Gordimer’s Pathologies

This article explores significant patterns in Nadine Gordimer’s fiction through a focus on the concept of pathology. The idea is to trace how some of the characteristic pathologies in her work are generated and structured. By way of conceptual clarification, some of the claims and liabilities of surface reading are evaluated. The key here is to understand a transactional relationship between ‘vertical’ and ‘horizontal’ readings, particularly in the differential space of the boundary that Gordimer’s work inhabits. Partly this generates dynamics that apply to her characters, but also to her fiction in general: pathology is not only its subject, but also what it is subject to. In this vein, the article traces other patterns – for instance, a mobile dialectic across the course of Gordimer’s career between vertical and horizontal versions of the uncanny. This has implications not only for the transition from the apartheid to post-apartheid periods in South Africa, but also to more globalised settings.