Education in Africa 
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| Title: | Building a Postcolonial Archive? Gender, Collective Memory and Citizenship in Post-Apartheid South Africa |
| Author: | McEwan, Cheryl |
| Year: | 2003 |
| Periodical: | Journal of Southern African Studies |
| Volume: | 29 |
| Issue: | 3 |
| Period: | September |
| Pages: | 739-757 |
| Language: | English |
| Geographic term: | South Africa |
| Subjects: | future memory gender relations racism black women historiography archives History and Exploration Women's Issues Politics and Government nationalism Bibliography/Research Law, Human Rights and Violence Historical/Biographical Education and Training Law, Legal Issues, and Human Rights |
| External link: | https://www.jstor.org/stable/3557440 |
| Abstract: | Since the ending of apartheid, the State, political parties, civil society and ordinary people in South Africa have attempted to deal with the traumatic legacies of the past to engender a common sense of nationhood. This paper examines this process of dealing with the past through the theoretical lens of postcolonialism, focusing, in particular, on attempts to establish historical truth and collective memory for black women, who have often been most marginalized by colonialism and apartheid and excluded from dominant accounts of history. It argues that if black women are denied a presence and agency in the construction of collective memory, their belonging and citizenship is consequently mediated in the process of nationbuilding. It considers how exclusionary and discriminating patterns are reproduced through attempts to construct national memory archives, focusing on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC). It then explores the measures being taken to create a more inclusive process of restoring collective memory. In particular, it discusses the importance and possibilities of creating a postcolonial archive, where the voices and texts of historically marginalized people can be incorporated into national projects of remembering and notions of belonging. The paper focuses specifically on recent attempts to archive black women's pictorial and written testimony in a memory cloths programme. Notes, ref., sum. [Journal abstract] |
