book of Happenstance. Translated by Dirk and Ingrid Winterbach. Cape Town, Pretoria: Human & Rousseau.

—. 2010. Die benederyk. Cape Town, Pretoria: Human & Rousseau.

—. 2012. Die aanspraak van lewende wesens. Cape Town, Pretoria: Human & Rousseau.

—. 2014. The road of excess. Translated by Leon de Kock. Cape Town, Pretoria: Human & Rousseau.

—. 2015. It might get loud. Translated by Michiel Heyns. Cape Town, Pretoria: Human & Rousseau.

[i] The original French term used by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari for the English term translated and accepted as assemblage, namely agencement, not only connotes “the arrangement of these [assemblage] connections” (Phillips 2006) in French, but also connotes the agency of becomings (ie that which is both immanent and emergent). Both of these inferences are lost in the English translation of agencement to assemblage.

[ii] The term mechanical denotes here a linear causality with a rigid determinism, whereas the term machinic denotes a material-discursive entanglement (Barad 2007) of virtual (in the Deleuze-Guattarian sense) possibilities which are real though not as yet actualised or concrete.

[iii] Deleuze uses the term repetition in conjunction with the term difference to denote “‘difference from the same’ or difference of the same over time” (Stagoll 2005:72). This is borrowed from Nietzsche’s concept of “the eternal return”, but Deleuze explains repetition and difference (the eternal return) not as repetition which constitutes sameness and equivalence, but as a perpetual repetition that is always in flux, always imperceptible; not simulacra, but the “resistance of simulacra” (Deleuze 1994:v–vii). In particular, Deleuze is thus concerned with disrupting the primacy afforded to identity and representation in Western philosophy by grounding it in a theory of immanent experience – ie “difference as it is experienced” (Stagoll 2005:72) rather than as perceived due to the demands of a created normativity and the structures that reinforce and disseminate these mimetically.

 

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