Oor referensie en (tersyde) oor representasie

Abstract

This article attempts to define the notion of representation by means of a critique of the reception of the film Fiela se kind (Fiela’s child), based on the novel with the same name by Dalene Matthee. It shows how historical facts become subjected to different norms within the fictional space of the novel (and the film) and how the meaning of both is not primarily dependent on the correspondence to historical reality, but is influenced by filmic and novelistic coding, the horizon of expectations of the audience and the social symbolic value of certain places like the farmhouse.