A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Humanities
University of the Witwatersrand
In fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy / The continuing role of South Africa’s past in the reconstruction of present-day
identities is an area of study and investigation that crosses political, social, cultural
and racial boundaries. It is also a field which, despite the post-apartheid political
period and South Africa’s change to a democratic dispensation, has not necessarily
provided neat categories, instances or guidelines into which identity-formation can fit.
As a result, studies abound which attempt to track, respond to, reflect on and
reposition how this history of slavery, colonialism and apartheid may be viewed in
relation to present-day society and socio-political circumstances.
This dissertation considers how and why representations of slavery emerge in
discussions of what constitutes a national discourse of race and reconciliation in postapartheid
South Africa. I argue that these resurgences of interest in slavery are tied to
the symbolic work that the multiple memories of slavery are able to do in the postapartheid
period.
The study is broadly situated in a globally emerging interest in historic formations of
slavery packaged in popular culture, and the current increase in human rights politics
dealing with re-emerging and new forms of slavery. As a result, this study adopts an
interdisciplinary approach to both the content and methodological focus of how
representations of slavery re-emerge in post-apartheid South Africa; providing a
consideration of the phenomena of power in relation to discursive and cultural
constructions of slavery, memory, identity and nation-building.
Each of the areas considered (wine farms, museum and memorial practices and
walking tours), suggest that the memory of slavery is able to function in relation to
the immediate needs of those proposing and implementing the remembering and
remembrance.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:wits/oai:wiredspace.wits.ac.za:10539/19854 |
| Date | 29 February 2016 |
| Creators | Cloete, Nicola Marthe |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Format | application/pdf, application/pdf |
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