What is it about?
Cultural critic and theorist Walter Benjamin coined the phrase 'profane illumination' in an essay he wrote on Surrealism, noting that a 'fanatical stress on the mysterious side of the mysterious takes us no further; we penetrate the mystery only to the degree that we recognize it in the everyday world'. Along these lines Fugard's modus operandi is incarnation and from there meaning emerges out of concrete specifics.
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Why is it important?
Probably one of the last, if not the last, full interviews with Athol Fugard now 87 years old.
Perspectives
Athol Fugard has achieved pre-eminence as a theatre director, playwright and actor but the immediate occasion for this interview arose because we share the connection to a region, the eastern Cape province of South Africa where we both were born and have lived the better part of our lives. So when Fugard says he is a regional writer it immediately places us on the same page. We share the politics, the issues, the despair but above all a deep love for the place we come from.
Neil Rusch
University of the Witwatersrand, School of Geography, Archaeology and Environmental Studies
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Profane Illumination: An Interview with Athol Fugard, English in Africa, September 2015, African Journals Online (AJOL),
DOI: 10.4314/eia.v41i2.6.
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