Summary

This article explores the use of a colonial object (a novel) and generally perceived to be colonial practices (such as empirical historiography, the critical study of literature and literary theory) as tools in the ongoing process of decolonising South African minds. Using the magic realist South African novel The Long Silence of Mario Salviati (Etienne van Heerden) as a case study, with particular reference to the history of the Italian prisoners of war (POWs) that were detained in South Africa during World War II (WWII), the article investigates knowledge production through magic realist fiction and attempts to explain how the correlations and tensions between magic realist fiction and empirical historiography contribute to knowledge production and preservation on a broader metatextual level. The article aims to show how pieces of history that may be lost in the ideologically and politically driven decolonisation of history books and curricula may survive through fiction, and perhaps even serve as an effective, albeit subtle, tool for a way to decolonise the mind by creatively using instead of discarding pieces of history, objects and practices with colonial origins.

概括

本文探讨了殖民对象（一种小说）的使用以及通常被认为是殖民实践（例如经验史学，文学和文学理论的批判性研究）在进行非殖民化南非思想过程中的工具。使用魔术现实主义者的南非小说《马里奥·萨尔维亚蒂的沉默》（Etienne van Heerden）作为案例研究，并特别参考了在第二次世界大战（WWII）期间在南非被拘留的意大利战俘（POW）的历史，该文章探讨了通过魔术现实主义小说和尝试进行的知识生产解释魔术现实主义小说与经验史学之间的关联和张力如何在更广泛的超文本层面上促进知识的产生和保存。本文旨在展示在思想和政治驱动的历史书籍和课程的非殖民化过程中可能丢失的历史片段如何通过小说得以幸存，甚至可以作为一种有效的，尽管微妙的工具，通过以下方式将思想非殖民化创造性地使用而不是丢弃具有殖民地血统的历史，物体和做法。