Special isssue

Postcolonial mobilities are complex to analyse because they are deeply intertwined, on different scales, with questions of resistance, belonging, and justice. An analysis of literary representations of postcolonial mobilities in South African fiction offers insights into the poetics that are used to locally negotiate agency, amid such complexity. The diachronic qualitative analysis engages with pre- and post-apartheid fiction set in Johannesburg by visualising their protagonists’ mobility; thus, it contributes to scholarship in postcolonial literary criticism and postcolonial mobilities. The analysis is rooted in Massey’s theorisation of space as intersecting trajectories, Cresswell’s discussion of mobility and politics, and Sheller’s concept of mobility justice. Methodically, the analysis is based on psychogeographic visualisation strategies. The results show that mapping, as a literary representation of embodied, reiterative practice, emerges as a transgressive strategy by which the protagonists traverse (im)material boundaries of racialisation in the fragmented cityscape of Johannesburg. Mapping locates the protagonists spatially and temporally within their respective communities, allowing for ensuing spatialising practices of making home. The discussed texts are An African Tragedy (Dhlomo), Mine Boy (Abrahams), Cry, the Beloved Country (Paton), Welcome to Our Hillbrow (Mpe), Portrait with Keys (Vladislavić), and Zoo City (Beukes).