DOCSLIB.ORG

Portrait of Don Mattera ------8

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Portrait of Don Mattera ------8 ON AFRICANA/ISLAMICA EXISTENTIAL THOUGHT: DON MATTERA AND THE QUESTION OF TRANSCENDENCE Tahir Fuzile T. Sitoto (STTFUZ001) Thesis Presented for the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in the Department of Religious Studies, Faculty of Humanities UNIVERSITY OF CAPE TOWN Supervisor: Professor A.K. Tayob University of Cape Town Submitted: June 2018 The copyright of this thesis vests in the author. No quotation from it or information derived from it is to be published without full acknowledgement of the source. The thesis is to be used for private study or non- commercial research purposes only. Published by the University of Cape Town (UCT) in terms of the non-exclusive license granted to UCT by the author. University of Cape Town DECLARATION I declare that this thesis has been composed solely by myself and that it has not been submitted, in whole or in part, in any previous application for a degree. Except where stated otherwise by reference or acknowledgements, the work presented is entirely my own. Name: Tahir Fuzile T. Sitoto Student number: STTFUZOOI Signature: Date: 25 June 2018 TABLE OF CONTENTS DECLARATION ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------2 TABLE OF CONTENTS --------------------------------------------------------------------------3 PORTRAIT OF DON MATTERA --------------------------------------------------------------8 DEDICATION ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------9 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ----------------------------------------------------------------------10 ABSTRACT -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------14 PART I: SITUATING THE STUDY, LITERATURE REVIEW, BIOGRAPHICAL MATTERS, METHOD AND THEORETICAL ISSUES CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION ---------------------------------------------------------------17 Background and Motivation for the Study ---------------------------------------------------17 Locating Don Mattera in the Study: A Brief Personal Narrative ------------------------18 Focus of Study --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------21 Between ‘Obscurity’ and ‘Reception’: Why a Dissertation on Don Mattera Matters? --25 Method, Questions Considered and Theoretical Approach -------------------------------37 Preliminary Note on Africana/Islamica Existential Thought as a Conceptual and Theoretical Approach---- ---------------------------------------------------------------------38 Research Methodology: A Case Study Design Approach ----------------------------------44 Chapter Outline and Structure of the Dissertation -----------------------------------------46 3 CHAPTER 2: MATTERA: AN INTELLECTUAL BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAIT -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------48 Introduction: Why an Intellectual Portrait? -------------------------------------------------48 Unconventional and ‘Self-Taught’: The Making of a Writer and an Intellectual ----50 Major Works, Themes and Reception ---------------------------------------------------------51 Birth, Early Pedagogy and the Gift of Poetry ------------------------------------------------52 Delinquency: From Catholic Convent to the ‘Twilight Zone’ ----------------------------55 ‘Metamorphosis’ and a Heightened Political Consciousness ------------------------------57 Literary Censorship, Banning Orders and House Arrest: 1975–1983 ---------------------60 From Sophiatown Renaissance to Post-1976 Cultural Icon: Mattera as an ‘Intellectual Bridge’ -------------------------------------------------------------------------------61 Becoming a Muslim: Mattera’s Enthralment with Islam’s notion of Compassion----63 Vocation as a Journalist --------------------------------------------------------------------------65 Rhetoric and Practice of a Journalist: When Art and Journalism Collide ---------------67 Advocacy or Radical Journalism? ---------------------------------------------------------------70 ‘Rhythm of Words’ in Print: Mattera’s Journalistic Style -----------------------------------71 Concluding Remarks ------------------------------------------------------------------------------76 CHAPTER 3: ON AFRICANA/ISLAMICA EXISTENTIAL THOUGHT (AND PHILOSOPHY) AS A CONCEPTUAL APPROACH AND METHOD ---------------78 Introduction ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------78 4 Africana Thought (and Studies), More Than a Label: Genesis of an Academic Field ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------84 ‘Africology’ and the Afrocentric Critique of Africana Thought and Studies ------------91 Africana Existential Thought/Philosophy an Epistemological Shift from Afrocentricity --------------------------------------------------------------------------------93 On ‘Existential’ in Africana/Islamica Existential Thought -------------------------------97 Inscribing Islam in Africana Existential Thought ------------------------------------------101 On Transcendence as a Theoretical Point of Departure ----------------------------------103 Concluding Remarks -----------------------------------------------------------------------------105 PART II: POETRY, FICTION AND EMERGING THEMES CHAPTER 4: REREADING MATTERA’S POETRY: THE ‘BARD OF LIBERATION’ AND ‘POET OF COMPASSION’ ----------------------------------------108 Introduction: Plotting a Reading of Mattera’s Poetry ------------------------------------108 The Poet and His Work: An Overview -------------------------------------------------------110 Search for ‘Complexity of Vision’ in Mattera’s Poetry: An Intertextual Reading --111 The Paradoxical and the Dialectical in Mattera’s Poetry ---------------------------------125 Transcendence and ‘Implicit’ Religiosity in Mattera’s Poetry --------------------------128 Concluding Remarks -----------------------------------------------------------------------------133 5 CHAPTER 5: ON MATTERA’S FICTION: DECENTRING THE ‘PROTEST ETHOS’ ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------136 Introduction: Locating an Approach to Reading the Short Stories --------------------136 The Short Stories: Context and Content -----------------------------------------------------140 Analysis and an Interpretation: Religiosity and Transcendence Embedded in the Political ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------152 Concluding Remarks -----------------------------------------------------------------------------157 PART III: COMPARATIVE FOCUS AND CONCLUSION CHAPTER 6: MATTERA IN CONVERSATION WITH MALCOLM X: DELINEATING CONTOURS OF AFRICANA/ISLAMICA EXISTENTIAL THOUGHT -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------159 Introduction: Why Read Mattera with Malcolm X? ---------------------------------------159 Islam and Black Experience in South Africa and North America: Brief Overview --162 ‘But Allah Had Another Plan’: Mattera and Malcolm X’s ‘Black Pilgrimage To Islam’ -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------167 Flight from an Anti-Black World? --------------------------------------------------------------169 Reading Mattera and Malcolm X through black/Africana Existential Philosophy -175 The Paradox of Race and Quest to Transcend ‘Racial Frontiers’ ------------------------178 On Compassion as Self-Transcendence -------------------------------------------------------182 6 Concluding Remarks-----------------------------------------------------------------------------188 CHAPTER 7: CONCLUSION: DRAWING MEANINGS, READINGS AND AN INTERPRETATION -----------------------------------------------------------------------192 Introduction ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------192 Discussion of Content and This Study’s Contribution ------------------------------------195 Discursive Rupture with Conventional black/Africana Existential Philosophy and Thought ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------199 Possible Limitation ------------------------------------------------------------------------------206 Concluding Remarks ----------------------------------------------------------------------------206 BIBLIOGRAPHY --------------------------------------------------------------------------------209 7 PORTRAIT OF DON MATTERA Photo Courtesy South African History Online (SAHO) 8 DEDICATION For all his dislike for interviews, Don Mattera gave time whenever we met to share insights on different aspects of his life, work and writings. I cannot thank you sufficiently, ‘Bra Don’, for your selfless spirit and compassion. This work is dedicated to you and the Mattera clan and to the memory of my late father, uVakele Alfred Sitoto, who departed so early to the world of the unseen. 9 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS To complete this study has taken a long journey saddled with many challenges and low and high moments. From the onset, I would like to thank my supervisor, Professor Abdulkader Tayob, whose critical guidance and patience ensured that this dissertation ended up in a decent form. I cannot thank him enough for embracing a prodigal student back from the wilderness. Without his gentle persuasion, this work would have remained a project deferred. Heartfelt thanks are also due to Nabowayah Kafaar, Tasneem Wise and Danika Driesen for ensuring that ‘all documents’ and registration procedures at UCT were in
Load more

Recommended publications
  • The Sound Archive at the District Six Museum
    THE SOUND ARCHIVES AT THE DISTRICT SIX MUSEUM: A WORK IN PROGRESS Valmont Layne South Africa is an anomaly among developing countries. It is both a developed country with good infrastructure and also a country with huge social and economic problems. There is a wide gulf between recipients of development aid on the one hand and skilled profes- sionals on the other. In this assumption lie both the challenges and opportunities for audiovisual preservation. In itemizing the issues, challenges, hurdles and obstacles, my chosen keywords are institu- tional growth, consciousness and expertise. The District Six Museum developed almost without evident design since its conception at a conference in 1988. Yet the sound archives, a new project conceived in 1997, had the luxury of being modelled on ethnographic and public sound archives in the USA and elsewhere. The key scholarly disciplines underpinning its work are History, Fine Arts, Social Science and Ethnomusicology. We need to build an appropriate archival model for this museum- based sound archives. There are a number of considerations. The museum has had a profound effect on heritage work. Our museum is a young institution and is in the grip of what some call the ‘Founder syndrome’. It has a very active board of trustees. It is still an institu- tional ‘baby’ being weaned by community-based activists, politicians and professional academics. In some cases, there is a direct political, emotional or professional interest in the work of the museum. This creates a wonderful non-bureaucratic atmosphere. But it also means 184 Archives for the Future that as we grow in our preservation capacities we will have to nego- t iate these realities.
    [Show full text]
  • Between Colour Lines: Interrogating the Category 'Coloured' in Depictions Of
    Between colour lines: Interrogating the category ‘coloured’ in depictions of District Six in the work of five South African artists Cameron Amelia Cupido Dissertation in fulfilment of Master’s in Visual Studies Visual Arts Department Stellenbosch University Supervisor: Prof. Lize Van Robbroeck March 2018 1 Stellenbosch University https://scholar.sun.ac.za Declaration By submitting this dissertation electronically, I declare that the entirety of the work contained therein is my own, original work, that I am the sole author thereof (save to the extent explicitly otherwise stated), that reproduction and publication thereof by Stellenbosch University will not infringe any third party rights and that I have not previously in its entirety or in part submitted it for obtaining any qualification. March 2018 Copyright © 2018 Stellenbosch University All rights reserved Stellenbosch University https://scholar.sun.ac.za Abstract The Group Areas Act of 1950 radically affected coloured artists of the time, since it resulted in forced removals and the demolition of traditionally ‘coloured’ suburbs, and forced coloured people into mono-cultural suburbs with imposed identities not of their own choosing. This thesis seeks to uncover the complexities and heterogeneity of coloured identity and the effects apartheid ideologies and practices had on the personal narratives and cultural praxis of Lionel Davis, Albert Adams, George Hallett, Gavin Jantjes and Peter Clarke, who all emphasized the significance of District Six in their own articulations of colouredness. I propose that this problematic ascribed identity was at the root of most artworks produced by these artists and that their art helped them deal with their experiences within (and about) the space of District Six during apartheid.
    [Show full text]
  • Black South African Literature from the 'Sophiatown Renaissance' to 'Black
    Untitled Document [Although this essay was presented as a lecture at the Center for Black Studies at the University of California at Santa Barbara on April 30, 1990, it was really a product of my West Berlin stay from 1985 to 1989. Henry Nxumalo was the founding member of Drum magazine. He seems to have been intellectually closer to H. I. E. Dhlomo and Peter Abrahams (according to the latter's Return to Egoli [1953]) than to Bloke Modisane and Lewis Nkosi (writers of the literary generation in which he is usually placed). He was a historical figure of historical connections and transitions. The following essay of historical connections exemplifies this particular spirit of Henry Nxumalo.] Black South African literature from the ‘Sophiatown Renaissance' to ‘Black Mamba Rising': Transformations and Variations from the 1950s to the 1980s. by Ntongela Masilela The task of historical hermeneutics is to make alien material comprehensible, i.e. material that is remote in time or in social or ethnic origin. In so doing, we do not deny its extrinsic or intrinsic distance from us, but instead make this distance part of the present as opposed to viewing it from a detached historical standpoint. In other words, an aesthetic presence based on such historical insight embraces rather than bypasses an awareness of this otherness or alienness. -Carl Dahlhaus, "Is history on the decline?," in the Foundations of music history. In its broad outline it is this: up to now our fiction has been a fiction of witness - doing a useful job in bearing witness to the immense suffering of our people and the sacrifices they have been and are continuing to make in resisting this oppression, but the nature of our crisis as black writers is where to go from here.
    [Show full text]
  • Mind Your Colour the 'Coloured'
    Mind Your Colour The 'Coloured' Stereotype in South African Literature Vernon February bron Vernon February, Mind Your Colour. The 'Coloured' Stereotype in South African Literature. Kegan Paul International, Londen / Boston 1981 Zie voor verantwoording: http://www.dbnl.org/tekst/febr002mind01_01/colofon.php © 2014 dbnl / erven Vernon February vi Preface This book is essentially about stereotypes as found in the literature and culture of South Africa. It deals specifically with those people referred to in the South African racial legislation as ‘coloureds’. The book is also an illustration of the way in which stereotypes function as a means of social control and repression. One of the direct consequences of colonialism and racism is that the colonized or the discriminated invariably become the dupe of a series of rationalizations whereby the power-holders (i.e., the whites) justify their dominant position in society. Balandier, the French scholar, has given ample demonstration of this phenomenon as it operated in the former French colonies in West Africa and the Antilles. Here, the major channels of imposing French values were the French administrative officials and expatriates in the colonies, the school system and the policy of assimilation. Such a policy led to a reverence for the metropolis, Paris, an over-evaluation of French customs and norms, and a rejection of their own culture. This illusion was soon dispelled the moment the colonized set foot in France. Most blacks discovered that they were still looked upon as le nègre, even by the lowest of Frenchmen. The Dutch economic historian, D. van Arkel, has, on the basis of his work on the Austrian Jews, come to the conclusion that stereotypes arise when the following conditions are fulfilled: (1) there must be stigmatization, (2) social distance and (3) terrorization.
    [Show full text]
  • Richard Rive, an Informal Guide to the Growth Of
    Y\tC'v\o.vd. T<\Vt::_ ( I Ma..-,: !,,_ { ff 3 D - Lf Ju. ,1 e l qgq) Mo.,-+; ..... T·fl)-tM.p , ~~ ~2~ i-~'" :t ~~~~.,~~~~C-~L 17-:-':1;, ~..-,~--,)I, Hl..J,."_, ,....="'-ni'"·, ..- = ;:;._ c_. .i. 7 t; I -r;;;;;::""-- i -c=-- :, ~citiag ~!~~h (Cape Town: David P~ilip, -i,_ ,...,7·P_, ".i. ',, ,· .''----~-b=~---.-_.·._ .• .,._ .,,-.1::-~_",...t_t- ·,·-..-~-·~ =--.-• .6..-,;·;. c::::> Qi':-:,-"'\ • David 1 , a ...:,' f ~~--- (Cape I ' L! ! . '., • ,.. , I r ,1 ! · I ·· ...,t-s.:;; . \ • ~ .. - ' I ~- F:ichard Rive was born in Cape Town in 1931. He attenCed schools in the city and later graduated in English at the University of - ,_ Cape Tov--111. He traiAed as a teacher d. L College~ Cape Town, and, 1n subsequent years, gained degrees in literature from Columbia 3nd Oxford universities. His Oxford doctoral thesis was on the works of Olive Schreiner. Rive ~spent most of life in So uth Africa, a p oint Ar._ .:. __ _ '- - notirig, a :5 all black Soutt-1 HTf .lLd.l l of 11lS le-ft th= Luuntry as exiles during the 195(} =' s 1960' -5 . Rive had been a teachet- ot- ar1 i nstrL1ctor- of teachers -foi-- vJQ.$ mo-=:.-c o f his t.--.Jorking li-fe .. :i=e head of the L( e ,t V $ ;I • I /'. D_,.,._ e I YI :). Rive grew up in a poor area of Cape Town called District Six. The "District" is the setting in much of his fiction. Despite its poverty and the violence thet haunted its streets, District Si:{ is recalled fondly, but with little sentimentality, by Rive, as a community in which people from different backgrounds and with differ-ent creeds lived together in a form of harmony that is virtually unknown in the broader South African society.
    [Show full text]
  • July-August 2020
    July/August 2020 Cape Camera CAPE CAMERA July/August 2020 Official Newsletter CAPE TOWN PHOTOGRAPHIC SOCIETY 1 Cape Town Photographic Society Cape Camera July/August 2020 CAPE CAMERA WHAT’S INSIDE Editorial Team Editor: Anna Engelhardt Design & Layout: Andre Mouton Competitions: Lesley Parolis Council/Outings: Richard Goldschmidt E & D: Kim Stevens Facebook: Steff Hughes PSSA: Nicol du Toit Snapshot: Andre Mouton Contributions for Cape Camera are wel- comed. Please let us know what you want to see in your newsletter. Please submit any contributions to editor Anna Engelhardt at email [email protected]. The CTPS Council 21 President: Richardt Goldschmidt NEWS FROM THE COUNCIL...............................................................................2 Vice-president: Ken Woods Treasurer: Nicol du Toit NEWS ITEMS..............................................................................................................3 Secretary:. Margaret Collins E & D NEWS................................................................................................................6 Competitions: Lesley Parolis E & D: Kim Stevens CTPS OUTING...........................................................................................................8 Outings: Richard Goldschmidt NEW MEMBERS........................................................................................................9 Venues: Detlef Basel A MEMBER’S PROFILE.........................................................................................10 Publications: Anna Engelhardt
    [Show full text]
  • Expressions of Coloured Identity in Cape Town-Based Hiphop
    In the Mix: Expressions of Coloured Identity in Cape Town-Based Hiphop The Harvard community has made this article openly available. Please share how this access benefits you. Your story matters Citation Moses, Warrick. 2019. In the Mix: Expressions of Coloured Identity in Cape Town-Based Hiphop. Doctoral dissertation, Harvard University, Graduate School of Arts & Sciences. Citable link http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:42029829 Terms of Use This article was downloaded from Harvard University’s DASH repository, and is made available under the terms and conditions applicable to Other Posted Material, as set forth at http:// nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:dash.current.terms-of- use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
    [Show full text]
  • SHANE GRAHAM [email protected]
    SHANE GRAHAM [email protected] Department of English Office: 1-435-797-2719 Utah State University Cell: 1-435-764-1616 Logan, UT 84322-3200 Fax: 1-435-797-3797 EDUCATION 2001 PhD Indiana University. Major: English Literature; Minor: African Studies. Dissertation Title: Trauma, Representation, and Public Memory in South Africa: Apartheid Prison Narratives and the Truth Commission. 1997 MA Indiana University. Major: English Literature. 1994 BA Northwestern University. Major: English Literature/Fiction Writing. ACADEMIC APPOINTMENTS 2020-present Professor of English, Utah State University 2009-2020 Associate Professor of English, Utah State University. 2005-2009 Assistant Professor of English, Utah State University. 2004-2005 Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow, University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa. 2001-2005 Assistant Professor of English, Sam Houston State University. 1996-2001 Associate Instructor of English, Indiana University. PUBLICATIONS BOOKS 2020 Cultural Entanglements: Langston Hughes and the Rise of African and Caribbean Literature. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press. 2011 (reprint) South African Literature after the Truth Commission: Mapping Loss (South African paperback edition). Pietermaritzburg: Univ. of KwaZulu-Natal Press. 2010 Shane Graham and John Walters, eds. Langston Hughes and the South African Drum Generation: The Correspondence. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. 2009 South African Literature after the Truth Commission: Mapping Loss. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. JOURNAL ARTICLES AND BOOK CHAPTERS 2019 “‘It cancels the slave ship!’: Africa, Slavery, and the Haitian Revolution in Langston Hughes’s Emperor of Haiti and Aimé Césaire’s The Tragedy of King Christophe.” Modern Drama 62.4 (2019): 458-82. [Double-blind review.] 2017 “‘This curious thing’: Richard Rive, the Harlem Renaissance, and the Commodification of the Black Atlantic.” Safundi: The Journal of South African and American Studies 18.3.
    [Show full text]
  • UC Berkeley UC Berkeley Electronic Theses and Dissertations
    UC Berkeley UC Berkeley Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title Places of Complicity in Narratives of Historical Violence: Thiaroye (Dakar) and District Six (Cape Town) Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/95h0h8gx Author Goldblatt, Clea Publication Date 2015 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California Places of Complicity in Narratives of Historical Violence: Thiaroye (Dakar) and District Six (Cape Town) By Clea M. Goldblatt A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Comparative Literature in the Graduate Division of the University of California, Berkeley Committee in charge: Professor Karl Britto, Chair Professor Souleymane Bachir Diagne Professor Gillian Hart Professor Chana Kronfeld Professor Debarati Sanyal Professor Barbara Spackman Spring 2015 1 Abstract Places of Complicity in Narratives of Historical Violence: Thiaroye (Dakar) and District Six (Cape Town) by Clea M. Goldblatt Doctor of Philosophy in Comparative Literature University of California, Berkeley Professor Karl Britto, Chair In Places of Complicity, I consider how narratives of the past of two African places obscure, and sometimes explore, complicity. For primarily activist-intellectual publics, Thiaroye and District Six have been icons of “memory” of racist violence and resistant community. I argue that dominant discourses of memory that surround these two sites share a representational mode and perform analogous elisions of the past. They work primarily through a particularly mimetic form of realism, in which the contemporary subject is interpellated as a remembering subject, interpretation is coded as remembrance, and a representation of the past is conflated with the (remembered) past itself.
    [Show full text]
  • Richard Moore Rive
    RICHARD MOORE RIVE Teacher, Academic & Author 1931 – 1989 Richard Rive was an exceptional writer, teacher and academic. Raised by a single mother in District Six he became internationally recognised and acclaimed for his work. He was from a generation of exceptional working class writers all who came from Camissa Communities, labelled “Coloured” by Apartheid. These communities lived in areas under assault from Apartheid forced removals in District Six, Cato Manor and Sophiatown. The writers in these places included James Matthews, Alex la Guma, Ronney Govender, and Don Mattera. Richard Moore Rive was born on 1 March 1931 in Caledon Street, District Six to Nancy Rive and Richardson Moore, an African-American sailor who stopped over in Cape Town for five months. Richardson abandoned Nancy and disappeared across the sea never to be seen again. Richard Rive and his half-siblings grew up in an old building called Eaton Place in District Six where his older sister Georgina played the biggest role in raising him. It was here in District Six that Richard drew his inspiration from the many cameos of life that he observed and from the 20 year-long forced removals by the Apartheid regime. Excelled at School Rive attended primary school at St. Mark’s. At age 12, his high marks earned him a municipal scholarship to Trafalgar High School. He excelled at school work and also at sport and won several prizes for athletics, holding the South African hurdles record for several years. Richard completed High School in 1947 and for a while he worked as a clerk for a small company, Phil Morkel.
    [Show full text]
  • Shame and Identity the Case of the Coloured in South Africa ZOE WICOMB
    Shame and identity the case of the coloured in South Africa ZOE WICOMB ... Also: brown contains black - (?) - How would a person behave for us to say of him that he knows a pure, primary brown? Wfe must always bear in mind the question: How do people learn the meaning of colour names? WITTGENSTEIN, Remarks on Colour In the 1980s South Africans discovered the Khoi/coloured woman Saartje Baartman, once known as the Hottentot Venus, who was exhib- ited in London and Paris from 1810 to her death in 1815. In nineteenth- century Europe, as Sander Gilman points out, the display of her spectacular steatopygia and its generation of medical discourse on the Khoi genitalia established the iconographic link between the black woman and sexual lasciviousness ('Black Bodies, White Bodies', 216). Since the last decade has seen her well referenced in South African visual art and writing, popular outrage has moved the government to apply to France for the return of Baartman, whose remains are still held by the Musee de l'homme in Paris (though they were removed from public dis- play in the 1980s). Having in the New South Africa become an icon of postcoloniality, Baartman's case can be seen as one of several initiatives towards reconstructing a national cultural past. Although the project of recovery is propelled by the ignominy of sexualized display before the imperial eye, the discourse around the return of Baartman is cast in terms of injury rather than shame, and a question which has not as yet been resolved is what we will do with her remains.
    [Show full text]
  • The Trojan Horse and Becoming Technical of the Human
    Premesh Lalu The Trojan Horse and Becoming Technical of the Human The pursuit of learning is to increase day after day The pursuit of Tao is to decrease day after day It is to decrease and further decrease Until one reaches the point of taking no action No action is undertaken, And yet nothing is left undone. Bruce Lee 24 Given all that has been done in memory of the student movement in What we call an event today is described by a name that Athlone South Africa, it is surprising not to have had an adequate account shares with the Greeks. ln 1985, a horse and trailer belonging to of the drives and desires that underpinned the movement of school the South African Railways carried death to the streets of Athlone. students for a period of six months in 1985. Historians conclude that Militia of police and army hidden in wooden crates enacted what students were driven by a sense of "immediatism" expressed in what famously became known as the Trojan Horse Massacre. How did this is called street sociology and pavement politics. However, history event come to bd named in terms of a memory of the Trojans and encounters its limit in the Trojan Horse Massacre in which three youths Greeks, and one handed down to us by a blind illiterate poet through were killed in Athlone, Cape Town on 15 October 1985.|n scholarly his wonderfully long and meanderingllliad? What if the students, works and documentary films, not to mention memorials, poems and the Trojans who, faced the hail of bullets, had through no fault of their works of art, the Trojan Horse lends itself to ideological prescription own notyet arrived at the lesson dealing with Homer's llliadwhich rather than attentiveness towards what was at work in the student describes the war that gave rise to the name of their own massacre? movement.
    [Show full text]