Unconquered territory

Narrating the Caledon Valley

Datos Bibliográficos

ID2187232
AutoresDavid B Coplan
Año2000
Volumen13
Número2
Páginas185-206
Fecha de publicación2000-12-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessNo
TipoARTICLE
RevistaJournal of African Cultural Studies (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 1369-6815 • E-ISSN: 1469-9346
EditorialInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/713674311
OpenAlexW2077255634
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas5
Referencias citadas14

This article views the renewed attacks on white-owned commercial farms in the South African Free State as a recrudescence of a broader ethnographic history of conflict over territory, boundaries, and borders among a complex interfacing of ethnic and political groupings; principally the Basotho, Afrikaner settlers, and colonial British. The argument discusses disjunct or opposing conceptions held by blacks and whites of rights to occupy, dispose of, and exercise authority over territory along the Caledon River border. The conflicts ‐ internecine, inter-communal, military and diplomatic ‐ that resulted reveal underlying narrations of land and life along the Caledon border that are as disjunct as the political cultures and racial preconceptions and instrumentalities that gave rise to them. The paper excavates patterns of cross-racial and cross-border cooperation as well as conflict, and argues that establishing a dialogue amongst these monologic cultural narrations, creating a sense of shared storytelling and hence experience across racial as well as political boundaries and borders, might suggest a way forward for a region still troubled by a cross-racial violence with roots deep in both popular history and cultural memory. Analytically, the paper draws comparatively on interdisciplinary cultural studies of the United States-Mexico border, and in focusing on the role of popular narration makes a further contribution to 'border studies' as a field that crosses disciplinary boundaries as well

Argument (complex analysis · Art · Colonialism · Ethnography · Literature · Narrative · Political science · Politics · Racism · Sociology · State (computer science · Storytelling · White (mutation · Anthropology · Multilingual Education and Policy · Gender Studies · History · Law