Nostalgia after Apartheid: Disillusionment, Youth, and Democracy in South Africa
- ISBN-10
- 026810879X
- ISBN-13
- 9780268108793
- Category
- Social Science
- Language
- English
- Published
- 2020-11-30
- Publisher
- University of Notre Dame Pess
- Author
- Amber R. Reed
Description
In this engaging book, Amber Reed provides a new perspective on South Africa’s democracy by exploring Black residents’ nostalgia for life during apartheid in the rural Eastern Cape. Reed looks at a surprising phenomenon encountered in the post-apartheid nation: despite the Department of Education mandating curricula meant to teach values of civic responsibility and liberal democracy, those who are actually responsible for teaching this material (and the students taking it) often resist what they see as the imposition of “white” values. These teachers and students do not see South African democracy as a type of freedom, but rather as destructive of their own “African culture”—whereas apartheid, at least ostensibly, allowed for cultural expression in the former rural homelands. In the Eastern Cape, Reed observes, resistance to democracy occurs alongside nostalgia for apartheid among the very citizens who were most disenfranchised by the late racist, authoritarian regime. Examining a rural town in the former Transkei homeland and the urban offices of the Sonke Gender Justice Network in Cape Town, Reed argues that nostalgic memories of a time when African culture was not under attack, combined with the socioeconomic failures of the post-apartheid state, set the stage for the current political ambivalence in South Africa. Beyond simply being a case study, however, Nostalgia after Apartheid shows how, in a global context in which nationalism and authoritarianism continue to rise, the threat posed to democracy in South Africa has far wider implications for thinking about enactments of democracy. Nostalgia after Apartheid offers a unique approach to understanding how the attempted post-apartheid reforms have failed rural Black South Africans, and how this failure has led to a nostalgia for the very conditions that once oppressed them. It will interest scholars of African studies, postcolonial studies, anthropology, and education, as well as general readers interested in South African history and politics.
Get the book
Similar books
-
Nostalgia After Apartheid: Disillusionment, Youth, and Democracy in South Africa
By Amber R. ReedIn this engaging book, Amber Reed provides a new perspective on South Africa's democracy by exploring Black residents' nostalgia for life during apartheid in the rural Eastern Cape.
-
Native Nostalgia
By Jacob DlaminiChallenging the stereotype that black people who lived under South African apartheid have no happy memories of the past, this examination into nostalgia carves out a path away from the archetypical musings.
-
History after Apartheid: Visual Culture and Public Memory in a Democratic South Africa
By Annie E. Coombes28 the uses of nostalgia There are inevitably problems with any reminiscing that tends toward an idealistic nostalgia, reproducing the experience of living in District Six as an idyllic, harmonious environment immune to political ...
-
(Post)apartheid Conditions: Psychoanalysis and Social Formation
By D. Hook(Post)apartheid Conditions: Psychoanalysis and Social Formation advances a series of psychoanalytic perspectives on contemporary South Africa, exploring key psychosocial topics such as space-identity, social fantasy, the body, whiteness, ...
-
History After Apartheid: Visual Culture and Public Memory in a Democratic South Africa
By Annie E. CoombesDIVHow should post-apartheid South Africa present its history - in museums, monuments, and parks./div ldquo;With verve, imagination, and engagement, Annie E. Coombes gives us an incisive account of memorial culture in South Africa since ...
-
Heritage Formation and the Senses in Post-Apartheid South Africa: Aesthetics of Power
By Duane JethroBickford - Smith , Vivian . ' Creating a City of the Tourist Imagination : The Case of Cape Town , The Fairest Cape of Them All ' . Urban Studies 46 , no . 9 ( 2009 ) : 1763-85 . Bickford - Smith , Vivian .
-
Mapping My Way Home: Activism, Nostalgia, and the Downfall of Apartheid South Africa
By Stephanie UrdangThis is a personal narrative, beautifully told, of a journey traveled by an indefatigable exile who, while yearning for home, continued to question where, as a citizen of both South Africa and the United States, she belongs. “My South ...
-
Nostalgia for the Future: West Africa after the Cold War
By Charles PiotFaculty in African and African American studies—Michaeline Crichlow, sandy Darity, thavolia glymph, karla holloway, Bayo holsey, Wahneema lubiano, Mark Anthony Neal, rick Powell, stephen smith, and Maurice Wallace—have similarly ...
-
The Terrorist Album: Apartheid's Insurgents, Collaborators, and the Security Police
By Jacob DlaminiFrom the photos emerges the afterlife of apartheid, as Dlamini tells the story of former insurgents, collaborators, and police.
-
Desire Lines: Space, Memory and Identity in the Post-Apartheid City
By Martin Hall, Noëleen Murray, Nick ShepherdThis pioneering collection of essays and case studies is an indispensable guide for those working within or studying heritage practice.