History after apartheid : visual culture and public memory in a democratic South Africa /

This study of how postrevolutionary societies come to grips with new ideological verities focuses particularly on where "specific histories or sites imbued with historical significance are being contested." Coombes (history of art, film, and visual media, Birkbeck College, Univ. of London) argues that there is a healthy debate in the new South Africa about history and heritage, truth and lies, and memory and fantasy that explores a different model of historical knowledge and narrative in the construction of new and competing identities. Several questions are posed and answered: How does the "Voortrekker Monument," a "foundational icon of the apartheid state," fit into the future? What are the opportunities and contradictions nested in the commemorative and commercial uses of "Robben Island" and "District Six," the epitomes of the carceral and punitive experience of apartheid? In some ways, the answers are rendered in the epilogue's analysis of the refurbishment of the "old" South African House in London's Trafalgar Square, where the elisions of the messages of the apartheid state are embroiled in the representation of a "new South Africa." This powerful volume demonstrates how states--and not just South Africa--should scrutinize how history is "embodied in the public domain." Well illustrated; scholarly footnotes; comprehensive bibliography. ^BSumming Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above. B. Osborne Queen's University at Kingston