The ‘post’ as powerful specific vocabulary

Danielle Drozdzewski

doi:10.1177/20438206211030054

Abstract

On several occasions through her article, ‘Keeping You Post-ed: Space-Time Regimes, Metaphors, and Post-Apartheid’, Houssay-Holzschuch (2021) prompts us to consider suitable vocabulary for analysing ‘post’ situations. In this commentary, I pursue the notion that the ‘post’ discourse already has a specific vocabulary. Taking Houssay-Holzschuch’s lead and drawing from Massey’s conception of space-time regimes, I argue that ‘post’ is used powerfully to fasten the past to a place’s present, bounding certain geopolitical discourses to people and places and overshadowing experiential memories of place. This powerful lexicographic move is shrouded by cruelly optimistic rhetoric that otherwise links ‘post’ with newly opened spaces of possibility, positive change, and hope.

Highlights

Houssay-Holzschuch’s (2021) opening contention, that ‘societies that have undergone systemic change are characterized as “post”’, and her question, ‘what is a “post” situation?’, provided me with entry points to begin thinking with and through the ‘post’ as a specific vocabulary
On the cusp of thepandemic, we dwell with/in an uncomfortable and challenging liminal zone waiting for a return to the everyday we know, all the while engaging in a type of collective optimism for a seemingly imminent vaccine
Referencing post-apartheid space-time, Houssay-Holzschuch argues that the liminality of this ‘post’ space-time opened ‘up spaces of possibility rather than probability’; such imaginative possibilities signalled hope for change notwithstanding the probability that change would never be distributed or equitably accessible across postapartheid South Africa

Summary

Introduction

Houssay-Holzschuch’s (2021) opening contention, that ‘societies that have undergone systemic change are characterized as “post”’, and her question, ‘what is a “post” situation?’, provided me with entry points to begin thinking with and through the ‘post’ as a specific vocabulary. Why begin here – with the pandemic – when Houssay-Holzschuch’s theorisations on ‘post’ assemble in post-apartheid space-time?

Results

Conclusion