https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8247-1230
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Abstract
Ivan Vladislavić’s short story “The Terminal Bar” has been neglected in criticism. This article reads the story as a critique of South Africa’s Border War (1966–1989), and of the society that formed in the background of that war, arguing that the eponymous bar serves as a microcosm of South Africa of the 1980s. Using recent scholarship on gender violence that confirms a link between ideology and normative masculinity, I demonstrate how the story’s presentation of the simultaneous existence of the violent and the quotidian recreates the profoundly uncomfortable atmosphere of normalized violence of 1980s South Africa. I call this “cognitive dissonance on a national scale.” I also investigate the masculinities represented in the story using the notion of the renounced feminine. In my reading, the story clearly shows that masculinities required and necessitated by the political dispensation of the time are detrimental to both the individual and to society at large. Lastly, I look into the presence and the function of a subtle female spectral presence that has escaped scholarly attention altogether, but that holds the key to the story’s central import.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1 Sue Marais, “Freeze-Frame?,” 40.
2 The Border War was, of course, not the only source of violence at the time; conscripts were being used to suppress unrest in the townships, bombs exploded in Durban and Pretoria, and anti-government protesters immolated suspected collaborators. Vladislavić alludes to such events his stories, but they are not foregrounded in “The Terminal Bar.”
3 To reduce footnotes, all references to the primary text will be provided in parentheses in the body of the article.
4 This may hint that the Terminal Bar is not a “ladies’ bar” (a public area permitted to sell alcohol to women), as existed historically at the time. See Dictionary of South African English<https://dsae.co.za>, s.v. ladies’ bar.
5 “Braai” is Afrikaans for “barbeque”.
6 A Kreepy Krauly is a swimming pool cleaning device invented in South African in 1974.
7 Gaylard, At Home, 54.
8 Before, because the corpses are already in the fridge when the night watchman and Weinberg fetch cabbages for the salads for the braai (109), and after, because the murder is described as happening towards the end of the terrorist attack that interrupts the braai.
9 To confuse matters further, the narrator calls the attackers “soldiers” (110, 111, 112 & 113), while Boshoff calls them “terrorists” (111).
10 Marais, “Freeze-frame?,” 40.
11 Peters, “Re-placing,” 247.
12 Morphet, “An Extraordinary Volume,” 23.
13 Marais, “Freeze-frame,” 37.
14 Ibid., 27.
15 Peters, “Re-placing,” 245.
16 Wood, “Taking Fun Seriously,” 28.
17 Marais, “Freeze-frame?,” 27–28.
18 Peters, “Re-placing,” 241; Wannenberg in Marais, “Freeze-frame?,” 28; Wood, “Taking Fun Seriously,” 22.
19 Wood, “Taking Fun Seriously,” 28; Marais, “Freeze-frame?,” 27–28.
20 Peters, “Re-placing,” 249; Marais, “Freeze-frame?,” 30–31.
21 Ngara, “Imagining,” 103.
22 Doherty, “BOSBEFOK,” 24.
23 Mandela, Long Walk, 751.
24 See Swanepoel “The Firedogs” for an exploration Vladislavić’s treatment of white discomfort as it relates to memory.
25 Vladislavić, “Journal,” 43.
26 Mathews, Jewkes, and Abrahams, “So, now I’m the man,” 107, 120.
27 Ibid., 121.
28 Doherty, “BOSBEFOK,” 2 & 12.
29 Ibid., 13.
30 Ibid., 12.
31 Ibid., 15.
32 Ibid., 16 & 24.
33 Ibid., 15.
34 Ibid., 16.
35 Ibid., 14–15.
36 Ibid., 39–40.
37 Ibid., 38.
38 Ibid., 3 & 20; Baines, South Africa’s Border War, 1–4.
39 Mason, “Contesting Masculinities,” 158.
40 Doherty, “BOSBEFOK,” 21–22, 26.
41 Ibid., 7.
42 Mason, “Contesting Masculinities,” 160.
43 Doherty, “BOSBEFOK,” 1.
44 APA. An example would be when abused children are expected to pretend to the outside world that they live in a happy home, and start believing that their situation is happy and normal.
45 Vladislavić, Portrait, 139.
46 Doherty, “BOSBEFOK,” 21.
47 Mason, “Contesting Masculinities, 160.
48 Kimmel, “Masculinity as Homophobia,” 59.
49 Ibid., 59.
50 Ibid., 63.
51 Mason, “Contesting Masculinities,” 163.
52 Kimmel, “Masculinity as Homophobia,” 65.
53 Ibid., 67.
54 Ibid., 67.
55 Ibid., 68.
56 Ibid., 69.
57 Baines, South Africa’s “Border War,” 38.
58 Mathews, Jewkes, and Abrahams, “So, now I’m the Man,” 107 & 120.
59 Conscription was compulsory military service for white men in RSA enforced by law from 1967–1994. (SA History Online)
60 Wood, “Taking Fun Seriously,” 27.
61 In 1992 and taking her cue from “Tsafendas’s Diary”, another story in Missing Persons, Sue Marais, started a tradition of reading the Kreepy Krauly as a reference to Dimitri Tsafendas’s tapeworm. Tsafendas, Hendrik Verwoerd’s assassin, pleaded insanity in court, saying that he took instructions from a tapeworm in his brain.
62 Wood, “Taking Fun Seriously,” 26–27.
63 “Recce” is slang for “reconnaissance,” and refers a special forces brigade in the SADF.
64 Baines, South Africa’s Border War, 38 & 39.
65 Peters, “Re-placing,” 249.
66 The story is rich in passing allusions; the Italian who escapes by hiding in laundry is an allusion to the cliché and slur of alleged Italian cowardice and incompetence in military situations, which of course is another manifestation of masculine failure.
67 Kimmel, “Masculinity as Homophobia,” 64 & 69.
68 Mason, “Contesting Masculinities,” 164.
69 After the murder, Boshoff runs out of the shop waving his revolver and shouting, “Father! Father!, ”calling for Father O’Reilly to absolve him (115). Here too he enacts a childlike state. The narrator denotes this outburst as “[v]ery odd.”
70 The Holy Bible (King James Version), Rev. 14, 19–20.
71 Koons, “Rhetorical Legacy,” 212, 216–217.
72 Ibid., 226.
73 Ibid., 222.
74 Ibid., 225.
75 Ibid., 211.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Rilette Swanepoel
Rilette Swanepoel is a senior lecturer in English Literature at North-West University. She holds a Y2 NRF rating (2018–2023). Her research interests include laughter in literature, the representation of memory and space, and the interfaces between literary and other arts