André Brink's An Instant in the Wind: A Post-colonial Revision of the Captivity Myth
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Shipwreck narratives have been part of the seafaring explorations of West’s expansion across the globe. These narratives relate fundamentally unsettling experiences for the explorer-colonizer as well as provide layers of contesting discourses. There has long been an enduring interest in the captivity myth and the persistent metaphor of the shipwreck in the colonial imagination. Postcolonial South African writers have also found inspiration from the idea of the shipwreck. This paper examines An Instant in the Wind by André Brink, an imaginative revision of the legendary Eliza Fraser shipwreck and captivity which occurred off the coast of Australia in the nineteenth century. Brink transposes the Fraser shipwreck narrative to eighteenth century colonial South Africa to investigate the history of encounters between white colonials and indigenous peoples. He writes in a long tradition of castaway narratives to reveal various obstacles and conflicting oppositions that constitute contact between the races. A major dissident Afrikaner writer, Brink’s fiction focuses on the involution of myth and history in the making of the colonial imagination and its relevance to South Africa’s own history of domination and subordination. An Instant in the Wind attempts to refocalize the narrative away from the perspective of the colonizer, providing an alternative history of two individuals forming an interracial relationship based on recognition of each other’s humanity. In portraying the black African protagonist, the novel at times relies on Eurocentric oppositions and stereotypes of the African Other and on a romantic notion of individualism and interracial intimacy. The disruptive presence of conventional eurocentric discourses in the novel exposes the challenge of giving voice to the silent black in white fiction. Despite some of the pitfalls of trying to "reinvent" an alternate history for the Other, however, Brink’s revision of the shipwreck myth manages to enact his particular view of history and story-making and produce an indirect but scathing condemnation and commentary on the history of colonial violence on the African continent.
Abstract
Shipwreck narratives have been part of the seafaring explorations of West’s expansion across the globe. These narratives relate fundamentally unsettling experiences for the explorer-colonizer as well as provide layers of contesting discourses. There has long been an enduring interest in the captivity myth and the persistent metaphor of the shipwreck in the colonial imagination. Postcolonial South African writers have also found inspiration from the idea of the shipwreck. This paper examines An Instant in the Wind by André Brink, an imaginative revision of the legendary Eliza Fraser shipwreck and captivity which occurred off the coast of Australia in the nineteenth century. Brink transposes the Fraser shipwreck narrative to eighteenth century colonial South Africa to investigate the history of encounters between white colonials and indigenous peoples. He writes in a long tradition of castaway narratives to reveal various obstacles and conflicting oppositions that constitute contact between the races. A major dissident Afrikaner writer, Brink’s fiction focuses on the involution of myth and history in the making of the colonial imagination and its relevance to South Africa’s own history of domination and subordination. An Instant in the Wind attempts to refocalize the narrative away from the perspective of the colonizer, providing an alternative history of two individuals forming an interracial relationship based on recognition of each other’s humanity. In portraying the black African protagonist, the novel at times relies on Eurocentric oppositions and stereotypes of the African Other and on a romantic notion of individualism and interracial intimacy. The disruptive presence of conventional eurocentric discourses in the novel exposes the challenge of giving voice to the silent black in white fiction. Despite some of the pitfalls of trying to "reinvent" an alternate history for the Other, however, Brink’s revision of the shipwreck myth manages to enact his particular view of history and story-making and produce an indirect but scathing condemnation and commentary on the history of colonial violence on the African continent.
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