베씨 헤드의 『비구름이 모일 때』가 개척한 “미래를 향한 새로운 길” (Bessie Head’s Search for “a new trail”: A Reading of When Rain Clouds Gather)

Even though the novel as a genre was associated with the rise of European bourgeoisie and the development of modern capitalism which led to the European colonialization of Africa, many postcolonial African writers chose the novel as the most resourceful genre to assert their independence from European cultural domination. Bessie Head, a nonwhite South African woman novelist, also defined her work as recording “whatever hopeful trend” she found in reality to shape the future that will be free from “exploitation, slavery and oppression”.
Head left South Africa under Apartheid and wrote all her major novels in exile in Botswana. Her first novel, When Rain Clouds Gather, explores an utopia where the black people achieve financial independence by means of advanced agricultural techniques and management, free themselves from political oppression, and finally recover their human dignity. Despite its utopian ending, When Rain Clouds Gather averts the danger of utopianism by setting itself in a rather exceptional small village of Botswana and interposing a comic relief.
The hero's shift from violent resistance movement to commitment to agriculture indicates that Head is critical of “all the hate-making political ideologies” and violence which eventually lead to the subject’s inner devastation, and refuses to subordinate individuality to collectivity. This novel is insightful in its suggestion that the violence against evil cannot be a true solution because evil recurs inevitably and systemically in modern society. This view has something in common with the contemporary argument about “systemic violence” by Slavoj Žižek. In When Rain Clouds Gather, the liberation from the oppressor comes not from violence, but from civil disobedience and silent occupation.

Even though the novel as a genre was associated with the rise of European bourgeoisie and the development of modern capitalism which led to the European colonialization of Africa, many postcolonial African writers chose the novel as the most resourceful genre to assert their independence from European cultural domination. Bessie Head, a nonwhite South African woman novelist, also defined her work as recording “whatever hopeful trend” she found in reality to shape the future that will be free from “exploitation, slavery and oppression”.
Head left South Africa under Apartheid and wrote all her major novels in exile in Botswana. Her first novel, When Rain Clouds Gather, explores an utopia where the black people achieve financial independence by means of advanced agricultural techniques and management, free themselves from political oppression, and finally recover their human dignity. Despite its utopian ending, When Rain Clouds Gather averts the danger of utopianism by setting itself in a rather exceptional small village of Botswana and interposing a comic relief.
The hero's shift from violent resistance movement to commitment to agriculture indicates that Head is critical of “all the hate-making political ideologies” and violence which eventually lead to the subject’s inner devastation, and refuses to subordinate individuality to collectivity. This novel is insightful in its suggestion that the violence against evil cannot be a true solution because evil recurs inevitably and systemically in modern society. This view has something in common with the contemporary argument about “systemic violence” by Slavoj Žižek. In When Rain Clouds Gather, the liberation from the oppressor comes not from violence, but from civil disobedience and silent occupation.