“[O]m die wit staar aan myself te verduidelik”:

witheid en die interseksionele spreker in Antjie Krog se Plunder (2022)

Abstract

The research focus of this article is the lived reality of the poet–speaker – a South African white woman – in Antjie Krog’s Plunder, specifically how it is depicted in the poem “(work in progress) ʼn meerstemmige teks: pogings om die wit staar aan myself te verduidelik” / “(work in progress) a polyphonic text: attempts to explain the white gaze to myself”. The aspects of exploration include how the speaker’s intersectional reality and identity are influenced by whiteness, and the relations that whiteness has with the white gaze, middle-classness, power and gender. The aim of the research is to illustrate how Krog engages with the politics of whiteness in post-apartheid South Africa in a self-revealing manner, but also that there is a possibility that Krog is sometimes unaware of the ways in which her explorations can reflect a continuation of hegemonic white privilege. The discussion of the poem ultimately illustrates how the poet–speaker’s persistent ambivalent position can indicate that clarity and reconciliation continue to slip from the grasp of those trying to make sense of the complex relationality between white and black people. The barriers caused by the white gaze, class and power differences are present throughout the poem, even in and through the perspective of the poet–speaker who undertakes to grasp the white gaze, and to grasp it with regard to how the black gaze views it.