The New Yorker: Fiction cover image

Joseph O'Neill Reads Nadine Gordimer

The New Yorker: Fiction

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What's the Cultural Capital of a South African Immigrant?

There's a lot of cultural capital in projecting myself as sort of superior to other people, morally superior. I don't think Gordon was doing that. He can't even go to the post office. He has no autonomy. And not only that, he doesn't even have the self that is supposedly the agent of autonomy, that even that's been taken away from him. So why didn't he just move home? We live with his wife and have another child. What is the huge benefit? Well, I think there is a sort of, he has on triple the money. But as you say, there are some overheads associated with living in South Africa, far away from home.

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