PALIMPSEST AND SELF-REFLEXIVE NARRATION: HISTORIOGRAPHIC METAFICTION IN DAMON GALGUT’S THE PROMISE AND ZOË WICOMB’S PLAYING IN THE LIGHT

Abstract

This article aims to explore the close relationship between palimpsestic memory and self-reflexive narration in The Promise by Damon Galgut and Playing in the Light by Zoë Wicomb, situating both texts within the theoretical framework of historiographic metafiction. Drawing primarily on Linda Hutcheon’s formulation of historiographic metafiction, alongside insights from postcolonial theory and memory studies, the study aims to explain that both novels destabilize authoritative historical narratives of apartheid and post-apartheid South Africa. By following the fragmented narrative structures, temporal dislocations, and metafictional techniques, these works foreground the contractedness of history and identity. The metaphor of the palimpsest used here as a central organizing principle, by showing how suppressed histories particularly those shaped by racial violence, dispossession, and identity erasure persist beneath dominant narratives. Galgut’s The Promise possess questions on the moral and political failures of post-apartheid reconciliation by revealing a fractured family saga, while Wicomb’s Playing in the Light explores the instability of racial identity by showing the trope of “passing” and the recovery of suppressed genealogies. Both novels of south African fiction employs self-reflexive narration to reveal the limits of representation, highlighting the ethical dilemmas inherent in narrating trauma and historical injustice. Consequently, this study contends that these texts do not merely rewrite history but rather problematize the possibility of historical truth. By illustrating the history as layered, unstable, and mediated, they challenge readers to engage critically with the processes by which memory and identity are constructed, erased, and re-inscribed.