The author takes as his starting point events that shock us in their extreme violence, such as the burning of the Mozambican man Ernesto Alfabeto Nhamuave and the Marikana shootings. He notes how the language of the commentary on these events evokes a complex continuation of apartheid�s historical legacy. Using both psychoanalytic and social theory, he then proceeds to craft a theoretical framework within which to trace a sustained analysis of the psychic life of power in (post)apartheid South Africa: an awareness of how social structure and psychical or affective forces jointly produce material reality. Power itself has its psychological facets and social formations may themselves exhibit patterns of psychical causality.
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List of Illustrations viii
Acknowledgements ix
Introduction: (Post)apartheid Psychosociality
- The Monumental Uncanny
- Apartheid's Corps Morcel
- Retrieving Biko
- 'Impossibility' and the Retrieval of Apartheid History
- Apartheid's Lost Attachments
- Mimed Melancholia
- Screened History: Nostalgia as Defensive Formation
Conclusion: Time Signatures
Notes
References
Index
