ABSTRACT
Like many novelists, Bessie Head (1937-1986) wrote stories that emerged from her observations of the world.1 This world – South Africa (and later Botswana) in the midtwentieth century – was characterised by a high degree of rigidity and ambient violence. Arguably,
I argue that Head’s contribution, then, was to craft art that refuses discursive closure, or epistemic totalitarianism. My reading of Head’s work is influenced by Mudimbe (1988), who argues that while the theory of discursive power might overlook the agent, thinkers like Levi-Strauss (and Foucault) exemplify an insurrectionary approach to the analysis of discursive power that refuses to reproduce a ‘totalitarian order of knowledge’ (Mudimbe 1988, 33). I suggest that Head’s work can help students of social theory address
increasing rigidities related to categories of identity, the security apparatus of states (and other forms of authority) and the uneven relations of power that contour contemporary lived experiences.
