"The idea of forward movement as progress has become something that I find very problematic. And I think it’s because I bought into it for a very long time in my own life, in my own thinking. That as long as things are forward moving, this is progressive. So I liked the idea of having these people thinking that they were coming here or coming together as a form of progressing, right? The very narrative of progress is so built into the whole colonial narrative that it can’t make sense of itself without that. But I actually liked the idea of realising, maybe, that that forward movement is not necessarily leading anyway. This is something that I think the protagonist of the novel realises by examining her father’s life closely, because he is someone who’s constantly on the move but also very lost and directionless. There are moments in our own histories, both collectively and personally, where, you know, it looked like we were doing this, but actually, we were not moving forward. Maybe, you know, we were stuck or we were moving back, but we were not doing that forward progression"
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Imported from EN Wikiquote
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Siphiwe_Gloria_Ndlovu
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Siphiwe Gloria Ndlovu
15 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Siphiwe Gloria Ndlovu →
Related Quotes
"What man did not want a piece of viable land that belonged to him"
"For me, the Quality of Mercy is about what to do with particularly violent histories—when you inherit them"
"What do we do with this inherited state? An eye for an eye or forgiveness?” —and what does that forgiveness (or mercy…"
"I think when we think of the city it’s where people go to work. But in a country that has such little employment, why…"
"For me, Bulawayo is a city of people coming together to build the city. So it’s a very cosmopolitan space. Because we…"
"That’s what I love about looking at the history we’ve created, it is messy, it is chaotic. With all the attempts to m…"
"But really, we can talk about the violence of apartheid, but what actually made the history was the messiness, was th…"
"One of the things that makes me particularly unhappy with the way Zimbabwe has dealt with its race issue is that it h…"
"I came across a lot of Sethekelis when I was reading archival sources. And I think a lot of us women who exist in the…"
"we have to be confrontational about the past. We have to learn from it, but also challenge some of what we’ve receive…"