‘Transformation Lite’? Mediated Anthologising of South African Women's Life Writing

Abstract

Instead of focusing, as is generally the custom, on the content of an anthology, the result of selecting and collecting, this paper shifts the focus of examination to the process in a new collection of women's life writing in South Africa. The autobiographical texts will only be drawn upon for the light they throw on the anthologising process. In the new republic, given our history, the perspectival shift is of vital concern because it makes explicit what and how changes are made, particularly in accepted anthologising discursive practice, which has implications for the freedom that was won in 1994. In the course of discussion, mediating influences that play a crucial role in identity formation and their eventual playing out in discursive production will also be clarified through theory.