Winner of the 2021 ALA Book of the Year Award - Scholarship The
author uses the image of blood under the skin as a way of
understanding cultural and literary forms in contemporary South
Africa. Chapters deal with the bloodied histories of apartheid and
blood as trope for talking about change. In this book the author
argues that a younger generation of South Africans is developing
important and innovative ways of understanding South African pasts,
and that challenge the narratives that have over the last decades
been informed by notions of forgiveness and reconciliation. The
author uses the image of history-rich blood to explore these
approaches to intergenerational memory. Blood under the skin is a
carrier of embodied and gendered histories andusing this image, the
chapters revisit older archives, as well as analyse contemporary
South African cultural and literary forms. The emphasis on blood
challenges the privileged status skin has had as explanatory
category inthinking about identity, and instead emphasises
intergenerational transfer and continuity. The argument is that a
younger generation is disputing and debating the terms through
which to understand contemporary South Africa, as well as for
interpreting the legacies of the past that remain under the visible
layer of skin. The chapters each concern blood: Mandela's prison
cell as laboratory for producing bloodless freedom; the kinship
relations created and resisted in accounts of Eugene de Kock in
prison; Ruth First's concern with information leaks in her accounts
of her time in prison; the first human-to-human heart transplant
and its relation to racialised attempts to salvage whiteidentity;
the #Fallist moment; Abantu book festival; and activist scholarship
and creative art works that use blood as trope for thinking about
change and continuity. Southern Africa (South Africa, Namibia,
Lesotho, Zimbabwe and Swaziland): Wits University Press
General
Is the information for this product incomplete, wrong or inappropriate?
Let us know about it.
Does this product have an incorrect or missing image?
Send us a new image.
Is this product missing categories?
Add more categories.
Review This Product
No reviews yet - be the first to create one!