Abstract

In this essay I read Bessie Head’s novel When Rain Clouds Gather from a broadly eco-materialist perspective, arguing that the social transformation of the protagonist, Makhaya Maseko, is fundamentally bound up with the text’s nuanced descriptions of the physical environment. Charting Maseko’s departure from the toxic milieu of apartheid South Africa, and his gradual process of settling into a new lifeworld in the village of Golema Mmidi, I argue that his familiarization with the material grounds of life in a new clime provides an elemental coherence that enables the structuring of his personal narrative into a meaningful system. Through a series of close readings, I demonstrate that the novel’s expression of a composite ecological being is also reflected in the stylistic idiosyncrasies of Head’s writing. Throughout, I draw on Head’s correspondence, and on biographical aspects of her life, to situate Makhaya’s journey against a larger theme of struggling to make a home in the face of social alienation and the bureaucratic indifference of the nation-state. Reference to the work of anthropologists like Tim Ingold and Hannah Knox situates my argument in the context of a larger ontological move in debates around the relationship between nature and culture.

摘要

在这篇文章中，我读了 Bessie Head 的小说When Rain Clouds Gather从广泛的生态唯物主义的角度来看，认为主角 Makhaya Maseko 的社会转型从根本上与文本对物理环境的细微描述有关。通过描绘 Maseko 离开南非种族隔离的有毒环境，以及他逐渐融入 Golema Mmidi 村的新生活世界的过程，我认为他对新气候中物质生活基础的熟悉提供了一种基本的连贯性，使将他的个人叙述构建成一个有意义的系统。通过一系列细读，我证明小说对复合生态存在的表达也反映在海德写作的文体特质中。自始至终，我都借鉴了海德的信件，以及她生活的传记方面，将 Makhaya 的旅程置于一个更大的主题之上，即面对社会疏远和民族国家的官僚冷漠而努力建立家园。参考蒂姆·英戈尔德 (Tim Ingold) 和汉娜·诺克斯 (Hannah Knox) 等人类学家的工作，将我的论点置于围绕自然与文化之间关系的辩论中更大的本体论运动的背景下。