Writing Johannesburg into Being

Rituals of Mobility and the Uneven City in Mark Gevisser, Ivan Vladislavić and Lindsay Bremner’s Writing

Abstract

This article explores the role of Johannesburg in the literary imagination of three contemporary South African writers, counterposing Mark Gevisser’s memoir Dispatcher: Lost and Found in Johannesburg (2014) and Ivan Vladislavić’s semi-autobiographical work of creative non-fiction Portrait with Keys (2006) with Lindsay Bremner’s collection of personal and architectural essays Writing the City into Being (2010). These white South African authors are keenly aware of their privileged position: they use the space offered by writing to make sense of their relation to Johannesburg and the access granted to them because they have the choice either to walk or to drive. I argue that this seemingly mundane choice is indicative of the continuing inequality of post-apartheid South African society, and that this is foregrounded in Bremner, Gevisser and Vladislavić’s literary writing as they use personal rituals of urban mobility to index and expose the boundaries and continuing unevenness of the city.