Search results

This paper explores two very different contexts in South Africa where witnessing and secondary witnessing have a special impact on the nature of national memorialization: women's narrative accounts of their prison experiences; and therapeutic initiatives around HIV/AIDS. It asks whether experiences related through testimony of one kind or another can be embodied in forms which might enable access for non‐participants, especially since the power of witnessing relies so heavily on qualities of voice and performance. What would be an adequate and relevant form which might translate personal trauma into a publicly accessible and affective monument or memorial? And if, unlike most of the public commemorative initiatives in South Africa since 1994, we take gender into consideration, is there anything particular about aspects of women's experience that might influence such a decision? Is it possible for us as non‐participants to adopt an ethical viewing position in relation to this material which takes on board both Susan Sontag's caution about voyeurism and Gayatri Spivak's insistence on the importance of listening without engaging in a necessarily narcissistic empathy that might obliterate the speaker's right to an incommensurable experience?RésuméL'article étudie deux contextes très différents en Afrique du Sud, dans lesquels le témoignage et le témoignage secondaire ont un effet spécifique sur la nature de la mise en mémoire nationale : les récits de prison faits par des femmes et les initiatives thérapeutiques contre le VIH et le SIDA. L'auteure se demande s'il est possible de donner aux expériences reliées par l'un ou l'autre type de témoignage une forme qui les rendrait accessibles à ceux qui n'y ont pas été impliqués, d'autant plus que la puissance du témoignage doit beaucoup aux qualités de la voix et de la performance. Quelle forme pourrait être adéquate et pertinente pour traduire le traumatisme personnel en mémorial affectif accessible à tous ? Si, contrairement à la plupart des commémorations publiques en Afrique du Sud depuis 1994, on prend le sexe en compte, y a‐t‐il quelque chose de particulier dans l'expérience des femmes qui pourrait influer sur cette décision ? Est‐il possible que ceux qui n'ont pas été impliqués adoptent une position de spectateurs éthiques par rapport à ce qui est présenté, en intégrant à la fois la mise en garde contre le voyeurisme de Susan Sontag et l'insistance de Gayatri Spivak sur l'importance d'écouter sans s'engager dans une empathie nécessairement narcissique, qui pourrait occulter le droit du narrateur à une expérience sans commune mesure avec celle des autres ?

Atom Egoyan's Steenbeckett—An Installation. Commissioned and produced by Artangel. Museum of Mankind, London, February 15—March 17, 2002.

Siopis has always engaged in a critical and controversial way with the concepts of 'race' and 'ethnicity' in South Africa. For politically sensitive artists whose work has involved confronting the injustices of apartheid, the current post-apartheid situation has forced a reassessment of their practice and the terms on which they might engage with the fundamental changes which are now affecting all of South African society. Where mythologies of race and ethnicity have been strategically foregrounded in the art of any engaged artist, to the exclusion of many other concerns, the demise of apartheid offers the possibility of exploring other dimensions of lived experience in South Africa. For feminists, this is potentially a very positive moment when questions of gender – so long subordinated to the structural issue of 'race' under apartheid – can now be explored. Penny Siopis' work has long been concerned with the lived and historical relations between black and white women in South Africa. The discussion focuses on the ambivalent and dependent relationships formed between white middle-class women and black domestic labour during apartheid. Siopis' work engages with how the appropriation of black women's time, lives, labour and bodies has shaped her 'own' history.