Seeing ghosts : the past in contemporary images of Afrikaner self-representation

[摘要] ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Contemporary Afrikaner ethnic identity is subject to attempts at rehabilitation, which seek to fit Afrikaner whiteness to the post-apartheid milieu. This thesis investigates how popular visual culture, aimed particularly at the white Afrikaner consumer, provides transformative identity-positions by ingeniously re-imagining Afrikanerness. The potential of such images for identity- and memory-work is explored in relation to the various conditions (political, historical, economic or otherwise) that determine their social and psychological significance. The thesis particularly accounts for the manner in which the past is refigured (with varying degrees of criticality and self-reflexivity) in these consumer items and advertisements, and explores their deployment of discursive devices such as irony, hybridisation, nostalgia, and collective memory.

[发布机构] Stellenbosch University