Legacy of a Troubled Past: Commemorative Politics in South Africa in the 21st century
Les Presses Universitaires de Provence et Liverpool University Press ont le plaisir d’annoncer la parution de l’ouvrage collectif
The Legacy of a Troubled Past: Commemorative Politics in South Africa in the 21st century (coll. « Sociétés contemporaines », 2022) sous la direction de Bernard Cros, Mathilde Rogez et Gilles Teulié.
Présentation de l’ouvrage
Since the advent of democracy in 1994, South Africa has been engaged in an unprecedented exercise of national soul-searching, torn between the need to lay to rest centuries of racial conflict and the desire to come to terms with its traumatic history.
This book asks whether the country has begun to turn the corner on the legacy of collective hurt. To do so it ranges in scope across 350 years of South African history, encompassing the struggle against the apartheid regime, the downfall of white supremacy, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the first 25 years of democracy, up to more recent movements, such as #RhodesMustFall, or the inquests into the 2012 Marikana massacre, that point to the persistence of traumatic memory in contemporary society.
The authors assembled here set out to analyse the representation of such memory, how it has been woven into narratives, recorded, preserved and questioned, and how issues of individual and collective responsibility have been grafted onto it through the visual arts, literature, political discourse and public action.
In focusing on memory along with its derived forms of memorialization, collective memory, nostalgia, or post-memory, our contributors pose a fundamental question: is South Africa finally coming to the end of the post-apartheid transition period? Do the decades of memory work on racial violence and repression examined here hold out hope for the nation to make peace with its past?
Table des matières
Introduction : Bernard Cros, Mathilde Rogez, Gilles Teulié
1. The Struggle, Past and Present: the Memorialisation of Violence
- Sabine Marschall, ‘Bruised Landscape of Memory: The Vandalism, Abuse and Neglect of Statues and Commemorative Monuments in South Africa.’
- Fanny Robles, ‘On the (In)Appropriate Ways to Remember Racial Oppression: Brett Bailey’s Exhibit A and B.’
- Annael Le Poullennec, ‘How to Remember Marikana: Memory, Narratives and mise en scène.’
2. The Ambiguous Memorialisation of Heroes
- Brenda Schmahmann, ‘Monumental Disruptions: Usha Seejarim’s Commemorations of Mahatma Gandhi and Nelson Mandela.’
- Mélanie Joseph-Vilain, ‘Commemorating Piet Retief: Justin Cartwright’s Up Against the Night (2015).’
- Shannen L. Hill, ‘Borrowing Biko: Visual Critiques of Capitalism in South Africa.’
3. Learning and Unlearning: Memories and/for the Future
- Fiona McCann, ‘“Unlearning” the Past, Reappraising the Present in Antjie Krog’s Life Writing: The Double Valence of Disposition.’
- Philippe Denis, ‘Memory Work with IV/HIV Positive Children under Antiretroviral Treatment in KwaZulu-Natal.’
- Cécile Perrot, ‘Youth, Memory and Politics in Post-Apartheid South Africa.’
Epilogue : Gary Baines, ‘From Reconciliation to Contentious Co-existence: Memory Work and Wars in Post-apartheid South Africa.’
Pour commander :
ISBN 979-10-320-0349-7
ISSN 2265-5913
https://presses-universitaires.univ-amu.fr/the-legacy-of-a-troubled-past
organisée par des collègues de l’Université Concepción del Uruguay d’Argentine, portant sur les littératures de l’Afrique et de la diaspora, et, entre autres, sur leurs réceptions en Amérique du Sud.
