(Post) Apartheid Conditions

The author takes as his starting point events that shock us in their extreme violence, such as the burning of the Mozambican man Ernesto Alfabeto Nhamuave and the Marikana shootings. He notes how the language of the commentary on these events evokes a complex continuation of apartheid�s historical legacy. Using both psychoanalytic and social theory, he then proceeds to craft a theoretical framework within which to trace a sustained analysis of the psychic life of power in (post)apartheid South Africa: an awareness of how social structure and psychical or affective forces jointly produce material reality. Power itself has its psychological facets and social formations may themselves exhibit patterns of psychical causality.

List of Illustrations viii

Acknowledgements ix

Introduction: (Post)apartheid Psychosociality

1. The Monumental Uncanny
2. Apartheid’s Corps Morcel
3. Retrieving Biko
4. ‘Impossibility’ and the Retrieval of Apartheid History
5. Apartheid’s Lost Attachments
6. Mimed Melancholia
7. Screened History: Nostalgia as Defensive Formation

Conclusion: Time Signatures
Notes
References
Index

Birkbeck College, University of London and University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg
Also by Derek Hook:
Foucault, Psychology and the Analytics of Power
Social Psychology of Communication (co-author)
A Critical Psychology of the Postcolonial: The Mind of Apartheid
Critical Psychology (editor)
Self, Community and Psychology (co-editor)
Psychopathology and Social Prejudice (co-editor)
Development Psychology (co-editor)
Body Politics: Power, Knowledge and the Body (co-editor)