Description
Book SynopsisWhat does friendship have to do with racial difference, settler colonialism and post-apartheid South Africa? While histories of apartheid and colonialism in South Africa have often focused on the ideologies of segregation and white supremacy,
Ties that Bind explores how the intimacies of friendship create vital spaces for practices of power and resistance. Combining interviews, history poetry, visual arts, memoir and academic essay, the collection keeps alive the promise of friendship and its possibilities while investigating how affective relations are essential to the social reproduction of power. From the intimacy of personal relationships to the organising ideology of liberal colonial governance, the contributors explore the intersection of race and friendship from a kaleidoscope of viewpoints and scales. Insisting on a timeline that originates in settler colonialism, Ties that Bind uncovers the implication of anti-Blackness within nonracialism, and powerfully challenges a simple reading of the Mandela moment and the rainbow nation. In the wake of countrywide student protests calling for decolonization of the university, and reignited debates around racial inequality, this timely volume insists that the history of South African politics has always already been about friendship.
Written in an accessible and engaging style,
Ties that Bind will interest a wide audience of scholars, students, and activists, as well as general readers curious about contemporary South African debates around race and intimacy.
Trade Review"Ties that Bind is an intriguing and long overdue book about race and friendship. It marks a time worldwide when virtual friendships are fast becoming the norm. And yet, after reading the chapters, one is left with a clearer sense of what it takes - or might take in the future - to actually be friends across race." - Sarah Nuttall is author of Entanglement: Literary and Cultural Reflections on Post-apartheid
Table of ContentsIntroduction: Times, Scales, and Spaces of Friendship in South Africa Shannon Walsh and Jon Soske; 1. With Friends like These: The Politics of Friendship in Post-Apartheid South Africa Sisonke Msimang; 2. Bound by Violence: Scratching beginnings and Endings with Lesego Rampolokeng Stacy Hardy and Lesego Rampolokeng; 3. 'Friend of the Family': Maids, Madams, and Domestic Cartographies of Power in South African Art Neelika Jayawardane; 4. The Impossible Handshake: The Fault Lines of Friendship in Colonial Natal, 1850-1910 T.J. Tallie; 5. The Problem with 'We': Affi liation, Political Economy, and the Counterhistory of Nonracialism Franco Barchiesi; 6. "A Song of Seeing": Art Education and the place of friendship under Apartheid Daniel Magaziner; 7. Corner Loving: Ways of speaking about Love MADEYOULOOK; 8. Affect and the State: Precarious workers, the law and the promise of friendship Bridget Kenny; 9. The Native Informant speaks back to the offer of friendship in white academia Mosa Phadi & Nomancotsho Pakade; 10. Kutamba Naye: In Search of Anti-Racist and Queer Solidarities Tsitsi Jaji; 11. Afropessimism and Friendship in South Africa: An interview with Frank Wilderson III Shannon Walsh.
