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Land, Race, and Citizenship: The Political Spaces of Monumentalism in South Africa

  • Christian J. Emden EMAIL logo
Published/Copyright: September 17, 2013
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Anglia
From the journal Anglia Volume 131 Issue 2-3

Abstract

This essay discusses the nature of (old and new) national monuments in post-apartheid South Africa which even now, twenty years after the first free elections, remains a democracy in transition. The discourse of monumentalism in transitional political systems is marked by concrete political interests that, in the case of South Africa, are centered on questions of race and citizenship as well as on territorial claims. Monumentalism in South Africa is inextricably linked to the spatial organization of political community, before and after apartheid, and as such it runs parallel to developments in public law and constitutionalism. On the one hand, officially sanctioned forms of monumentalism, such as the Voortrekker Monument, the Taal Monument, or Pretoria’s Freedom Park, tend to camouflage the political and social tensions of post-apartheid South Africa. On the other hand, new forms of monumentalism create accidental and liminal spaces that expose the political paradoxes and historical ambiguities of the new South Africa as in the case of the spatial relationship between the Women’s Monument and the cooling towers of the power station, painted with ANC motifs, in the urban landscape of Bloemfontein.

Published Online: 2013-09-17
Published in Print: 2013-09

© 2013 by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co.

Articles in the same Issue

  1. Masthead
  2. Introduction: Towards a New Monumentalism?
  3. Monumental Cleopatra: Hollywood’s Epic Film as Historical Re-imagination
  4. Marathon Theater as Anti-Monument: The Curious Case of Gatz
  5. Monumentalism and Contemporary Verse Novels
  6. Monumentalism and Monuments in Postcolonial Literatures: Dismembering Tradition
  7. Monumentalism as a Rhetoric of Impact
  8. New Monumentalism in Contemporary Architecture
  9. Land, Race, and Citizenship: The Political Spaces of Monumentalism in South Africa
  10. Joybrato Mukherjee & Magnus Huber (eds.). Corpus Linguistics and Variation in English: Theory and Description
  11. Richard Ingham. The Transmission of Anglo-Norman: Language History and Language Acquisition
  12. A. N. Doane & William P. Stoneman. Purloined Letters: The Twelfth-Century Reception of the Anglo-Saxon Illustrated Hexateuch (British Library, Cotton Claudius B. iv)
  13. Stephen Partridge & Erik Kwakkel (eds.). Author, Reader, Book: Medieval Authorship in Theory and Practice
  14. Samuel Fanous & Vincent Gillespie (eds.). The Cambridge Companion to Medieval English Mysticism
  15. Linda Marie Zaerr. Performance and the Middle English Romance
  16. Neil Cartlidge (ed.). Heroes and Anti-Heroes in Medieval Romance
  17. Heather Blurton & Jocelyn Wogan-Browne (eds.). Rethinking the South English Legendaries
  18. Aleida Assmann. Introduction to Cultural Studies: Topics, Concepts, Issues
  19. Roy Sommer. Eine transmediale Geschichte der englischen Komödie zwischen pragmatischer Poetik und generischem Gedächtnis
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  25. David Dwan & Christopher J. Insole (eds.). The Cambridge Companion to Edmund Burke
  26. Ralph Pordzik. Victorian Wastelands: Apocalyptic Discourse in Nineteenth- Century Poetry
  27. Alain Jumeau & Sara Thornton (eds.). Persistent Dickens. Études Anglaises
  28. Hans Ulrich Seeber. Literarische Faszination in England um 1900
  29. Karolina Jeftic. Literatur und moderne Bilderfahrung. Zur Cézanne-Rezeption in der Bloomsbury Group
  30. Stephanie Siewert & Antonia Mehnert (eds.). The Morbidity of Culture: Melancholy, Trauma, Illness and Dying in Literature and Film
  31. Julia Novak. Live Poetry: An Integrated Approach to Poetry in Performance
  32. Leena Eilittä, Liliane Louvel & Sabine Kim (eds.). Intermedial Arts: Disrupting, Remembering and Transforming Media
  33. Wilfried Koch. Die Naturbeschreibung im Journal von Henry David Thoreau
  34. Dieter Schulz. Emerson and Thoreau or Steps Beyond Ourselves: Studies in Transcendentalism
  35. Stephanie LeMenager, Teresa Shewry & Ken Hiltner (eds.). Environmental Criticism for the Twenty-First Century
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  37. Eva Boesenberg, Reinhard Isensee & Martin Klepper (eds.). American Economies
  38. Jessica Zeltner. When the Centre Fell Apart: The Treatment of September 11 in Selected Anglophone Narratives
  39. Books Received
https://doi.org/10.1515/anglia-2013-0039

Articles in the same Issue

  1. Masthead
  2. Introduction: Towards a New Monumentalism?
  3. Monumental Cleopatra: Hollywood’s Epic Film as Historical Re-imagination
  4. Marathon Theater as Anti-Monument: The Curious Case of Gatz
  5. Monumentalism and Contemporary Verse Novels
  6. Monumentalism and Monuments in Postcolonial Literatures: Dismembering Tradition
  7. Monumentalism as a Rhetoric of Impact
  8. New Monumentalism in Contemporary Architecture
  9. Land, Race, and Citizenship: The Political Spaces of Monumentalism in South Africa
  10. Joybrato Mukherjee & Magnus Huber (eds.). Corpus Linguistics and Variation in English: Theory and Description
  11. Richard Ingham. The Transmission of Anglo-Norman: Language History and Language Acquisition
  12. A. N. Doane & William P. Stoneman. Purloined Letters: The Twelfth-Century Reception of the Anglo-Saxon Illustrated Hexateuch (British Library, Cotton Claudius B. iv)
  13. Stephen Partridge & Erik Kwakkel (eds.). Author, Reader, Book: Medieval Authorship in Theory and Practice
  14. Samuel Fanous & Vincent Gillespie (eds.). The Cambridge Companion to Medieval English Mysticism
  15. Linda Marie Zaerr. Performance and the Middle English Romance
  16. Neil Cartlidge (ed.). Heroes and Anti-Heroes in Medieval Romance
  17. Heather Blurton & Jocelyn Wogan-Browne (eds.). Rethinking the South English Legendaries
  18. Aleida Assmann. Introduction to Cultural Studies: Topics, Concepts, Issues
  19. Roy Sommer. Eine transmediale Geschichte der englischen Komödie zwischen pragmatischer Poetik und generischem Gedächtnis
  20. Jared Gardner. The Rise and Fall of Early American Magazine Culture
  21. Jan Alber & Monika Fludernik (eds.). Postclassical Narratology: Approaches and Analyses
  22. Gregory Claeys (ed.). The Cambridge Companion to Utopian Literature
  23. Anne-Julia Zwierlein (ed.). Gender and Creation: Surveying Gendered Myths of Creativity, Authority, and Authorship
  24. Daniel Dornhofer. Petrarkistischer Diskurs und höfische Kommunikation im Wandel. Strategien schottischer Dichter, 1580–1625
  25. David Dwan & Christopher J. Insole (eds.). The Cambridge Companion to Edmund Burke
  26. Ralph Pordzik. Victorian Wastelands: Apocalyptic Discourse in Nineteenth- Century Poetry
  27. Alain Jumeau & Sara Thornton (eds.). Persistent Dickens. Études Anglaises
  28. Hans Ulrich Seeber. Literarische Faszination in England um 1900
  29. Karolina Jeftic. Literatur und moderne Bilderfahrung. Zur Cézanne-Rezeption in der Bloomsbury Group
  30. Stephanie Siewert & Antonia Mehnert (eds.). The Morbidity of Culture: Melancholy, Trauma, Illness and Dying in Literature and Film
  31. Julia Novak. Live Poetry: An Integrated Approach to Poetry in Performance
  32. Leena Eilittä, Liliane Louvel & Sabine Kim (eds.). Intermedial Arts: Disrupting, Remembering and Transforming Media
  33. Wilfried Koch. Die Naturbeschreibung im Journal von Henry David Thoreau
  34. Dieter Schulz. Emerson and Thoreau or Steps Beyond Ourselves: Studies in Transcendentalism
  35. Stephanie LeMenager, Teresa Shewry & Ken Hiltner (eds.). Environmental Criticism for the Twenty-First Century
  36. Axel Goodbody & Kate Rigby (eds.). Ecocritical Theory: New European Approaches
  37. Eva Boesenberg, Reinhard Isensee & Martin Klepper (eds.). American Economies
  38. Jessica Zeltner. When the Centre Fell Apart: The Treatment of September 11 in Selected Anglophone Narratives
  39. Books Received
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