Democracy at Home in South Africa: Family Fictions and Transitional Culture

ISBN-13: 9781137561985 / Angielski / Twarda / 2015 / 205 str.

Kerry Bystrom

Opis

Since its liberation in 1994, South Africa has been an object of world attention, as an example of how to end conflict without bloodshed and how to create a constitutional regime based on universal human rights - as well as an example of how these dreams can falter when faced with the realities of "freedom" in the neo-liberal world order. Focusing on aesthetic figuration - novels, performance, photography, visual art installations - of diverse home spaces, modes of domestic life, and family histories, Bystrom argues that writers and artists depicting the first fifteen years of democracy as they unfold literally at home present a compelling portrait of intimate and everyday aspects of political change. They reveal the challenges of the democratic transition and point to unexpected futures. Further, by enacting a form of intimate politics, Bystrom contends, they position private life at the heart of public culture.

Recenzje

"Bystrom is a master synthesizer who lucidly lays out complex debates and compellingly places her own concerns in their context. The debates on democracy place this study squarely in the humanistic discussion that has evolved around human rights in the last ten years, and where the case of South Africa is a central paradigm. Bystrom's prose is clear and subtle at the same time, and her enormous range of reference will be an invaluable tool for both experts in the field and other audiences who may want to enter the field." - Eleni Coundouriotis, University of Connecticut, USA

"An outstanding intellectual meditation on transitional culture in South Africa's first fifteen years of democracy. Bystrom is right: the imaginative acts of the extended transition are valuable to us now, as we enter an altogether darker period of historical reckoning and reflection - and look for the forming swells of a future we can recognize." - Sarah Nuttall, author of Entanglement: Literary and Cultural Reflections on Post-apartheid

"Democracy at Home in South Africa is a magnificent and unmatched study of the micro-politics of transition and democratic experiment in South Africa and the aesthetic traditions that have emerged to plot the nation beyond the entanglements of historical trauma, race, and nationalism. Working across the spectrum of South African literature and art after apartheid, Bystrom provides us with one of the best explorations of the role of the family and home in the South African democratic experiment." - Simon Gikandi, Professor, English, Princeton University, USA

O autorze

Kerry Bystrom is Associate Professor of English and Human Rights at Bard College, USA, and Bard College Berlin, Germany. She has published widely on South African literary and cultural studies in journals including Journal of Southern African Studies, African Studies, Social Dynamics, and Comparative Literature. She is the co-editor of a special issue of Cultural Studies on "Private Lives and Public Cultures in South Africa" (2013) and co-editor of a special issue of Journal of Human Rights on "Humanitarianism and Responsibility." She is an editorial board member of Safundi: A Journal of South African and American Studies.