Rehearsals of liberation: Contemporary postcolonial discourse and the New South Africa

The desire of antiapartheid cultural workers to create theater that will succeed overseas may cause that theater to lose its dissidence by conforming to the expectations of the liberal enthusiasts Barnes describes. The demands of this overseas market inevitably affect playmaking in South Africa. The exported theater that results, Ian Steadman points out, ‘might even be viewed as an instrument of ruling-class hegemony, for the image of South African culture prepared for outsiders is highly selective and often reinforces the very stereotypes it seeks to undermine.' Without sufficient interrogation, the construction of South African literature as postcolonial can also reproduce the contradictions in the production and reception of South African theater abroad and in Derrida’s ‘Racism’s Last Word.' The bifurcated vision of the Maxwellian model of South African literature obscures heterogenous elements that can contribute to a postapartheid era. The ‘english’ construction of postcoloniality facilitates this exclusion of multiple differences among and within racial groups.