The Trauma Speaks Back! Narrative Therapy as a Decolonial, Reconstitutive Praxis in Zakes Mda’s The Heart of Redness

Articles in Press

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

1 Ph.D. Candidate of English Literature and Language, Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures, University of Tehran, Iran.

2 Professor of English Literature and Language, Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures, University of Tehran, Iran.

3 Assistant Professor of American Studies, Faculty of World Studies, University of Tehran, Iran.

10.22034/cls.2026.145001.1557

Abstract

This study mobilizes Michael White’s Narrative Therapy and Cathy Caruth’s conceptualization of trauma in order to approach Zakes Mda’s The Heart of Redness as a literary embodiment of narrative healing in action. The novel reflects how storytelling, as a decolonizing act and reconstitutive imperative, can address the layered and inherited trauma caused by apartheid in South Africa. The novel’s polyphonic architectonics, dual narrative timeline, and character dynamics operationalize narrative’s deconstructive and re-authorial modalities in breaking silence’s hegemony in order to facilitate epistemic transition from disruption into coherence. Through its characters’ journeys from incomprehension to understanding by relying on emplotment as the orchestration of lived fragments into an agentic integrity, the novel not only critiques the enduring psychosocial pathologies engendered by apartheid, but also charts a route to personal and collective renewal. It will be argued that Zakes Mda’s The Heart of Redness employs historical layering and a pronounced emphasis on agency to offer a therapeutic re-envisioning of history and identity. Consequently, the novel serves as a significant narratological fulcrum within the post-apartheid literary landscape. Through this framework, Mda’s work demonstrates how narrative possesses an ontogenetic force which could restitute dignity and foster reconciliation, thereby cultivating the conception of preferred futures.

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Main Subjects

Critical Literary Studies

Articles in Press, Accepted Manuscript
Available Online from 23 February 2026

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History

  • Receive Date: 28 September 2025
  • Revise Date: 22 February 2026
  • Accept Date: 23 February 2026

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