Interregnum in Colonial Space: Subversion of Power and Dispossession of Metropolitan Home Materials in Gordimer’s July’s People

Nadine Gordimer’s recurrent theme has been raising awareness about the unjust and discriminatory policy of Apartheid in South Africa. In one of her later novels, July’s People, she depicts the impact of an impromptu journey of a white family into their black servant’s hinterland. Apartheid atrocities and discriminations of the white government of South Africa cause black insurgency and the displacement of the Smales family. This dislocation into the primitive settlement of July disrupts the former exercise of power hierarchy between the Smales family members and July. The Smales family is also deprived of familiar home equipment and city facilities. Although July shelters them from city riots, he takes advantage of the Smales’s predicament and appropriates new power in the new environment. The burden of this study was to examine July’s treatment of the Smales family when they are emasculated from their former privileges. This study also attempted to show how this sojourn dispossesses all major characters from their city life styles and powers. Both linguistic and physical subversions of power relations cause a change in the conjugal relationships of the Smales family and confuse July with an in-between identity and attitude towards his master’s family and his village community. This study examined the new relationships and life style changes in the light of post-colonial theoretical assumption