Stages of Transition: South Africa's Truth Commission and Performance

FAIN: FT-52805-04

Catherine Melinda Cole
University of California, Berkeley (Santa Barbara, CA 93106-0001)

"Stages of Transition" is a study of the performative dimensions of South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC). An epic theatre of national and international proportions, the TRC is an extraordinary example of theatricalization of traumatic memory on a national scale. How did the TRC's performative conventions, modes of address, expressive embodiment and rhetorical construction shape the experience for both participants and spectators? "Stages of Transition" moves beyond the narrow juridical frame of culpability and redress to explore the larger issues of cultural memory and its many guises of performance.