Looking from South Africa to the World
A Story of Identity for our Times
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 12786282 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Stephen Clingman (Schlumberger (Ireland), corresponding author) |
| Year | 2013 |
| Volume | 14 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 235-254 |
| Publication date | 2013-07-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Safundi (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1543-1304 • E-ISSN: 1753-3171 |
| Publisher | Taylor & Francis (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/17533171.2013.812858 |
| OpenAlex | W2031844453 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 2 |
| References cited | 13 |
The article is a consideration of the question of identity in South Africa, and also in a global context. Just as South Africa has looked to the world in order to understand its place, so too the world might look to South Africa to illuminate patterns less immediately visible elsewhere. Far from being unrepresentative in the apartheid period, South Africa was the ‘state of exception’ that incarnated and concentrated global realities; equally in the current era the reciprocal relations between the South African and the global evoke haunting concerns. The article begins with a consideration of the ‘classic’ generation of anti-apartheid activists, including figures such as Nelson Mandela and Bram Fischer, as they fashioned a new sense of South African identity. Yet it goes on to consider what happens when the classic period is over, and older definitions and oppositions are no longer available. Here the navigations of fiction, both in South Africa and elsewhere, become significant, and the article examines the work of writers from Gordimer, Coetzee and Ndebele, to Caryl Phillips and W. G. Sebald. It ends with a contemplation of the current period, nearly twenty years after the democratic transition in South Africa. In the era of the Marikana massacre and other pressing developments, both music and fiction open up some of the ambiguities and obligations. Drawing on Agamben, I suggest the intrinsic mutuality of the ‘home’ and the ‘foreign’ in establishing a more promising—and challenging—sense of belonging and identity both in South Africa and the world
Aesthetics · Art · Contemplation · Context (archaeology · Democracy · Identity (music · Period (music · Political science · Politics · Sociology · State (computer science · African cultural and philosophical studies · Gender Studies · History · Law · Legal Issues in South Africa · Philosophy · South African History and Culture
State of Exception
Entanglement
Building competitive advantage from ubuntu
Playing in the Light
Homo Sacer
Solomon T. Plaatje, Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since the European War and the Boer Rebellion
Theory from the South
Imagined communities
South Africa in the Global Imaginary
The Novels of Nadine Gordimer
| Unique citing works | 2 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,15 |
| Citation span | 2013 - 2018 (6) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 2 |