Description
Book SynopsisAnalyzes how, in the midst of the momentous shift to an inclusive democracy, South Africa's visual and material culture represented the past while at the same time contributing to the process of social transformation. This book explores the dilemmas posed by a range of visual and material culture including key South African heritage sites.
Trade Review“Exquisitely detailed, ethically engaged, theoretically consequential, this book will delight readers across a wide spectrum of the humanities and social sciences. Annie E. Coombes captures the complexities of contemporary South Africa via an intriguing analysis of the country’s public culture. The South African case studies become portable and are intelligently linked to global debates in this highly readable study.”—Isabel Hofmeyr, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg
“With verve, imagination, and engagement, Annie E. Coombes gives us an incisive account of memorial culture in South Africa since apartheid. She foregrounds the political tensions and ambiguities of rehabilitating traditional monuments, making Robben Island into an icon of resistance and liberation, creating museums of urban and township living that hover between reflective nostalgia and traumatized remembrance. Revisionism is a political necessity, but how is one to remember a brutal and painful history without rekindling the divisive passions of the past? A must read for anyone interested in memory culture on a global scale.”—Andreas Huyssen, author of
Present Pasts: Urban Palimpsests and the Politics of MemoryTable of ContentsList of Illustrations ix
Acknowledgments xiii
List of Abbreviations xvii
Introduction: Making History Memorable 1
1. Translating the Past: Apartheid Moments in Postapartheid South Africa 19
2. Robben Island: Site of Memory/Site of Nation 54
3. District Six: The Archaeology of Memory 116
4. New Histories for Old: Museological Strategies 149
5. What's in a Name? The Place of "Ethnicity" in the "New" South Africa 206
6. New Subjectivities for the New Nation 243
Epilogue: Changing Places 279
Notes 297
Bibliography 339
Index 355
