For decades the global gaze on South African society invariably focused on it as a symbol of the inevitable excesses of social engineering, racism and violence under the apartheid dispensation; with astonishment at the apparent exceptionalism of the ‘miracle’ transition that occurred to democratic rule and the dismantling of apartheid; and, more recently, on the resurgence of newer manifestations of racialisation and violence in post-apartheid South Africa.

This book recognises and confronts this complex history of racialised oppression, as well as the future possibilities and impossibilities of transforming South African society through a re-engagement with the apartheid archive – an archive that allows us to understand the continued impact of the past on our present social, subjective and psychological realities.

Located within a psychosocial approach that is uniquely suited to the socio-historical and psychial analysis of racism, this book relies mainly on the memories, stories and narratives of ordinary people, submitted to the Apartheid Archive Project, as its source material. It provokes us into thinking about racism as grounded as much in affective as in macro-political means, in the functioning of both intrapsychic and material forms, perpetuated as much in private as in institutional domains.

Foreword Philomena Essed

Introduction: The Apartheid Archive Project, the Psychosocial, and Political Praxis Garth Stevens, Norman Duncan and Derek Hook

Section 1: Theorising the Archive

Section Introduction: Theorising the Archive Leswin Laubscher

Memory, Narrative and Voice as Liberatory Praxis in the Apartheid Archive Garth Stevens, Norman Duncan and Christopher C. Sonn

Working with the Apartheid Archive: Or, of Witness, Testimony, and Ghosts Leswin Laubscher

Transitioning Racialised Spaces Carol Long

Section 2: Whiteness, Blackness and the Diasporic Other

Section Introduction: Whiteness, Blackness and the Diasporic Other Brett Bowman

Unsettling Whiteness Gillian Straker

Archiving White Lives, Historicising Whiteness Kopano Ratele and Leswin Laubscher

Engaging with Apartheid Archive Project: Voices from the South African Diaspora in Australia Christopher C. Sonn

On Animal Mediators and Psychoanalytic Reading Practice Derek Hook

Section 3: Race, Gender and Sexuality in the Archive

Section Introduction: Race, Gender and Sexuality in the Archive Carol Long

Intersections of ‘Race’, Sex and Gender in Narratives on Apartheid Tamara Shefer

Desire, Fear and Entitlement: Sexualising Race and Racialising Sexuality in (Re)membering Apartheid Kopano Ratele and Tamara Shefer

Gendered Subjectivities and Relational References in Black Women’s Narratives of Apartheid Racism LaKeasha G. Sullivan and Garth Stevens

Section 4: Method in the Archive

Section Introduction: Method in the Archive Christopher C. Sonn

On Genealogical Approaches to Working with the Apartheid Archive: A Critical History of the South African Paedophile Brett Bowman and Derek Hook

How do we ‘Treat’ Apartheid History? Derek Hook

Self-Consciousness and Impression Management in the Authoring of Apartheid Related Narratives Gillian Eagle and Brett Bowman

Decolonisation, Critical Methodologies, and Why Stories Matter Christopher C. Sonn, Garth Stevens and Norman Duncan

From the White Interior to an Exterior Blackness: A Lacanian Discourse Analysis of Apartheid Narratives David Pavón-Cuéllar and Ian Parker

Appendix A: Narrator Details and Corpus of Narratives Examined in this Volume