Towards a critical heritage studies

Anna Karlström’s article made me think of the inaugural conference of the International Association of Critical Heritage Studies held in Gothenburg in June 2012. At the conference, heritage scholars and graduate students gathered from around the world—though mainly from Britain, Australia, and Sweden— to discuss key debates in the rapidly developing, wide-ranging field of heritage. The location, the University of Gothenburg, was one of the most prominent sites for the new research field of heritage, as a platform for research and graduate education from about the mid-2000s. The conference was organized through Swedish, British, and Australian international collaboration, with participation by the International Journal of Heritage Studies. The recent careers of two of the main organizers—Laurajane Smith and Rodney Harrison—had seen them circulate between Australia and Britain, and in Smith’s case, to Sweden as well.Web of Scienc

The 1952 Jan van Riebeeck tercentenary festival: constructing and contesting public national history

Paper presented at the Wits History Workshop: Myths, Monuments, Museums; New Premises? 16-18 July, 199

Missing and Missed: Rehumanisation, the Nation and Missing-ness

The bringing together of two lines of research that have previously been treated separately – namely the missing/missed body of apartheid-era atrocities and the racialised body of the colonial museum – animates this issue of Kronos. Both the skeletons of empire and those of apartheid-era atrocities can be thought of as racialised, and as ‘disappeared’ and missing. Furthermore, both areas are marked by similar lines of enquiry, linked to issues of identification, redress and restoration, often framed through notions of humanisation or rehumanisation. Consequently, these different ‘disciplines of the dead’1 have been brought into collaboration and contestation with each other, with missingness often reproduced through the ways in which the dead have been drawn into grand narratives of the nation and its seeming triumphs over colonialism and apartheid.Notwithstanding their similarities, the racialised body of the colonial museum and the body of more recent conflicts have their own genealogies and literatures. The ‘disappeared’ entered the political lexicon of terror largely through Argentina and Chile; two decades later Rwanda and Bosnia turned international attention to mass violence and genocide as exemplified by the mass grave. South Africa slips through these grids: apartheid security forces tried but failed to emulate their Latin American counterparts in ‘disappearing’ activists on a large scale, while inter-civilian violence, which mostly took the form of political rather than ethnic, racial or religious cleansing, did not produce mass graves. Nonetheless, both ‘disappearances’ and inter-civilian conflict produced missing persons in the South African conflict – most presumed dead, and thus, as Madeleine Fullard describes them (this issue) ‘in limbo – dead, but missing.’ Investigations into such cases, led first by the country’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), and later by its Missing Persons Task Team (MPTT), sought to locate, exhume, identify and return mortal remains to their families. In so doing, South Africa joined a growing list of countries following this route

Missing and missed: Rehumanisation, the nation and missing-ness

The bringing together of two lines of research that have previously been treated separately – namely the missing/missed body of apartheid-era atrocities and the racialised body of the colonial museum – animates this issue of Kronos. Both the skeletons of empire and those of apartheid-era atrocities can be thought of as racialised, and as ‘disappeared’ and missing. Furthermore, both areas are marked by similar lines of enquiry, linked to issues of identification, redress and restoration, often framed through notions of humanisation or rehumanisation. Consequently, these different ‘disciplines of the dead’ have been brought into collaboration and contestation with each other, with missingness often reproduced through the ways in which the dead have been drawn into grand narratives of the nation and its seeming triumphs over colonialism and apartheid. Notwithstanding their similarities, the racialised body of the colonial museum and the body of more recent conflicts have their own genealogies and literatures. The ‘disappeared’ entered the political lexicon of terror largely through Argentina and Chile; two decades later Rwanda and Bosnia turned international attention to mass violence and genocide as exemplified by the mass grave. South Africa slips through these grids: apartheid security forces tried but failed to emulate their Latin American counterparts in ‘disappearing’ activists on a large scale, while inter-civilian violence, which mostly took the form of political rather than ethnic, racial or religious cleansing, did not produce mass graves. Nonetheless, both ‘disappearances’ and inter-civilian conflict produced missing persons in the South African conflict – most presumed dead, and thus, as Madeleine Fullard describes them (this issue) ‘in limbo – dead, but missing.’ Investigations into such cases, led first by the country’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), and later by its Missing Persons Task Team (MPTT), sought to locate, exhume, identify and return mortal remains to their families. In so doing, South Africa joined a growing list of countries following this route

The politics and aesthetics of commemoration: national days in southern Africa

The contributions to the special section in this issue study recent independence celebrations and other national days in South Africa, Namibia, Zimbabwe, Madagascar and the Democratic Republic of Congo. They explore the role of national days in state-making and nation-building, and examine the performativity of nationalism and the role of performances in national festivities. Placing the case studies in a broader, comparative perspective, the introduction first discusses the role of the state in national celebrations, highlighting three themes: firstly, the political power-play and contested politics of memory involved in the creation of a country’s festive calendar; secondly, the relationship between state control of national days and civic or popular participation or contestation; and thirdly, the complex relationship between regional and ethnic loyalties and national identifications. It then turns to the role of performance and aesthetics in the making of nations in general, and in national celebrations in particular. Finally, we look at the different formats and meanings of national days in the region and address the question whether there is anything specific about national days in southern Africa as compared to other parts of the continent or national celebrations world-wide.Web of Scienc

Biography – A Play? Poetologische Experimente mit einer Gattung ohne Poetik

Im Unterschied zu vielen Genres in der abendländischen Tradition gibt es für biographisches Schreiben keine Gattungspoetiken, nur Prototypen, Vorbilder, und die bis heute dominante Erzählordnung ist die chronologische. Kausal- und Finalnexus eines Lebens werden so in wissenschaftlichen wie literarischen Biographien in der Regel behauptet und miteinander verbunden. Die Aufsätze dieses Bandes stellen im Kontrast dazu Variationsmöglichkeiten biographischer Poetologie vor, historische wie gegenwärtige Experimente, (inter-)mediale Spielformen wie Alternativen der Narration. Einige der Beiträge sind zugleich Werkstattberichte von Biographen, die Auskunft über die Konstruktionsprinzipien ihres Schreibens geben. Der Titel des Bandes bezieht sich auf Max Frischs Theaterstück Biografie: Ein Spiel, das 1967 entstand und 1968 im Schauspielhaus Zürich uraufgeführt wurde, und variiert dessen Ausgangsbedingung, ersetzt den Registrator, der dem Helden Kürmann erlaubt, sein Leben – immer wieder dessen entscheidende Situationen verändernd – neu zu leben, durch den Biographen, der die Vita des Biographierten in allen ihren Handlungsoptionen als ein offenes Experiment zu beschreiben versucht