'Against extremity': Eben Venter's Horrelpoot and the quest for tolerance

Critical Arts, July, 2009 by Phil van Schalkwyk

Relationality, engagement, fear

On the positive side, Venter's utilisation of Heart of darkness ties in with the fact that Horrelpoot is calculated toward engagement (with the Other), relationality, reciprocity, a confrontation not only with a body of established ideas, both on realities and texts (including Heart of darkness!), but also with the very core of fear--suppressed fear. Venter is undertaking an expedition right to the heart of fear, to the amygdala, the little almond-shaped locus of fear in the brain. The latest neuropsychological research on the human amygdala, which Venter has consulted and refers to under 'Acknowledgements', suggests that fear may be genetically transferable from one generation to the next. Against this backdrop, Venter explores inherited white South African fear; that fear which is known to wake numerous white males at night from the same dream: of a man bending over one's bed with a knife. This fear, with its patriarchal and Oedipal overtones, has at its basis not only the threatening Other, but also the Self (as Other). (13)

In this regard it is important to note that returning Heleen's son safely back to her is not Marlouw's chief motive for travelling to South Africa. Early in the story he acknowledges to himself as well as to Heleen's housekeeper Jocelyn, who is also a South African expatriate, that he is going on this South African quest for selfish reasons (p. 30, p. 35). It becomes ever more evident that what Marlouw is really searching for is himself, a true Self who would, for example, be able to take off his sock and unabashedly reveal his crippled foot to the world (p. 31). Coupled with this is the ideal and possibility of real human reciprocity, as suggested in the very honest conversation with Jocelyn, with whom, everybody believes, he does not get along at all.

Though satisfying Heleen's request to save Koert is not paramount, Koert does play an important role in Marlouw's quest in that he turns out to be Marlouw's alter ego. The fact that Koert is mortally ill, in resemblance to Conrad's Kurtz, is significant in this regard: when Marlouw is finally allowed a word with the elusive Koert, he discovers that the latter has become grotesquely, abjectly obese, much more so than Marlon Brando as Kurtz in Apocalypse now. This is in sharp contrast to the emaciated Kurtz of Heart of darkness.

Furthermore, Koert somehow resembles Marlouw, his one foot being crippled as well, but in his case due to gangrene. Whereas Conrad's Kurtz has built an empire of ivory, Venter's Koert is lord of meat. In this respect Horrelpoot should be read as a sequel to an earlier novel by Venter (1993), Foxtrot van die vleiseters (Foxtrot of the meat eaters), which portrays the demise of the Afrikaner in the dying days of apartheid. The title alludes to the meat-eating habits of the Afrikaner, and to the fact that red meat has been a luxury item in South Africa and a symbol of (apartheid) wealth and privilege. In Horrelpoot the stereotypical white Afrikaans meat eater has grown out of all proportions. Koert has become physically helpless, but, like Conrad's Kurtz, his powerful voice remains, the Voice, in Lacanian thinking, being the most primitive and most compelling of the psychic elements or drive objects, establishing resonance between the I and the non-I (Ettinger 2004: 80-81). However, despite Koert's strong voice, his extremity and, notably, his extreme fear, (14) stand in the way of human reciprocity. It is difficult to get a word with him, and even when a meeting is finally arranged, no meaningful dialogue can ensue (p. 261)--a fact underlined by Koert's deranged way of talking and animal-like bellowing. During the first encounter with Koert, the lord of meat, Marlouw realises: