Title: “The Conservationist” in Unnatural History: The Indigenization of Nadine Gordimer’s Creative Writing

Abstract: Nadine Gordimer, the winner of the 1991 Nobel Prize for literature, is a national treasure in South Africa. Although she is white, she has a distinctive sense of “African-centered consciousness,” which is the root of her South African literary creation. Gordimer’s 70 years of literary creation have been committed to building an indigenized artistic expression which is full of subjectivity, nationality and revolution. Her indigenized creative writing, which consists of the construction of national consciousness in her early phase, the radical narrative strategies in her middle phase, and the reconstruction of the concept of home and country in the later phase, vividly presents the life of the South African people and the changes of South African history over the past century, enlightening South African people to break away from the slavery and alienation of unnatural history and grow into citizens with subject consciousness and national consciousness. Thus, Gordimer’s works culminate in “The Conservationist” which preserves the historical memory of South Africa, defends African cultural traditions and protects African humanistic values.

Keywords: Nadine Gordimer, South African literature, indigenization, African-centered consciousness, unnatural history

Author: Dan Li, Lecturer, School of Foreign Languages, Zhejiang Gongshang University, Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China.

DOI: 10.19967/j.cnki.flc.2022.03.001