Modernities & our inner Africas

“You say the act of writing produces its own illegibility? That it goes nowhere, but cannot help going?“Well then: run, baby, run!”— Blackface, A Veil of Footsteps“… essentially, there is no one at home, but the stories we tell ourselves.”— Guy de Lancey, Light as Thought and the Binding ProblemLet us agree that you do not know me. Allow me then to introduce myself and indicate what I try to do and what I know I cannot do.To be brief: I’m an Afrikaans-speaking South African African who, by luck and of necessity, was also exposed to living and working elsewhere in the world. Add to this the observable fact that I am whitish—a historical, generic marker that has again become acutely polarising, even though it comes in all shades of pale. My home language, to an extent also my working tool, is French; my mother tongue is Afrikaans.