"Between the walls of Jasper, in the streets of gold" : the deconstruction of Afrikaner mythology in Marlene van Niekerk's triomf

Abstract

Triomf explores the distortion of the national Afrikaner identity as a result of apartheid. This dissertation aims to demonstrate how van Niekerk deconstructs the Afrikaner through myths, stories, symbols, intertextuality and Derridean deconstruction. The Benades represent the Afrikaner on three levels: the personal, the national and the primordial. Since the Benades are primordial, Van Niekerk is able to use the archetypes of Jung’s collective unconscious to deconstruct the archetypal mythological structures Afrikaner nationalists used to develop identity and unity. The archetypes deconstructed are Spirit, the Great Mother, Re-birth, the Trickster, the Physical Hearth and the Sacred Fire. Afrikaner myths deconstructed include the Great Trek, the family, the patriarch, the matriarch, the future of a white Afrikaner nation and the binding character of Afrikaans as white national language. Van Niekerk undermines the plaasroman of the 1920s and 1930s, as the Afrikaner’s national identity was constituted and deconstructed in literature.