| Summary: | Abstract
This thesis explores how independent literary publishing activities during the period
1994-2004 sought to engage in public debate and deliberation, and thereby moved
beyond purely literary concerns. It explores how the publishers understood their
publishing activities as acts of public engagement and contestation, and argues that
they can usefully be considered counterpublics, a characteristic which feels unique to
the post-apartheid period. The mid-1990s saw a surge in literary publishing activity in
South Africa that included journals and magazines, books, pamphlets, websites,
readings and performances, and recordings. These publishing activities can be
considered independent in that they occurred outside the support structures of
institutions such as the commercial book publishing industry or universities, and were
typically initiated by writers, who relied on their own time, energy and skills to
publish. While independent literary publishing was not a new thing in South Africa,
the post-apartheid period showed some striking features, including a heightened
concern with the act of publishing itself, the emergence of several black-owned
publishers, and a new relationship to the state in terms of access to funding. This
thesis focuses on the publishing activities of five publishers: Dye Hard Press,
Botsotso, Timbila, Kotaz and Chimurenga. It discusses the often complex
contribution the publishing activities make to what we consider a post-apartheid
public sphere that is central to democracy, and to public deliberation broadly
conceptualized. It argues that public sphere theory offers a way of talking about the
divergent characteristics of the publishing activities, which can be considered acts of
poetic world making that position themselves in contestation with the post-apartheid
mainstream. They are counterpublic in that their world making tends to contest the
exclusions of the mainstream in publishing and editorial practice. However, it
suggests that their relationship to the mainstream is at times ambivalent, and their
independence not always assured. This is particularly felt in the reliance of some of
the publishers on state and state-aligned arts bodies for funding for their survival, but
also in other areas such as their difficult relationship with commercial book dealers,
and the mainstream media. This thesis suggests that it is here where the very nature of
both their dependence on and independence from the dominant public as publishing
activities is in itself a shifting site of contestation. Their proximity to the mainstream
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in terms of state funding also suggests the need for a theorization of what we might
call “embedded counterpublics” in highly stratified societies such as South Africa.
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