Seventeenth International Conference on New Directions in the Humanities

Abstract

As used in the domain of identity politics, the notion of transitionality is one which calls into question and deconstructs the centre/periphery dichotomy in discourses of identity, presenting the ideas of cultural identity as always being in a state of transition or ‘in the making’. Similarly, the idea of transnationality is a spatial-temporal term which challenges and destabilizes notions of original cultures and pure identities because the impact of globalization, in the form of transnational corporations, engender in society particular homogenizing patterns of cultural identity. In postcolonial literature, the ideas of transitionality and transnationality offer fresh insights into notions of postcolonial identities, as the idea of identity is no longer seen and defined in terms of fixity and transcendence, but rather as being predicated on notions of transition and transnational dynamics which are reflected by the presence or reality of various orders in society. The argument of this paper is that Alexander McCall Smith’s detective novels on Botswana exemplify and call attention to the author’s most profound reflections on the notion of identities which are based on the concepts of transitionality and transnationality in modern Botswana and, by extension, Africa. Through the image of the protagonist, Precious Ramotswe, as well as representations of the lives of other minor characters, I demonstrate the extent to which McCall Smith’s fiction challenges all notions that privilege falling back on a primordial and imagined Botswana and African identity.