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 Periodical article |
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| Title: | Remembering experience, interpreting memory: life stories from Windermere |
| Author: | Field, Sean |
| Year: | 2001 |
| Periodical: | African Studies |
| Volume: | 60 |
| Issue: | 1 |
| Period: | July |
| Pages: | 119-133 |
| Language: | English |
| Geographic term: | South Africa |
| Subjects: | segregation informal settlements oral history Urbanization and Migration Peoples of Africa (Ethnic Groups) History and Exploration Ethnic and Race Relations |
| External link: | https://doi.org/10.1080/00020180120063656 |
| Abstract: | The destruction of a culturally mixed Windermere/Kensington community in Cape Town, South Africa, during the period 1958-1963, and the development of the so-called 'model coloured townships' of Kensington and Facreton, are tragic examples of apartheid's social engineering. By the late 1960s the apartheid State had completed the classification and removal process of former Windermere and Kensington residents. Life stories from Windermere are testimony to the porous social and cultural boundaries between residents classified into separate identities and their interweaving struggles over jobs, homes and resources. Through the life stories of two African and two coloured interviewees, this paper explores interviewees' memories of cultural difference, hybridity and identity formation. The final section argues that in listening to the agency or lack of agency reflected in the telling of life stories there are complex clues about experience, memory and identity that can be interpreted. Moreover, life stories provide insights into how people developed their survival strategies and their ways of living with the emotional wounds inflicted by apartheid. Bibliogr., notes, ref. |
