Entanglement is a condition of being twisted together or entwined, involved with; it speaks of an intimacy gained, even if it was resisted, or ignored or uninvited. It is a term which may gesture towards a relationship or set of social relationships that is complicated, ensnaring, in a tangle, but which also implies a human foldedness. It works with difference and sameness but also with their limits, their predicaments, their moments of complication. It is a concept I find deeply suggestive for the kinds of arguments I want to make in relation to the post-apartheid present, in particular its literary and cultural formations. So often the story of post-apartheid has been told within the register of difference – frequently for good reason, but often, too, ignoring the intricate overlaps that mark the present and, at times, and in important ways, the past, as well.

Entanglement is an idea that has been explored by scholars in anthropology, history, sociology and literary studies, although always briefly and in passing rather than as a structuring concept in their work. I want to draw it from the wings and place it where we can see it more clearly, and consider that it might speak with a tongue more fertile than we had imagined, with nuances often uncaught or left latent in what may constitute a critical underneath, or sub-terrain. In the South African context which I will examine here, the term carries perhaps its most profound possibilities in relation to race – racial entanglement – but it brings with it, too, other registers, ways of being, modes of identity-making and of material life.

Below I outline six ways in which the term has been interpreted, explicitly or implicitly, by others. I spend some time on this, since these are complex ideas, ideas which signal a number of important intellectual pathways forged in recent years in African studies and beyond. Thereafter, I explain how I think of the term, bringing to it my own inflections, and explaining why it is an appropriate structuring idea for the book as a whole.