Resumen

JOHL, Ronél. Biography in context - what we may learn from controversies: 1) Leon de Kock and André P Brink en die spel van liefde. Tydskr. geesteswet. [online]. 2025, vol.65, n.3, pp.923-946. ISSN 2224-7912.  https://doi.org/10.17159/2224-7912/2025/v65n3a10.

On a re-reading of certain newspaper reviews of the Afrikaans version of Leon de Kock's biography of André P Brink, it is striking that (Afrikaans) literary academics have generally been reluctant in venturing out on matters that could be argued to fall strictly "outside the boundaries" of the work under discussion, even if these matters involved issues that closely affect the text, such as: (1) the impact of the controversial genesis and publication history of the Brink biography on the text and (2) the perceived synergy between the biographer's (general) behaviour towards women - as it came to light before and at the time of the book's launch - and his treatment of the many women in the biography. Moreover, in academic literature on biography, there are regularly statements suggesting that academics are generally still "afraid" of the biography as a genre. For example, in a review article of the Afrikaans version of the Brink biography, Annemarié van Niekerk mounts a defence of the biography, starting off with a reference to the lingering reputation of the biography as "disrespectable", "dangerous", a "hybrid". This supposedly "untamed" nature of the genre often serves as motivation to withdraw the discourse on biography within the safe confines of the academic disciplines, where controversial topical issues seemingly do not have to be adjudicated, but rather be avoided, which Van Niekerk also does in her article review. The question, however, then becomes, among other things, which of the academic disciplines should assume the responsibility offormulating a general theory of biography (this is a question I would like to examine in further pieces). At present, there is still no satisfactory theory of biography. The current article takes as a starting point the idea of the (literary) biography as a text within a social-historical communication network, an approach which involves, among other things, that the biography is not withdrawn from any controversies that may surround it. A communication network model makes it possible to account for various connections which a text (biography) enters into and maintains across time and space in particular contexts of the communication with different elements: from its origins and production to its reception. A second premise assumes that particular facets of the surrounding reality in which each text is embedded also take the form of texts (marketing pieces, announcements, reports, interviews, etc.). In the case of so-called epitexts, this involves those texts surrounding a particular text (biography) that may influence its reception and interpretation. A third premise holds that the collection of epitexts that surround a contested main text can be constructed as a narrative in order to shed light on the main text (biography). It is hoped that this can be done in ways that do not skirt the complex issues of the text-in-communication (the biography in context), and honour the integrity of the process. The reconstruction of the epitext of Leon de Kock's literary biography of Brink, André P Brink en die spel van liefde, has yielded data that destabilise the main text and seem to put in question claims about the scientific integrity of the biography, an observation which a critical textual study of the biography itself could usefully explore in greater depth.

Palabras clave : literary legacy; literary widows; controversial biographies; public text; epitext as narrative; communication network model; sender complex; epitext as narrative; context; paratext.

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