At the Walls of Athens: What Remains?

Abstract

In this contribution, the author takes as his starting point two paintings by Poussin on the subject of The Death of Phocion and their (aesthetic) implications for subjectivity and a contemporary politics. Focusing on the South African context, he makes use of the metaphor of the wall (or hedge), as representative of both the politics of oppression (in the case of Van Riebeeck’s hedge of bitter almonds in Kirstenbosch Gardens, Cape Town) as well as the politics of reconciliation (in the case of The Wall of Names in Freedom Park, Pretoria). The wall is consequently related to the transformative role of mourning in what he refers to as a politics that comes after—a politics that itself depends on a disruption of the traditional model of rational politics depicted in the Poussin paintings by the brightly-lit walls and buildings of Athens. In this regard the author defends an ethico-politics of unboundedness where the wall no longer primarily functions as a cipher of exclusion or a stable inside/outside but, in addition, comes to stand as a marker of the radical disruption of a politics founded in subjectivity. Here the author refers to the ongoing interruption of the South African political landscape by the return of the remains which highlights the significant transformative relationship between mourning and democracy.