P Gobodo-Madikizela
Biographic Data
| ID | 21788 |
|---|---|
| NAME | P Gobodo-Madikizela |
| GIVEN NAMES | P |
| FAMILY NAME | Gobodo-Madikizela |
| SIGNATURE | GOBODO-MADIKIZELA P |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of the Free State |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-7008-9467 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 19 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 112 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 19 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1997 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 6 |
The time of Nachträglichkeit and the afterlife of apartheid trauma
This article explores the concept of transgenerational trauma. I draw from two distinct archives to approach the "transgenerational" in a more nuanced manner - one that moves beyond a linear past-to-present trajectory. The first of these is the Freudian archive, where I revisit the concept of Nachträglichkeit to shed light on the temporal dynamics between past and present, particularly in the affective responses of young black students during int…
The afterlife of apartheid
This article explores transgenerational dynamics of memory in the individual and collective contexts in contemporary South Africa. By engaging in a conversation informed by psychoanalytic theory between the archive of the public hearings of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and narratives of the younger generation of black South Africans, the article offers a conceptual framework for how transgenerational transmission of memory in the lives…
What’s Repaired in Reparations
Couched is a podcast series that features conversations among psychoanalysts, artists, writers, activists, and intellectual change-makers about our current social and political conditions and the challenge of finding grounding and connection in an increasingly uncertain world. Couched aims to generate conversations that will move listeners to engage with one another and the world, ideally creating generative communities. This article is an edited…
Research Site Anonymity in Context
This paper utilizes critical theory to interrogate and problematize the practice of anonymising research sites as an ethical imperative. The contributing authors conduct research in and with various communities in southern Africa, position themselves and work from and within diverse areas and specialities of the social sciences. This article is developed from their rich and wide spectrum of field experience with a great diversity of communities, …
They dug up wounds’
This article seeks to illuminate the deeper and complex dimensions of post-apartheid transformation by examining how University of the Free State (UFS) undergraduate students experienced racial integration within campus residences. Data were drawn from a sample of 17 individual semi-structured in-depth narrative interviews with student participants. Three emergent themes (a) conceptualizing transformation, (b) racial diversity vs. relational unit…
Response To Commentaries
Psychological Repair
The possibility of psychological repair after mass trauma is considered here in the context of the global trend of dialogue between survivors and perpetrators in the aftermath of mass atrocities. Stories of remorse and forgiveness illustrate and allow reflection on the last two decades’ experience in dealing with the past, as exemplified by truth commissions in countries like South Africa and Rwanda. Three aspects of this experience are stressed.…
Gendered Violence
This thematic cluster of essays, titled “Gendered Violence: Continuities and Transformation in the Aftermath of Conflict in Africa,” focuses on the continuities between regimes of violence during organized political conflict and persisting violence against women in the postconflict era of democratic governance. The genesis for this collection evolved out of an international symposium organized by the first author of this introduction, in August 2…
Conversation between Ruth Safier and Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela on “Remembering the past
Selves’ in contradiction
South Africa has one of the most advanced constitutions in the world. Several progressive laws that promise the protection of women, including the Domestic Violence Act, and a range of state-funded bodies have been established to promote women’s rights. Despite these signs of transition to democracy in the post-apartheid era, violence against women remains problematically high. The dominant perspective in both South African and international lite…
An exploration of German subjectivity three generations after the end of World War Two
This qualitative study aimed to explore how grandchildren of Second-World-War-generation Germans talk about and make meaning of their national past. Operating from a social constructionist stance, semistructured individual narrative/biographical interviews were conducted to collect the data. These constructed narratives were analyzed drawing on intersubjective psychoanalytic theory to identify the relational affective investments (organizing prin…
Remembering the past
Intersubjectivity and Embodiment
In this essay, I draw from the public testimonies of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) and argue, from a constructionist perspective, that the stories that women survivors brought to the TRC were stories of healing and reconciliation. I explore how gender and the maternal body might be central in shaping this discourse of forgiveness and reconciliation—in other words, not only how processes of reconciliation may be gendered but also h…
Trauma, forgiveness and the witnessing dance
In this paper I explore the concept of forgiveness as a response to gross human rights violations. I present a conceptual examination of the effects of massive trauma in relation to what I refer to as the 'unfinished business' of trauma. Using a psychoanalytic framework, I consider the process of 'bearing witness' about trauma and examine how this process opens up the possibility of reciprocal expressions of empathy between victim and perpetrator…
Empathetic Repair after Mass Trauma
This article explores the phenomenon of empathy and examines its manifestation in the context of encounters between victims/survivors of gross human rights violations and perpetrators who are perceived by victims/survivors as showing signs of remorse. The article considers the factors that mediate the development of empathy through, on the one hand, the examination of the external dynamics of victim-perpetrator encounters, and on the other, the a…
A Human Being Died That Night
Remorse, Forgiveness, and Rehumanization
This article explores forgiveness and remorse in the context of gross human rights violations. The discussion focuses on encounters between victims and perpetrators who appeared before South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission. An apology offered by Eugene de Kock, the apartheid government's chief assassin, is presented to explore how a remorseful apology can contribute to a vocabulary of forgiveness in the context of evil. The discussio…
Black Scholarship
This ‘article’ serves as introduction to the Special Issue: black scholarship. As such, it outlines the various articles contained in, as well as the rationale for the issue. In this article the authors argue that programmatic anti-racist interventions such as this Special Issue are crucial to the process of redressing the ‘racialised’ patterns of research and authorship characterising mainstream psychology journals
Healing the Racial Divide? Personal Reflections on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission
Remorse, Forgiveness, and Rehumanization
This article explores forgiveness and remorse in the context of gross human rights violations. The discussion focuses on encounters between victims and perpetrators who appeared before South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission. An apology offered by Eugene de Kock, the apartheid government's chief assassin, is presented to explore how a remorseful apology can contribute to a vocabulary of forgiveness in the context of evil. The discussio…
Trauma, forgiveness and the witnessing dance
In this paper I explore the concept of forgiveness as a response to gross human rights violations. I present a conceptual examination of the effects of massive trauma in relation to what I refer to as the 'unfinished business' of trauma. Using a psychoanalytic framework, I consider the process of 'bearing witness' about trauma and examine how this process opens up the possibility of reciprocal expressions of empathy between victim and perpetrator…
Psychological Repair
The possibility of psychological repair after mass trauma is considered here in the context of the global trend of dialogue between survivors and perpetrators in the aftermath of mass atrocities. Stories of remorse and forgiveness illustrate and allow reflection on the last two decades’ experience in dealing with the past, as exemplified by truth commissions in countries like South Africa and Rwanda. Three aspects of this experience are stressed.…
Remembering the past
Empathetic Repair after Mass Trauma
This article explores the phenomenon of empathy and examines its manifestation in the context of encounters between victims/survivors of gross human rights violations and perpetrators who are perceived by victims/survivors as showing signs of remorse. The article considers the factors that mediate the development of empathy through, on the one hand, the examination of the external dynamics of victim-perpetrator encounters, and on the other, the a…
Intersubjectivity and Embodiment
In this essay, I draw from the public testimonies of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) and argue, from a constructionist perspective, that the stories that women survivors brought to the TRC were stories of healing and reconciliation. I explore how gender and the maternal body might be central in shaping this discourse of forgiveness and reconciliation—in other words, not only how processes of reconciliation may be gendered but also h…
Black Scholarship
This ‘article’ serves as introduction to the Special Issue: black scholarship. As such, it outlines the various articles contained in, as well as the rationale for the issue. In this article the authors argue that programmatic anti-racist interventions such as this Special Issue are crucial to the process of redressing the ‘racialised’ patterns of research and authorship characterising mainstream psychology journals
Selves’ in contradiction
South Africa has one of the most advanced constitutions in the world. Several progressive laws that promise the protection of women, including the Domestic Violence Act, and a range of state-funded bodies have been established to promote women’s rights. Despite these signs of transition to democracy in the post-apartheid era, violence against women remains problematically high. The dominant perspective in both South African and international lite…
They dug up wounds’
This article seeks to illuminate the deeper and complex dimensions of post-apartheid transformation by examining how University of the Free State (UFS) undergraduate students experienced racial integration within campus residences. Data were drawn from a sample of 17 individual semi-structured in-depth narrative interviews with student participants. Three emergent themes (a) conceptualizing transformation, (b) racial diversity vs. relational unit…
Healing the Racial Divide? Personal Reflections on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission
The time of Nachträglichkeit and the afterlife of apartheid trauma
This article explores the concept of transgenerational trauma. I draw from two distinct archives to approach the "transgenerational" in a more nuanced manner - one that moves beyond a linear past-to-present trajectory. The first of these is the Freudian archive, where I revisit the concept of Nachträglichkeit to shed light on the temporal dynamics between past and present, particularly in the affective responses of young black students during int…
Conversation between Ruth Safier and Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela on “Remembering the past
Black Scholarship
This ‘article’ serves as introduction to the Special Issue: black scholarship. As such, it outlines the various articles contained in, as well as the rationale for the issue. In this article the authors argue that programmatic anti-racist interventions such as this Special Issue are crucial to the process of redressing the ‘racialised’ patterns of research and authorship characterising mainstream psychology journals
Healing the Racial Divide? Personal Reflections on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission
Remorse, Forgiveness, and Rehumanization
This article explores forgiveness and remorse in the context of gross human rights violations. The discussion focuses on encounters between victims and perpetrators who appeared before South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission. An apology offered by Eugene de Kock, the apartheid government's chief assassin, is presented to explore how a remorseful apology can contribute to a vocabulary of forgiveness in the context of evil. The discussio…
A Human Being Died That Night
Trauma, forgiveness and the witnessing dance
In this paper I explore the concept of forgiveness as a response to gross human rights violations. I present a conceptual examination of the effects of massive trauma in relation to what I refer to as the 'unfinished business' of trauma. Using a psychoanalytic framework, I consider the process of 'bearing witness' about trauma and examine how this process opens up the possibility of reciprocal expressions of empathy between victim and perpetrator…
Empathetic Repair after Mass Trauma
This article explores the phenomenon of empathy and examines its manifestation in the context of encounters between victims/survivors of gross human rights violations and perpetrators who are perceived by victims/survivors as showing signs of remorse. The article considers the factors that mediate the development of empathy through, on the one hand, the examination of the external dynamics of victim-perpetrator encounters, and on the other, the a…
Intersubjectivity and Embodiment
In this essay, I draw from the public testimonies of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) and argue, from a constructionist perspective, that the stories that women survivors brought to the TRC were stories of healing and reconciliation. I explore how gender and the maternal body might be central in shaping this discourse of forgiveness and reconciliation—in other words, not only how processes of reconciliation may be gendered but also h…
Remembering the past
An exploration of German subjectivity three generations after the end of World War Two
This qualitative study aimed to explore how grandchildren of Second-World-War-generation Germans talk about and make meaning of their national past. Operating from a social constructionist stance, semistructured individual narrative/biographical interviews were conducted to collect the data. These constructed narratives were analyzed drawing on intersubjective psychoanalytic theory to identify the relational affective investments (organizing prin…
Gendered Violence
This thematic cluster of essays, titled “Gendered Violence: Continuities and Transformation in the Aftermath of Conflict in Africa,” focuses on the continuities between regimes of violence during organized political conflict and persisting violence against women in the postconflict era of democratic governance. The genesis for this collection evolved out of an international symposium organized by the first author of this introduction, in August 2…
Conversation between Ruth Safier and Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela on “Remembering the past
Selves’ in contradiction
South Africa has one of the most advanced constitutions in the world. Several progressive laws that promise the protection of women, including the Domestic Violence Act, and a range of state-funded bodies have been established to promote women’s rights. Despite these signs of transition to democracy in the post-apartheid era, violence against women remains problematically high. The dominant perspective in both South African and international lite…
Psychological Repair
The possibility of psychological repair after mass trauma is considered here in the context of the global trend of dialogue between survivors and perpetrators in the aftermath of mass atrocities. Stories of remorse and forgiveness illustrate and allow reflection on the last two decades’ experience in dealing with the past, as exemplified by truth commissions in countries like South Africa and Rwanda. Three aspects of this experience are stressed.…
They dug up wounds’
This article seeks to illuminate the deeper and complex dimensions of post-apartheid transformation by examining how University of the Free State (UFS) undergraduate students experienced racial integration within campus residences. Data were drawn from a sample of 17 individual semi-structured in-depth narrative interviews with student participants. Three emergent themes (a) conceptualizing transformation, (b) racial diversity vs. relational unit…
Response To Commentaries
What’s Repaired in Reparations
Couched is a podcast series that features conversations among psychoanalysts, artists, writers, activists, and intellectual change-makers about our current social and political conditions and the challenge of finding grounding and connection in an increasingly uncertain world. Couched aims to generate conversations that will move listeners to engage with one another and the world, ideally creating generative communities. This article is an edited…
Research Site Anonymity in Context
This paper utilizes critical theory to interrogate and problematize the practice of anonymising research sites as an ethical imperative. The contributing authors conduct research in and with various communities in southern Africa, position themselves and work from and within diverse areas and specialities of the social sciences. This article is developed from their rich and wide spectrum of field experience with a great diversity of communities, …
The afterlife of apartheid
This article explores transgenerational dynamics of memory in the individual and collective contexts in contemporary South Africa. By engaging in a conversation informed by psychoanalytic theory between the archive of the public hearings of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and narratives of the younger generation of black South Africans, the article offers a conceptual framework for how transgenerational transmission of memory in the lives…
The time of Nachträglichkeit and the afterlife of apartheid trauma
This article explores the concept of transgenerational trauma. I draw from two distinct archives to approach the "transgenerational" in a more nuanced manner - one that moves beyond a linear past-to-present trajectory. The first of these is the Freudian archive, where I revisit the concept of Nachträglichkeit to shed light on the temporal dynamics between past and present, particularly in the affective responses of young black students during int…
Psychology (15 works) · Law (11 works) · Political science (11 works) · Psychoanalysis (10 works) · Sociology (10 works) · History (7 works) · Forgiveness (6 works) · Social Psychology (6 works) · South African History and Culture (6 works) · Epistemology (5 works)