Ruins of Modernity by Julia Hell & Andreas Schönle

Author:Julia Hell & Andreas Schönle
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: ebook, book
Publisher: Duke University Press
Published: 2011-10-24T16:00:00+00:00

Notes

Versions of this chapter have been presented at the University of Michigan, the University of Natal, and the University of Toronto. I wish to thank Andre Dutoit and Deepak Mistrey for their helpful comments.

1. Conrad, Heart of Darkness, 86.

2. For a fascinating discussion of the Brasilia project and its subversion by local people, see Holston, The Modernist City.

3. Ibid.

4. See Comaroff and Comaroff, Of Revelation and Revolution.

5. Rossi, The Architecture of the City.

6. Bunn, “Whited Sepulchres.”

7. See Coombes, History after Apartheid.

8. Physical monuments tend to be created either by fiercely independent, often aggrieved groups, or by the state when it wants to assert its power. The moment before the concentration of state power, which has taken place only during the Mbeki regime, was indeed a moment when attitudes of healing were vital to the transitional process—transmuting the deep strife between social agents and groups into what Tutu called “restorative truth,” or reconciliation focused on victim acknowledgment. The victims were not stridently trying to assert their group identity in autonomy from the larger nation. Those who took part in the TRC had signed on to a game of national unity eschewing such assertions of separate identity as captured in monuments. And it should be recalled that the TRC took place during a state of on-again off-again political violence (between Inkatha and the ANC, and between other groups), and it was the work of the Truth Commission to salve these eruptions of malcontent through ideals and images of unity and harmony rather than through assertion of monumental power.

9. Johannesburg Star, August 2, 2002.

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