Performing History and Constructing ‘Culture’: Ronnie Govender's 1949 and the Romanticism of Historical Memory

Abstract

Though both South Asian and South African literary and cultural studies boast deep critical traditions, rarely have critics specifically focused on dramatic literature and the performative acts of Indian South Africans. Theatre – as an aesthetic genre as well as a social institution – has been remarkably under-theorised within Indian Ocean communities, even though its power in Indian South African communities and within South African history and culture has been amply documented and analysed In theatre studies of South Asia, scholars have pushed new frontiers about the studies of colonial modern theatre as well as post-independence Indian theatres, inspired by a performance-studies turn, but the push to link theatre and performance studies with Indian Ocean, and migrant, contexts has yet to fully manifest within scholarly circles. Through an examination of Ronnie Govender's play 1949, this article argues that theatre as a medium offers the opportunity to create specific versions of history and community identity not visible in prose literature or the novel. These versions of history and community identity are analysed with reference to the broader history of South Africa as well as the manners in which Govender's history both incorporates particular aspects of earlier definitions of Indian identity in South Africa and innovates to create images of Indo-African shared spaces.