Mourning becomes...
Post/memory and commemoration of the concentration camps of the South African War 1899-1902
By Elizabeth Stanley
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- Format: Hardcover
- ISBN: 978-0-7190-6568-2
- Pages: 320
- Price: £80.00
- Published Date: June 2006
- Series: Encounters: Cultural Histories
Description
This fascinating work challenges many of the accepted facts about the concentration camps run by the British during the South African War. The author demonstrates that much of what we have traditionally understood about these camps originates the testimony which was solicited, selected and published by key women activists within Boer proto-nationalist circles. Using detailed archival evidence, she shows that much of the history of the camps results from a deliberate imposition of 'post/memory' - a process by which what was 'remembered' was shaped and reshaped to support the development of a racialised nationalist framework.
Many of the camps' occupants died from successive epidemics of measles, typhoid, enteritis and pneumonia rather than deliberate ill-treatment, yet the book shows how mourning for those who died was overridden by state commemorative activities concerned with promoting pan-Boer nationalist aspirations. The innovative and groundbreaking approach of the author invites the reader to step into and explore with her the commemorative sites passed by nationalist land acts, which still powerfully mark the South African landscape.
Contents
Acknowledgements
Remembering
1. 'The Brunt of the War & Where It Fell'
2. Small personal reminiscences concerning large human issues
3. A secret history of kept secrets: local mourning & state commemoration
4. Making memory work: remembering, moral life & the concentration system
5. 'Should We Forget?' Some answers from women's testimonies
6. What has been forgotten, concerning children in the 'white' camps
7. Nooitgedacht: black people in the concentration system
8. Onthou! Commemoration & the legendary topography
9. For Electra, peace, of a kind
Bibliography
Author
Liz Stanley is Research Professor of Sociology at the University of Newcastle (MOVING TO EDINBURGH, SUMMER 2005)