South African performance and archives of memory

Abstract

In this densely packed book, filled with a plethora of examples, Yvette Hutchison examines issues of memory in South Africa through the lens of performance. The focus is on the role of performance in negotiating memory, and how this relates to ways in which South Africans formulate a sense of themselves in the post-apartheid present. A key argument is that public archives and similar national narratives and formulations of memory in South Africa are in tension with more nuanced and diverse local presentations. These alternative presentations are argued to be manifest through more multi-vocal and 'embodied' performative modes such as theatrical dramas and community events that provide a means of exploring often unarticulated traumas and experiences beyond the national narrative. As a consequence, Hutchison argues, such more ephemeral examples particularly theatrical performances within communities provide a means of undoing the 'disconnect' between overarching official state performances of memory and the multiplicity of lived experiences of South Africans with diverse individual and collective histories, thus extending beyond the limitations of non-ephemeral official state archives, such as the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), 1995-1998.