Epistemologiese en ontologiese dominante in "Die beiteltjie" van N.P. van Wyk Louw en "Kieselguhr- kleim" van George Weideman

Abstract

In this article the concept of "the dominant", as introduced by the Russian Formalists Jurij Tynjanov and Roman Jakobson and elaborated by Brian McHale, is applied in a discussion of two Afrikaans poems by N.P. van Wyk Louw and George Weideman. McHale argues that the difference between modernist and postmodernist texts may be found in the shift of the dominant from problems of knowing to problems of modes of being - from an epistemological dominant to an ontological one. The discussion of the two poems is supplemented by Linda Hutcheon's theory of double-coding and historiographic metafiction. While Louw's poem is shown to be mainly epistemological, Weideman's poem is characterized by double-coding, the presence of both epistemological and ontological aspects, the paradoxical inscribing ond contesting of modernist conventions, and the combination of both historiographic and metapoetic elements. As such, it might be regarded as an early example of Afrikaans historiographic metapoetry.