Abstract

CROESER, Chan. Where Ghosts Still Play: A Queer exploration of the affective role of the haunted farm in CJ Langenhoven's "Die bouval op Wilgerdal". Tydskr. geesteswet. [online]. 2024, vol.64, n.4, pp.760-776. ISSN 2224-7912.  https://doi.org/10.17159/2224-7912/2024/v64n4a13.

This article analyses an early twentieth-century Afrikaans ghost story, "Die bouval op Wilgerdal" by CJ Langenhoven (1972, originally published in 1924) by means of a queer reading and it places specific focus on the affective role of space in the story. It is a story within a story that is presented as a first-person retelling of a tale about the haunted, ruined farm of the Van Graan family. Affect theory and Gordonian hauntology are used as tools to underpin the queer reading of the story that, it is argued, contribute to its queering. The article approaches queerness as a radical politics that disrupts social norms and reaches beyond queerness as an umbrella term for the LGBTQIAP+ community. The article illustrates how queer reading is an approach to text analysis that focuses on hegemonic literary history to queer the literary canon and undermine the hegemony of (hetero)normativity. Queer reading specifically pays attention to the tension between the visible and the invisible in texts in order to bring out hidden meanings that run counter to normative readings of the text. Productive links between queer reading, Gordonian hauntology and the uncanny are illuminated by illustrating how the relationship between the visible and the invisible is explored. For Gordon, ghosts and haunting inform how systemic structures that are invisible or seemingly no longer there, make their impact felt. The analysis of haunting can therefore lead to a more complex understanding of the moving parts and generative structures of historically embedded social formations. A key part of Gordon's theory is how the uncanny is a haunting experience where the familiar, which has been suppressed, returns in the form of a disturbing phantom. Importantly, this article highlights the parallels between queerness and the uncanny. Because of the links between queer reading and affect as well as Gordon's emphasis on the affective, a discussion on affect theory is presented to direct attention to how emotions circulate between bodies, objects, and spaces in the text. The discussion of the text sheds light on the affective role of the farm in the Afrikaans literary tradition. The argument is made that the space of the farm does not figure as a mere backdrop against which Afrikaans stories play out, but that it can be considered a palimpsest through which the various layers of history, identity and affect can be read. To illustrate this, a brief overview of the context from which the farm novel emerged is given to highlight how it responded to widespread urbanisation by glorifying the rural values of the past. The article describes how ownership of the land, and the farmer's ties to the land through his labour and bloodline were regarded as key parts of Afrikaner identity by the Afrikaner nuclear family depicted in early twentieth-century Afrikaans farm narratives. It is suggested that one of the ways in which CJ Langenhoven's "Die bouval op Wilgerdal" queers the characteristic features of the farm in Afrikaans literature is by making the space of the story, the farm, an uncanny space. In this way, the story undermines and criticises the values that are often associated with the farm and questions its centrality in the formation of an Afrikaner identity. To elucidate this subversion and questioning the affective landscape of the narrator in "Die bouval op Wilgerdal" is analysed to show how CJ Langenhoven uses the setting to evoke an uncanny affective environment by drawing the narrator affectively into the anticipation of threat through the sights and sounds of the farm. The haunting of the farm is located in its setting, rather than from the outside suggesting that the story regards the threat that haunts the farm as internal and supernatural. This is particularly evident from how Langenhoven represents the haunting of the Wilgerdal farm in the ruined Afrikaner home and reveals that the true haunting is located in the ruin of the Van Graan family lineage and the subsequent loss of their bloodline's ties to the land. This is especially evident from how Langenhoven makes the Afrikaner house a haunted house and thus reveals that the ghostliness of Wilgerdal originates in the heart of the Afrikaner family. This disruption occurs due to Frans Rysselaar's occupation of Petrus 's body, leaving Petrus disembodied and searching for justice on the farm. The conventional patterns of Afrikaans literature about the farm, where the benevolent patriarch rules over the farm and ensures the succession of his bloodline, are therefore queered. Following from this, the article suggests that by depicting the threat to the farm as a supernatural threat linked closely to the setting of the story, the farm and the Afrikaner family home, Langenhoven's text may have been attempting to queer the familial values of Afrikaner society that were valorised in Afrikaans literature about farms at the time. Finally, it is argued that through this queering the text uncovers and/or reflects the uncanny nature ofthe farm and the Afrikaner's tenuous relationship with it. A queer reading of "Die bouval op Wilgerdal" implores the Afrikaner to live with and provide a hospitable memory for the ghosts that populate Afrikaner homes. The article concludes by suggesting that this story may have been speaking to that which haunted Langenhoven and Afrikaner society at the time and that these same fears around the survival of the Afrikaner family and the Afrikaner's ownership of the land still persist.

Keywords : queer; queerness; queer reading; ghost stories; uncanny; CJ Langenhoven; hauntology; affect theory; spectrality theory; Gordonian hauntology; affect; farm; Afrikaans literature; land ownership; Afrikaner identity; family abolition; heteronormativity; heteroreproducitive futurity.

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