Abstract

Ivan Vladislavic's short story "Alphabets for Surplus People" is read both as political satire and as an exercise in linguistic 'play'. The discussion foregrounds a device that is characteristic of Vladislavic's work: creating lists. His more recent novels, like his earlier short fiction, demonstrate both a keen eye for the physical characteristics of objects and a lexicographer's delight in manipulating words-as-objects. Vladislavic's fascination with objects - and with the words that represent those objects - is shown to offer a non-polemical critique of the consumerism effacing extant class divides. This balance of the 'aesthetic' and the 'political' suggests a new direction for South African literature, a form of the "new aesthetic" anticipated by Fredric Jameson almost two decades ago.

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