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(Mar 3, 2006) - This phrase is a traditional greeting of the amaXhosa of South Africa. It comes from the practice of burying a newborn’s placenta outside the main homestead of the community. Answering the question, where is your navel, “tells someone where you live, what your clan affiliation is, and what your social status is. The answer contains a wealth of cultural information. Most importantly, it determines where you belong.”
This idea of belonging is at the heart of Peter Midgley’s research about the literature of South Africa. Peter has recently completed his Ph.D. in English and Film Studies from the University of Alberta, under the supervision of Dr. Daphne Read. Questions of identity and nationhood in South Africa were central to Peter’s work. “My main goal was to examine the representation of ancestors and ancestral spirits in three languages: Afrikaans, English, and isiXhosa (the language of the amaXhosa).” Peter was also interested in cross cultural influences. “I looked at how western concepts of belonging have been incorporated into South African culture, and also how European settlers in South Africa have to some extent adopted elements of an amaXhosa world view governed by the ancestral spirits. I wanted to know how the sense of ubuntu, basic human decency or humanity, is acted out through the ancestral spirits and represented in South African literature.”
Peter is originally from South Africa. He completed a B.A. in Legal Theory, with an Honours degree in Afrikaans and Dutch, from the Rhodes University in South Africa, as well as an M.A. in English from the same institution. Peter developed his interest in South African literature through his academic work, and also by working for five years at the National English Literary Museum (which collects material about South African literature). “I realized my personal sense of belonging was different from other people. People would say that I am European; but whenever I met people from Europe, I realized that I was not European. The way I look at the world is distinctly African in many ways. I may have European ancestry, but I don’t belong to Europe.” Peter was intrigued to find South African writers who were interested in similar questions of belonging.
One of the biggest challenges for Peter in his research was to learn to read isiXhosa. “The grammar has changed a lot over the two hundred years since the language was first written down. They also have four different orthographies for this literature. In reading early works, I had to learn obsolete grammar systems and orthographies before I could understand what was written.” However, this was not the end of the challenge. “Written isiXhosa is based on the Rharabhe and Gcaleka dialects. There are about thirty-two spoken dialects, of which eight or nine are written. Because of important cultural nuances, it was not sufficient to simply learn one dialect.” Corresponding with mother-tongue speakers and cultural workers who could explain these subtle differences was crucial to the process of understanding isiXhosa literature.
The impact of Peter’s research is in giving a new understanding to South African literature. “The tendency was to look at the different literatures as separate from each other: English, Afrikaans, Xhosa, Zulu, etc. What I’ve achieved is to show there is a lot of cross-cultural, mutual influencing in all directions, without assigning a language to a particular culture. This is important to understand, as some writers who speak isiXhosa will choose to write in Afrikaans, or vice versa.” Another impact is in finding appropriate critical terms for discussing the literature of South Africa. “These critical terms allow me to speak about South Africa and the complex intercultural relationships that exist there in ways I couldn’t do before.”
Currently, Peter is working on a monograph on the South African author André P. Brink, as well as a critical edition of Sol T. Plaatje’s novel, Mhudi, the first novel in English by a black South African. For Peter, it has always been important in his research to translate the theoretical into the practical. “You reach a point when you realize that a Ph.D. is not so much about improving your marketability but more about self-fulfillment. Yes, it makes you more marketable, but it is certainly about becoming a more developed human being and making a contribution to society. You must try and find some way of letting your research affect people’s lives on a daily basis.”
By David Martin, Research Profile Project
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