This paper argues that the turn to allegory in 1920s writing about South Africa can be related to debates around shifting imperial geographies. I focus in particular on Gandhi's Satyagraha in South Africa (1928), with some attention to the allegorical turn in another national icon, Sol T. Plaatje. Allegorical narration, I argue, enables the articulation of different parts of the colonized world in relation to one another, but it does so with particular consequences for the temporal structure of political possibility. This paper forms part of a larger book project on non-realist narrative and internationalist politics, focusing on global literary production from the turn of the 20th century to the Second World War
Lahiri2011.pdf