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Department of English » Staff » L de Kock
Leon de Kock

MA (Leeds),  D. Litt et Phil (Unisa)

For a fuller CV, see www.leondekock.co.za

DESIGNATION

Professor

 

RESEARCH INTERESTS

 

South African literary studies

Literary Translation

Whiteness studies

Postcolonial studies

Transnationalism and South African literary culture

Pedagogies of creative writing and translation

Ecologies of mind and body with specific reference to Humberto Maturana

 

 

TEACHING AREAS

 

South African literature
Creative writing and literary translation
Literary practice

Postcolonial studies
Fiction, drama and poetry

 

PUBLICATIONS

BOOKS

(Forthcoming.) Translation of Etienne van Heerden's novel, In Stede van die Liefde. (English title: In Love's Place.) Johannesburg: Penguin SA.

 Bad Sex: A Novel. Cape Town: Umuzi.

2011. Before it Darkens / Duskant die Donker. (Translation of retrospective cycle of poems by Cas Vos.) Pretoria: Protea Book House.

2010. Intimately Absent. (Translation of poems by Cas Vos from his volume, Intieme Afwesige.) Pretoria: Protea Book House.

2010. Bodyhood. (Volume of poetry.) Johannesburg & Cape Town: Umuzi.

2006. gone to the edges. (Volume of poetry.) Pretoria: Protea Book House.

2004. South Africa in the Global Imaginary. Pretoria and Leiden: UNISA Press, Brill and the Centre for African Renaissance Studies. (Edited with Louise Bethlehem and Sonja Laden, with two single-authored chapters in the volume.)

2002. Identities: South African Short Stories. Cape Town: Juta-Gariep. (Edited with Peter Southey, general introduction and notes preceding each story by Leon de Kock.)

2001. Verborge Skatte: Herman Charles Bosman in/oor Afrikaans. Cape Town: Human & Rousseau. (Edited edition of Bosman's Afrikaans fiction and poetry, including Bosman's criticism in both English and Afrikaans on Afrikaans literary and cultural matters. With extensive Introduction in both English and Afrikaans and Notes on the Text. General editors: Stephen Gray and Craig Mackenzie.)

1999. Translation of Marlene van Niekerk's novel, Triomf. London: Little Brown, (hardcover, followed by Abacus paperback); South African version: Johannesburg: Jonathan Ball, 1999. US edition: The Overlook Press, 2004. Film based on translation by Michael Raeburn, 2009.

1997. Bloodsong: Poems. Cape Town: Snailpress.

1996. Civilising Barbarians: Missionary Narrative and African Textual Response in Nineteenth-Century South Africa. Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press and Lovedale Press (monograph).

1996. The Heart in Exile: South African Poetry in English, 1990-1995. Johannesburg: Penguin, 1996. (Edited with Ian Tromp.)

 

ARTICLES IN PEER-REVIEWED JOURNALS

In Press

Squeezing Writers Out: A Deductivist Stranglehold on the Construction of 'South Africa Literature'? Festchrift for Henrietta Roos. Journal of Literary Studies.

Published

 

2010. Call of the Wild: Speculations on a White Counterlife in South Africa. English in Africa 37 (1): 15-39. (Special issue on Whiteness Studies.)

 2010. Framing Essay: Performing Public Wisdom. Social Dynamics 36 (1): 179-186. (Exceeding Public Spheres II, special issue edited by Lesley Cowling, Carolyn Hamilton and Isabel Hofmeyr.)

2009. Judging 'New' South African Fiction in the Transnational Moment. Current Writing: Text and Reception in Southern Africa 21 (1 / 2): 24-58. (Special issue on South African literature beyond 2000).

2009. Cracking the Code: Translation as Transgression in Triomf. Journal of Literary Studies 25 (3): 16-38.

2008. Making the Body Public. English Academy Review 25 (2): 88-100.

2008. How South African Literature Got Squeezed Out, and Then Slipped In: English Academic Literary Discourse in South Africa 1946-1996. English Studies in Africa 50 (2): 19-46. (Jubilee Edition, with Derek Barker.)

2008. A History of Restlessness: And Now for the Rest. English Studies in Africa 50 (2): 109-122.

2007. The Gold Standard in English Literary Discourse: Some Functions of the Academic Article in Peer-Reviewed Journals in South Africa. Journal of Literary Studies 23 (2):105-117. (With Derek Barker.)

2007. Don’t go Wessa, Young Man: Doctrinal Groups in SA English Literary Discourse. scrutiny2: issues in english studies in southern Africa 12 (1): 19-29. (With Derek Barker.)

2006. Blanc de Blanc: Whiteness Studies - A South African Connection? Journal of Literary Studies 22 (1 / 2) June: 175-189.

2005. Naming of Parts: How Things Shape up in Transcultural Literary History. Literator 26 (2) August: 1-15.

2005. Does South African Literature Still Exist? Or: South African Literature is Dead, Long Live Literature in South Africa. English in Africa 32 (2): 69-84.

2003. Translating Triomf: The Shifting Limits of 'Ownership' in Literary Translation, or, Never Translate Anyone But a Dead Author. Journal of Literary Studies 19 (3/4): 345-359.

2003. Splice of Life: Manipulations of the ‘Real’ in South African English Literary Culture. Journal of Literary Studies 19 (1): 82-102.

2001. Introduction: South Africa in the Global Imaginary. Poetics Today. (Special issue on South Africa: South Africa in the Global Imaginary, edited by Leon de Kock, co-edited by Louise Bethlehem and Sonja Laden.) Duke University Press, Vol 22 (2), Spring: 263-298.

2001. 'Sitting for the Civilisation Test': The Making(s) of a Civil Imaginary in Colonial South Africa. Poetics Today 22 (2), Spring: 391-412.

1997. An Impossible History. English in Africa 24 (1): 103-117.

1997. Becoming Different from Ourselves. Journal of Literary Studies 13 (1 / 2): 223-226.

1996. 'The Heart in Exile': South African Poetry in English, 1990-1995. Ariel: A Review of International English Literature 27(1): 105-131.

1995. The Ruptures of the Particular: Against Generalised Critiques of Generalised Cultural Relativism. Journal of Literary Studies 11 (3/4): 43-47.

1995. Reading History as Cultural Text. Alternation 2 (1): 65-78.

1994. For and against the Comaroffs: Postmodernist Puffery and Competing Conceptions of the Archive. South African Historical Journal 31: 280-89.

1994. Missionaries, Language, and the Land. Journal of Theology for Southern Africa 87.

1994. Textual Capture in the Civilising Mission: Moffat, Livingstone, and the Case of Tiyo Soga. English in Africa 21: 33-58.

1993. Contending with the Information Narrative (review article on Tim Couzens's Tramp Royal), South African Historical Journal 29: 274-282.

1993. Postcolonial Analysis and the Question of Critical Disablement. Current Writing 5 (2): 44-69.

1993. The Central South African Story, or Many Stories? English Academy Review 10 (1): 45-55.

1992. History, Literature, and English: Reading the Lovedale Missionary Record within South Africa's Colonial History, English Academy Review 9, December: 1-21.

1992 . 'People, Power & Culture' and the Ethics of Historical Representation. South African Historical Journal 27, November: 243-253.

1992. 'Drinking at the English Fountains': Missionary Discourse and the Case of Lovedale. Missionalia 20 (2): 116-138.

1992. Interview with Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak: New Nation Writers Conference in South Africa. Ariel: A Review of International English Literature 23 (3): 29-47.

1992. English and the Colonisation of Form. Journal of Literary Studies 8 (1 / 2): 33-54.

1989. A Prison-House of Mirrors? In: Marianne de Jong (ed), Shorter Papers and Discussion at the Seminar on Foe, Journal of Literary Studies 5 (2): 229-231.

1987. Wole Soyinka. Africa Insight 17 (2).

1987. Literature, Politics and Universalism: A Debate Between Es'kia Mphahlele and J.M.Coetzee. Journal of Literary Studies 3 (4): 35-48.

CHAPTERS IN BOOKS


In Press

 

A Change of Tongue: Questions of Translation. In: Derek Attridge and David Attwell (eds.) The Cambridge History of South African Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Metonymies of Lead: Bullets, Type and Print Culture in South African Missionary Colonialism. In: Andrew van der Vlies (ed.) Print, Text, & Book Cultures in Southern Africa. UNISA Press.

The End of 'South African' Literary History? Judging 'National' Fiction in a Transnational Era. In: Michael Chapman and Margaret Lenta (eds.) Post-Postapartheid Literature in South Africa, Witwatersrand University Press.

Published

2009. Cracking the Code: Translation as Transgression in Triomf. In: Judith Inggs and Libby Meintjes (eds.) Translation Studies in Africa. Continuum Studies in Translation Series. London: Continuum International Publishing Group: 21-43.

2006. Naming of Parts: How Things Shape up in Transcultural Literary History.  In: Gunilla Lindberg-Wada (ed.) Studying Transcultural Literary History. Berlin, New York: Walter de Gruyter: 12-22.

2004. Introduction: South Africa in the Global Imaginary. In: Leon de Kock, Louise Bethlehem and Sonja Laden (eds.) South Africa in the Global Imaginary. Pretoria and Leiden: UNISA Press, Brill and the Centre for African Renaissance Studies: 1-31.

2004. 'Sitting for the Civilisation Test': The Making(s) of a Civil Imaginary in Colonial South Africa. In: Leon de Kock, Louise Bethlehem and Sonja Laden (eds.) South Africa in the Global Imaginary. Pretoria and Leiden: UNISA Press, Brill and the Centre for African Renaissance Studies: 117-135.

2001. Introduction: Nadine Gordimer, The Late Bourgeois World. UNISA Press.

1997. The Truth of Representation and Representation as Truth. In: J.W.N. Tempelhoff (ed.) The Exploration of Fact and Fiction: An Interdisciplinary Discourse. Potchefstroom University for CHE.

1996. The Pursuit of Smaller Stories: Reconsidering the Limits of Literary History in South Africa. In: J.S.  Smit, J. van Wyk and J.P. Wade (eds.) Rethinking South African Literary History. Durban: Y Press: 85-92.

1994. Don Mattera. In Eugene Benson and L.W. Conolly (eds.) Encyclopaedia of Postcolonial Literatures in English. London: Routledge.

1993. Nadine Gordimer: 'The Ultimate Safari'. In: Noelle Watson (ed.) Reference Guide to Short Fiction.  London: St. James.

1991. The Sjambok Era: Johannesburg's Popular Press of the 1930s. In: in R. Hill, M. Muller and M. Trump (eds.) African Studies Forum Volume 1.  Pretoria: Human Sciences Research Council.

1986 & 1991. Essays on Nadine Gordimer, Andre P. Brink and Christopher Hope in James Vinson and D.L. Kirkpatrick (eds.) Contemporary Novelists, London, Macmillan.

1986. Bosman's View of Post-1948 South Africa. In: Stephen Gray (ed.) Herman Charles Bosman, Southern African Literature Series, No. 6, Johannesburg, McGraw Hill.

 

Web-based Articles

2009. 'Once More With Feeling': The Problems and Potential of Literary Translation in Contemporary South Africa. LitNet Translation Seminar.

http://www.litnet.co.za/cgi-bin/giga.cgi?cmd=cause_dir_custom&cause_id=1270&page=vertaling

2008. The Body Public. LitNet seminar on the body.

http://www.litnet.co.za/cgi-bin/giga.cgi?cmd=cause_dir_news_item&cause_id=1270&news_id=37314&cat_id=169

 

Selected Literary Journalism: 2008-2010

2011. Why rage is inevitable. (Leon de Kock comments on the Mail & Guardian reviewing-and-publishing debate.) Mail & Guardian, 11 March. http://mg.co.za/article/2011-03-11-why-rage-is--inevitable

2010. Making Sense of Uncertainty. Review of David Medalie. The Mistress's Dog: Short Stories 1996-2010. Sunday Independent. 15 August. http://www.sundayindependent.co.za/index.php?fArticleId=5601984

2010. Readers Call for Fiction-Free Diet. Review of David Shields. Reality Hunger. Sunday Independent. 4 July.

2010. A New Force in the New Apartheid. Review of Andrew Brown, Refuge. Sunday Independent. 28 February.

http://www.sundayindependent.co.za/index.php?fArticleId=5371451

2010. As Darkness Falls. Review of Philip Roth, The Humbling. Sunday Times. 28 February.

http://www.timeslive.co.za/lifestyle/books/article326125.ece/As-darkness-falls

2010. Hits Keep Coming but it Ain't Enough. Review of Mike Nicol, Killer Country. Sunday Independent. 14 February. http://www.sundayindependent.co.za/general/print_article.php?fArticleId=5351825

2009. Intimate Enemies: A Discussion with Marlene van Niekerk and Michiel Heyns about Agaat and its Translation into English. Journal of Literary Studies 25 (3): 136-151.

2009. Review of Jacques Pauw, Little Ice Cream Boy (novel). Sunday Independent, 30 November.

2009. The Silence of the Ashes. Read of the week. Review of Richard Russo, That Old Cape Magic (novel), Sunday Times Lifestyle. Print and online. 8 November. http://www.timeslive.co.za/lifestyle/article180051.ece/The-silence-of-the-ashes

2009. Grim Land of Animals and Survivors. Review of Alistair Morgan, Sleeper's Wake (novel). Mail & Guardian. 25 August. Print and online.

http://www.mg.co.za/article/2009-08-25-grim-land-of-animals-and-survivors

2009. Tóibín - Fiction's Alchemist (review of Colm Toibin, Brooklyn). Sunday Times Lifestyle. Print and online. 30 August.

http://www.timeslive.co.za/lifestyle/books/article34895.ece

2008. De Horror! De Horror! Book of the Week. (Review of Eben Venter's Trencherman. Sunday Times Lifestyle. Print and online. Print 24 August: p. 20. Online: http://www.timeslive.co.za/sundaytimes/article118304.ece Full version of review downloadable from http://reviews.book.co.za/blog/2008/08/27/carrot-stick-carrot-de-kock-pike-and-de-kock-again-on-trencherman/

2008. Leaving the Forefront of African Lit. (Obituary of Es'kia Mphahlele). 18 November, Mail & Guardian. Paper and online edition. 1 November.

http://www.mg.co.za/article/2008-11-07-leaving-the-forefront-of-african-lit

2008. The Rite to Remain Silent. (Review of For the Sake of Silence by Michael Cawood Green. June 14, Sunday Times, online edition, 14 June.

http://www.thetimes.co.za/Books/Article.aspx?id=783962

2008. The Politics of Publishing. Mail & Guardian Higher Learning suppl. Vol 24 No 24, June: p. 5. http://www.mg.co.za/article/2008-06-30-politics-of-publishing

2008. Seven Steps to Literary Heaven. (Review essay on Michiel Heyns, Bodies Politic). Sunday Times Lifestyle, online edition. 8 June.

http://www.thetimes.co.za/article.aspx?id=780493

2008. How to get into bed with a publisher. (Essay on WISER Colloquium, 'The Politics of Publishing in South Africa'.) Sunday Times Lifestyle, online edition. 8 June. http://www.thetimes.co.za/article.aspx?id=780495

2008. Beelde dans clichés tot in die stof (review of Gail Dendy, The Lady Missionary). Rapport. 20 June.

2008. Philip Roth: 'n Manlike Rukwind.  Boeke-Insig. Autumn 2008, 46-47.

2008. Bottomless wit. Profile on Finuala Dowling and review of Flyleaf. Sunday Times Lifestyle, 24 February.

2008. A Consensus of Criticism. (Essay on ‘Paradoxes of the Postcolonial Public Sphere’ Conference, Wits University, January 2008.) Financial Mail, 29 February: 82-84.

http://secure.financialmail.co.za/08/0229/features/ifeat.htm

 
 
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