Twentieth Century and Contemporary Literature

The Twentieth Century and Contemporary Research Seminar is a forum for scholars to present research on aspects of literature and culture in this century and last. While the seminar serves as a testing ground for new ideas that push against the expectations of period and discipline, it is also home to our lively community of postgraduate and postdoctoral researchers, providing a valuable resource within the Faculty.

Disaster, Qualified: Nadine Gordimer and Postcolonial Wildlife Conservation Dr Dominic O'Key (University of Cambridge)

Tue 6 May, 17:00

English Faculty Board Room

Abstract: This paper asks how Nadine Gordimer's writing responds to the historical problem of postcolonial nature conservation. A work in progress from my ongoing book project, The Conservation Plot: Reading Postcolonial Wildlife, the paper turns to Gordimer's work in order to consider what's at stake in the relationship between postcolonial writing and conservation histories. At the heart of my essay will be a re-reading: where critics like Rob Nixon have justifiably positioned Gordimer's apartheid-era writing as being exemplary of the postcolonial critique of conservation, I wish to attend to the ways that her post-apartheid fiction stages conservation as a double bind: a legacy of colonial violence, yet also a mechanism for preventing new enclosures. Put differently, and to paraphrase her penultimate novel, Get A Life, I want to suggest that Gordimer's late work recasts conservation as "disaster, qualified".

Bio: Dominic O'Key is a Teaching Associate in the Faculty of English. He is the author of Creaturely Forms in Contemporary Literature: Narrating the War Against Animals (2022).

Wine/orange juice will be served. All welcome including dinner/drinks afterwards at a nearby pub.

Please get in touch with Amelia (aaz30) or Malak (mk2149) with any queries.