Out of History

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Re-imagining South Africans Pasts Out of History brings together exciting and innovative work in History and the Humanities. Drawing upon papers which have been presented at the South African Contemporary History and Humanities Seminar at the University of the Western Cape, the book reflects upon how this space fashioned new histories of the South African past over the last twenty years. Written by leading scholars in fields of visual history, public history, heritage, linguistics, oral history and postcolonial studies, the contributions address critical questions about the production of academic knowledge and the status of the Humanities in the post-apartheid present. Through offering a critique of nationalist narratives, the chapters explore the limits of historical representations, providing new paths to rethink memory, the archive, creative writing, disciplinary methodologies and the legacies of colonialism.

1. Leslie Witz, Jung Ran Forte and Paolo Israel

Epistemological Restlessness: Trajectories in and out of History

2. Gary Minkley and Leslie Witz

Sir Harry Smith and his Imbongi: Local and National Identities in the Eastern Cape, 1952

3. Nicky Rousseau

“Unpalatable Truths” and “Popular Hunger:” Reflections on Popular History in the 1980s

4. Susan Newton-King

Hilletje Smits and the Shadow of Death: Transgression in the Camdeboo

5. Isabel Hofmeyr

Reading Oral Texts: New Methodological Directions

6. Uma Mesthrie

Remembering Removals

7. Patricia Hayes

Northern Exposures. The Photography of C.H.L. Hahn, Native Commissioner of Ovamboland 1915–1946

8. Ciraj Rassool

“Taking the Nation to school:” I.B. Tabata and the Politics of Knowledge

9. Hlonipha Mokoena

What did this Life Mean? Magema Magwaza Fuze and the Problem of Writing a Kholwa Intellectual History

10. Fernando Rosa Ribeiro

Rethinking Multilingualism in South Africa

11. Premesh Lalu

The Absent Centre: Human Capital, Nationalism and the Postcolonial Critique of Apartheid