Can the subaltern be heard? Response and Responsibility in South Africa's Human Spirit

Abstract

This article examines the possibility of responding to the postcolonial other by theorizing how such a response is constructed in a recent textual representation of South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) hearings: an audio anthology entitled South Africa's Human Spirit . Representations of the TRC hearings are particularly compelling in how they bring together issues of post-traumatic witnessing with postcolonial questions addressing whether it is possible to adequately comprehend the other. The intersection of these potentially competing methodologies is made structurally manifest in the design of South Africa's Human Spirit , as the compact discs through which one audits the testimony of the predominately black South Africans are housed inside a padlocked metal cage. My "reading' of the audio-text, initially impelled by my ambivalent reaction to the anthology's design, is intended to determine how the figure and function of the cage mediates the response of the individual listening to these compact discs. Drawing on the theories of Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Roland Barthes, Shoshana Felman and Dominick LaCapra, and most particularly Emmanuel Levinas, as well as exploring the South African philosophy of ubuntu , the study examines how the caged testimony of South Africa's Human Spirit might offer a more complex understanding of the response, and, indeed, responsibility, to the face of the wounded other.