Unpacking the (Racist/Anti-racist) Archives in Ivan Vladislavić’s The Distance

Ivan Vladislavić’s poetics is dotted with references to archives. The most famous example is his novel Double Negative (2011), loosely inspired by the photographic archives of David Goldblatt, in particular the volume TJ: Johannesburg Photographs 1948-2010. One of Vladislavić’s most recent novels, The Distance (2020), also makes extensive use of and reference to archives. The present contribution aims therefore at an in-depth analysis of the status, function, and destiny of those specific archives. To begin with, the photographic archive dedicated to the media coverage of the life and career of Muhammad Ali creates a precise storyline set in the early Seventies, shaping the novel as an anti-racist ‘phototext’ – a genre discussed in Italy by Luigi Marfè, among others. The verso of those newspaper cuttings shows articles about life in South Africa in the same historical period, where apartheid is only discernible in a sort of filigree reading between the cracks and fractures created by the recto/verso paging and browsing, as well as by the two voices of competing narrators, i.e. the two brothers and co-protagonists, Joe and Branko, who co-author the fictional narrative. Moreover, an open reference to the National English Literary Museum hints at the heritage of South African writers, artists and intellectuals, while the lost archive, a secret diary of the protagonists’ mother, is also meaningful in connection with the narration of a family saga, or Familienroman. The functioning of archives is here examined through the lenses of Derrida, Mbembe, and Foucault.