Abstract

This research examines the novel No Time Like the Present (NTLP) by Nadine Gordimer as a material object. This novel outlines the conditions and situation of the post-apartheid South African country with various post-colonial problems. Centered on the life of a mixed family, black and white, with the characters of former independence fighter Umkhonto, the novel shows how the tortured and fragmented essence of a country struggles to define itself as a post-apartheid nation. In this regard, as an implication of this problem, this research formulates two problems, (1) How do the colonial memory and trauma contructed in NTLP novel? And (2) How are the subject efforts to accept and recover from the trauma? To solve those problems, this research uses Postcolonial Trauma perpective of Step Craps and combined with reconciliation theory from Dominick LaCapra as a formal object. The aims of this research to (1) describe the construction of memory and colonial trauma through narrative witnessing that has an impact on the existence of the traumatic subject in the novel, and (2) explain the traumatized subjects efforts to survive through recovery and acceptance of the trauma experienced. This research is qualitative-descriptive by analyzing data using phenomenological method. The method used to analyze the events as well as traumatic experiences constructed in literary texts. The research resulted, (1) the construction of traumatic memories originating from apartheid events is narrated in various forms of torture carried out by the white regime, both directly against Umkhonto and South African society in general, including arrests and killings, segregation and cladestine life, invasions home, and cultural racism. This experience in turn causes collective trauma, which is narrated in symptoms such as the inability of the subject, feelings of inferiority, self-loathing, to Xenophobia. Furthermore, (2) in the efforts of reconciliation, social, political, economic, and other transformations and reforms, it encourages traumatic subjects to persist in the present and in the future, even though the past is still haunted. As an entity that represents the collectivism of the South African people, Umkhonto demonstrates persistence, reconnecting experiences, knowledge and feelings between them through acceptance of reality, selecting the right listeners or mates, and working towards voting rights in elections.