Under Erasure

William Kentridge, Derrida, and Post-Apartheid South Africa

Bibliographic Data

ID4577679
AuthorsNatalie Haziza (0000-0003-2121-1715, La Cité Collégiale, corresponding author)
Year2018
Volume19
Issue2
Pages133-144
Publication date2018-04-03
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueStudies in Gender and Sexuality (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1524-0657 • E-ISSN: 1940-9206
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/15240657.2018.1456019
OpenAlexW2799790531
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited13

This article aims to read the work of South African artist William Kentridge through the prism of Jacques Derrida’s notion of trace. Kentridge utilizes a unique style of filmic animation: charcoal pictures drawn on a single piece of paper, where the animation is achieved by erasing and re-drawing parts of the picture, and then filming the image again. I will argue that this technique, as well as Kentridge’s focus on deferral, memory, and identity, share an affinity with the philosophical, aesthetic, ethical, and political aspects of Derrida’s trace. Drawing attention to the trace—a paradox of presence, where motion is achieved precisely by the deferred nonpresence in each drawing—Kentridge acknowledges, in a similar way to Derrida, the impossibility of ontological thought and knowing. In post-apartheid South Africa, this is not only an aesthetic statement but a political one as well. By maintaining the traces, Kentridge concedes that knowing should be deferred, acknowledging that what we know about the other is limited, if not impossible, and that the apartheid regime’s attempt to master the other was violent and erroneous

Aesthetics · Animation · Art · Epistemology · Existentialism · Impossibility · Political science · Politics · Visual arts · Witness · Art, Politics, and Modernism · History · Law · Philosophy · South African History and Culture · Visual Culture and Art Theory

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