Cycnos | Volume 34.3 - Nadine Gordimer, Jump and other stories : parcours critiques | II. Une esthétique de la fragmentation

Résumé :

International audience

In Nadine Gordimer's Jump and Other Stories, the sense of fragmentation and segregation is overwhelming. The dwelling places of the various protagonists, first of ail, show how in terms of spatial and hence political planning, the part is never included the whole; in other words, they show how the principle of metonymy is systematically thwarted if not undermined. The fact that the staries are usually told in a mixed narrative and enunciative mode, the fact that they always comprise several speakers and the fact that these speakers do not speak the same language convey the same lack of wholeness. Even the extended metatextuality practiced by Gordimer might be said to partake of such metonymic disjunction since her specular comments disrupt the sense diegetic wholeness. If the principle of metonymy is then proven malfunctioning in the bulk of the collection, the last story manifestly introduces the hope of metonymic inclusion and modifies then the collection's whole teleology, presenting metonymy as the ultimate goal and promise.

Mots-clés : Apartheid -disenchantrnent -fragmentation -Nadine Gordimer -metatextuality -metonymic unity -metonymy -teleology.

Date de publication : 2018-11