Beyond the "memory" of apartheid
Richard Rive and the Jewish mock-monarchs of Cape Town
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 2179127 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Cullen Goldblatt (0000-0001-9700-9244) |
| Year | 2017 |
| Volume | 53 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 454-468 |
| Publication date | 2017-07-04 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of Postcolonial Writing (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1744-9855 • E-ISSN: 1744-9863 |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/17449855.2017.1307259 |
| OpenAlex | W2606644144 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 3 |
| References cited | 7 |
This article builds upon critiques of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, asserting that the Commission “recalled” apartheid violence in the dichotomous terms of perpetrator and victim that have served to obscure the structural character of violence before and after 1994. The literary texts this article analyses – the novel “Buckingham Palace”, District Six (1986) and the short story “Riva” (1983), both by the Capetonian author Richard Rive – each contains a Jewish mock-monarch character. These play-monarchs evoke the positions of complicity that were inherent to the structure of apartheid, but which are largely absent from the national “memory” of apartheid that the Commission informed. Rive’s two texts, and his two mock-monarchs in particular, provoke reflection upon the character and temporality of apartheid violence and upon what might constitute a literature of resistance to it
Archaeology · Character (mathematics · Commission · Complicity · Epistemology · Judaism · Political science · Resistance (ecology · Sociology · Temporality · African studies and sociopolitical issues · Historical and Contemporary Political Dynamics · South African History and Culture · History · Law · Philosophy
| Citations per year | 0.38 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2018 - 2024 (7) |
| Highly cited | No |