Exploring the ordinary has been a central concern in South African literary and cultural studies. The ordinary or everyday relies on the lived experience of time – on temporalities defined as the way we experience and imagine the relation between past, present, and future. My central argument in this article is that the lived experience of a systemic shift (which is an ordinary experience in post-apartheid South Africa), coupled with the utopian ideals that attended the liberation movement, has shaped South African temporalities in ways that endure. It is within this framework of how we imagine and experience time that I read three novels: Niq Mhlongo’s Way Back Home (2013) Masande Ntshanga’s The Reactive (2014), and Mohale Mashigo’s The Yearning (2016). I argue that all three texts articulate post-apartheid temporalities as a type of post-liberation consciousness, or afterlife, born out of a successful revolution in South Africa. In much the same way that apartheid prejudice did not disappear after independence, nor did the inclusive ideologies of the broad-based anti-apartheid or liberation movement that can be seen in all aspects of South African cultural life. By afterlives, I mean how certain aspects of the past reside in the present, and specifically how the utopian discourses that shaped the anti-apartheid resistance movements live on in current post-liberation fiction.

中文翻译：

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解放后的时间、乌托邦的来世和三部南非小说，作者是马桑德·恩尚加、莫哈勒·马希戈和尼克·姆隆戈

探索平凡一直是南非文学和文化研究的核心问题。平凡或日常依赖于对时间的生活体验——时间性被定义为我们体验和想象过去、现在和未来之间关系的方式。我在这篇文章中的核心论点是，系统性转变的生活体验（这是种族隔离后南非的一种普通体验），加上参与解放运动的乌托邦理想，以持久的方式塑造了南非的时间。正是在这个我们如何想象和体验时间的框架内，我阅读了三本小说：Niq Mhlongo 的《回家之路》（2013）Masande Ntshanga 的 The Reactive（2014）和 Mohale Mashigo 的 The Yearning（2016）。我认为，这三篇文章都将种族隔离后的时间性表达为一种解放后意识或来世，源于南非成功的革命。以同样的方式，种族隔离偏见并没有在独立后消失，在南非文化生活的各个方面都可以看到广泛的反种族隔离或解放运动的包容性意识形态也没有消失。我所说的来世，是指过去的某些方面如何存在于现在，特别是塑造反种族隔离抵抗运动的乌托邦话语如何在当前的解放后小说中继续存在。在南非文化生活的各个方面都可以看到广泛的反种族隔离或解放运动的包容性意识形态。我所说的来世，是指过去的某些方面如何存在于现在，特别是塑造反种族隔离抵抗运动的乌托邦话语如何在当前的解放后小说中继续存在。在南非文化生活的各个方面都可以看到广泛的反种族隔离或解放运动的包容性意识形态。我所说的来世，是指过去的某些方面如何存在于现在，特别是塑造反种族隔离抵抗运动的乌托邦话语如何在当前的解放后小说中继续存在。