Travels in Identity: Aspects of Place and Belonging in Novels by Elsa Joubert and Riana Scheepers/ Reise in Identiteit: Aspekte van Plek en Hoort in Verhale van Elsa Joubert en Riana Scheepers‪.‬

Abstract An investigation into the experience of place and its changing nature in the story "Bloed" [Blood] (from Melk, [Milk] 1980) by Joubert and some stories from Scheepers' collection Die ding in die vuur [The thing in the fire] (1990) serves to establish the role of the experience of place with regard to the development of identity in these stories. In "Bloed" [Blood] the dynamic way in which the experience of place influences identity is clear. on a single day trip the main character's experience of alienation in Africa is transformed into an identification with Africa; a process that is directly related to the radically changing experience of place in the story. All the core markers of identity construction--gender, class, race and sexuality--are involved in this process of re-orientation; and the simultaneous, intertextual appropriation and subversion of a classic Western poem occur in the portrayal of the powerful adaptive reaction in terms of the experience of place and identity within the post-colonial situation. Scheepers' stories: "Tweede kind" [Second child], "Drie sinvolle gesprekke" [Three meaningful conversations] and "Dom koei" [Daft cow] represent phases in the changing experience of identity that correlate with the joumey of identity in "Bloed" [Blood], but the identity changes more subtly and gradually--intratextually played out over three stories--as well as less completely. The changing nature of the experience of place, as portrayed by means of the topographic structure of the stories and the effect of the filter-focafisation, again supports the process of a change in perspective on, and identification with Africa.