1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910863172303321

Autore

Libin Mark <1969->

Titolo

Reading affect in post-apartheid literature : South Africa's wounded feelings / / Mark Libin

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Springer International Publishing, 2020

Cham : , : Springer International Publishing : , : Imprint : Palgrave Macmillan, , 2020

ISBN

3-030-55977-7

Edizione

[1st ed. 2020.]

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource

Collana

Palgrave Studies in Affect Theory and Literary Criticism, , 2634-632X

Disciplina

809.8968

190

Soggetti

Affect (Psychology) in literature

South African literature (English) - 20th century - History and criticism

South African literature (English) - 21st century - History and criticism

South African literature - 20th century - History and criticism

South African literature - 21st century - History and criticism

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

Chapter One: Apartheid’s Bitter Fruit -- Chapter Two: Domestic Bliss -- Chapter Three: “Revealing is Healing”: Ubuntu, the TRC Hearings, and the Transmission of Affect -- Chapter Four: Seeing and Time: Durational Time in Ubu and the Truth Commission and Long Night’s Journey into Day -- Chapter Five: Compassion Fatigue: White Empathy and White Guilt in Antjie Krog’s Country of My Skull and J.M. Coetzee’s Disgrace -- Chapter Six: Shame, Guilt, and Complicity in Mark Behr’s The Smell of Apples and Sindiwe Magona’s Mother to Mother -- Chapter Seven: Conclusion: How Close is Too Close? Anger, Reconciliation, and the “Born Free” Generation.

Sommario/riassunto

This book examines South Africa’s post-apartheid culture through the lens of affect theory in order to argue that the socio-political project of the “new” South Africa, best exemplified in their Truth and Reconciliation Commission Hearings, was fundamentally an affective, emotional project. Through the TRC hearings, which publicly broadcast the testimonies of both victims and perpetrators of gross human rights



violations, the African National Congress government of South Africa, represented by Nelson Mandela and Archbishop Desmond Tutu, endeavoured to generate powerful emotions of contrition and sympathy in order to build an empathetic bond between white and black citizens, a bond referred to frequently by Tutu in terms of the African philosophy of interconnection: ubuntu. This book explores the representations of affect, and the challenges of generating ubuntu, through close readings of a variety of cultural products: novels, poetry, memoir, drama, documentary film and audio anthology.