3 “The Late Bourgeois World” of Gordimer (1964)
Nadine Gordimer (1923–2014) asked herself how white people could be engaged in the anti-apartheid movement to set out the dissolution of a white society in South Africa. She felt critical about the current status of her home country and wanted to reverse the social trend. She was motivated to involve in the ongoing revolution in some form. I will focus on “motivation and adaptive ability” and consider this writing brain of Gordimer because such brain activity of an author may be seen as a far-sighted risk avoidance strategy for South Africa.
In the early 60s when Gordimer wrote The Late Bourgeois World, South Africa was practicing apartheid. The segregated regime was symbolized by Prime Minister Hendrik Verwoerd (incumbency 1958–1966). In this rigidly stratified society, people could not exert their adaptive ability under any circumstances. Their mental motivation became stronger by necessity.
The role of the frontal cortex is worth noticing here as the area of brain activity that involves planning and decision-making. The frontal cortex has a reciprocal relationship with other association areas such as the parietal lobe and the temporal lobe and has strong links with the amygdala to make judgments with regard to the hypothalamic area and emotions.
The Late Bourgeois World contains the narrative of the day the protagonist and her family come to know about the death of her husband, Max. Characters include the protagonist, her demented grandmother, her son Bobo (an elementary school age child), Max’s parents, his sister and her husband, the advocate Graham, and a carrier named Luke. They remember Max in each scene and his behavior is described as the motivation of a white person related to the anti-apartheid revolution in South Africa of that time.
花村嘉英訳（2018）「シナジーのメタファーの作り方」より translated by Yoshihisa Hanamura